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Thread: Gary Lee Sampson - Federal

  1. #11
    Moderator MRBAM's Avatar
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    Judge says prosecutors can appeal decision to order second death penalty hearing for serial killer Gary Lee Sampson

    A federal judge says prosecutors can appeal his decision to order a second hearing on whether serial killer Gary Lee Sampson should be executed for carjacking and killing two people.

    US District Judge Mark Wolf rejected arguments by Sampson’s lawyers that prosecutors could not appeal until the sentencing hearing was over.

    Sampson was sentenced in the first hearing to be executed, but Wolf found last year that Sampson’s constitutional rights to an impartial jury had been violated because a juror had lied about “important questions relating to her ability to be impartial.” He then ordered a new hearing. Those proceedings are now on hold while the First US Circuit Court of Appeals considers the case.

    If the appeals court decides that his decision ordering the second hearing can be appealed, Wolf said, it would also be “appropriate” for the court to exercise its discretion to decide on the government’s claims, and rule on whether he correctly interpreted the law in ordering the new hearing.

    Sampson killed two men, Jonathan Rizzo and Philip McCloskey, in Massachusetts in July 2001. He pleaded guilty to federal charges, which carried the possibility of the death penalty. A jury found in 2003 that he should be sentenced to death.

    Sampson was also convicted in state court in New Hampshire on charges of killing Robert “Eli” Whitney in Penacook, N.H., later the same month.

    http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrode...?p1=News_links

  2. #12
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    Feds push to put Gary Lee Sampson to death

    Federal prosecutors are fighting to reinstate the death penalty for convicted mass murderer Gary Lee Sampson, who carried out a multi-state crime spree 12 years ago.

    The federal district court overturned a 2003 jury verdict that sentenced him to death, when it sided with defense lawyers who claimed a juror dishonestly answered questions and was biased. Government lawyers wrote in their appeal today to the First Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday that the decision went too far.

    “That ruling is unprecedented,” lawyers wrote in a 55-page brief. “No other court has overturned a jury verdict based on a finding of inferable bias on the part of a juror, and where actual bias was not proven.”

    While the conviction still stands, prosecutors want the appeal’s court to reverse the lower court and reinstate Sampson’s death penalty, which was overturned last year. If Sampson’s lawyers have their way he will undergo another trial to determine his sentence of life in prison or the death penalty.

    “Although the court found that Sampson had failed to carry his burden of showing actual or implied bias, it nonetheless vacated Sampson’s death sentence upon concluding that, if it had to do it all over again, it would have exercised its discretion to excuse Juror C for cause because of the ‘substantial risk’ that she would not be impartial.”

    http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion...mpson_to_death
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  3. #13
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Feds: Put spree killer back on death row

    By Laurel J. Sweet
    The Boston Herald

    Convicted spree killer Gary Lee Sampson “deserves to die,” said former U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, whose prosecution put the murderer on death row, as the death sentence goes before an appeals court.

    Federal prosecutors will argue Wednesday for the reinstatement of a 2003 jury’s sentencing-phase verdict of death, which U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf overturned last year after learning one of the jurors lied on her questionnaire about her family’s criminal history. Sampson, 53, a federal death-row inmate in Indiana, did not contest his conviction for murdering Philip McCloskey of Taunton, Jonathan Rizzo of Kingston and Robert “Eli” Whitney of Concord, N.H., in 2001.

    “Gary Lee Sampson deserves to die based on the sentence rendered by the jury,” Sullivan said yesterday. “The victims’ families have now been waiting almost 12 years for justice.”

    Sampson’s attorney could not be reached for comment yesterday. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark T. Quinlivan contends the juror “had no personal experience with regard to the core crimes of carjacking and murder,” and that “juror dishonesty alone does not warrant overturning a jury verdict, even in capital cases.”

    http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion...k_on_death_row

  4. #14
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Appeals court backs new sentencing for serial killer

    A federal appeals court has ruled that serial Killer Gary Lee Sampson’s death sentence should be vacated and a new hearing should be held to determine whether he should be executed for the spree in which he killed three people.

    Upholding a ruling by a district court judge, the First US Circuit Court of Appeals said, “we conclude — as did the district court — that the death sentence must be vacated and a new penalty-phase hearing undertaken.”

    The appeals court said Sampson deserved a new hearing because a juror had been dishonest during voir dire before the sentencing portion of the trial. In the voir dire process, jurors are questioned to determine whether they are suitable to sit on a case.

    “This case is a stark reminder of the consequences of juror dishonesty. Jurors who do not take their oaths seriously threaten the very integrity of the judicial process. The costs, whether measured in terms of human suffering or monetary outlays, are staggering,” a three-judge panel of the appeals court found in a decision written by Justice Bruce Selya.

    Sampson was sentenced to death in 2003. He was the first person sentenced to death by a federal court in Massachusetts. The last executions by the state of Massachusetts were in May 1947, and the death penalty was abolished under state law in 1984, according to the Death Penalty Information Center

    In federal death penalty cases, a special hearing is held before a jury once the trial is completed to determine whether the death sentence is justified.

    Judge Mark Wolf, who was then chief of US District Court in Boston, ordered a new “penalty-phase” hearing for Sampson after ruling in 2011 that a juror in the original hearing had lied about her past, possibly tainting the jury’s verdict. Prosecutors appealed the decision.

    Sampson killed Jonathan Rizzo, 19, of Kingston and Phillip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton in Massachusetts in July 2001. He then killed Robert “Eli” Whitney of Penacook, N.H., in what prosecutors have called a bloody, weeklong rampage. Sampson pleaded guilty but contested the death penalty.

    In the years after, lawyers handling Sampson’s appeal found that one of the jurors had lied on a questionnaire. The juror did not report, among other things, that she had once been threatened by her husband with a gun and that she had a daughter who had a history of drug abuse and had been sent to jail before.

    Wolf ordered a new “penalty-phase” hearing, saying that he would have excused her from the case if he had known about the risk of bias.

    “Few accouterments of our criminal justice system are either more fundamental or more precious than the accused’s right to an impartial jury. That right is threatened when — as in this case — juror dishonesty occurs during the voir dire process yet is not discovered until well after final judgment has entered on the jury’s verdict,” the appeals court said in today’s decision.

    The court said the juror had told a “litany of lies” and in light of her “willingness to lie repeatedly, her fragile emotional state, her past experiences ... and the similarities between those experiences and the evidence to be presented during the penalty-phase hearing, any reasonable judge would have found that the cumulative effect of those factors demonstrated bias.”

    “Thus, the defendant was deprived of the right to an impartial jury and is entitled to a new penalty-phase hearing,” the court said.

    http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...RmM/story.html
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  5. #15
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    Death penalty weighed for serial killer Gary Lee Sampson

    Scott McCloskey grudgingly went before a federal jury 10 years ago to talk about his father, how he had raised six children, how he had bought a Winnebago and wanted to travel, and how Gary Lee Sampson had killed him, devastating their family.

    Recounting the trial, McCloskey said he would never want to go through it again.

    But if he has to, the 50-year-old, a father himself, said in an interview, he will — as long as Sampson sees justice.

    “We’re not ready to throw in the towel,” said McCloskey, of Plymouth. “He was found guilty, he got the death penalty, and that’s the way it should be.”

    In the weeks since a federal appeals court threw out the death sentence and ordered a new sentencing trial for Sampson, an admitted serial killer, because of a problem with a juror, prosecutors and those close to the case have painstakingly been debating how to proceed: whether to move on and let Sampson serve life in prison, or whether to seek the death penalty again in a new trial.

    ‘I do want them to move forward. He deserves what he should get.’

    US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz would only comment that she will announce her decision on how to proceed once it is reached, adding, “For more than 12 years we have been committed to seeing that justice is done in this case.”

    But legal analysts said the decision will be based largely on the views of the families of Sampson’s victims, and it will be a balancing act between reopening wounds from the trial a decade ago and trying to find closure.

    “None of us want to go through this, it’s a long process,” McCloskey said. But, he said that, speaking for himself, “I do want them to move forward. He deserves what he should get.”

    Mike Rizzo, whose son, Jonathan, was also killed by Sampson, said his family has already invested 12 years in the pursuit of justice and he is ready to continue.

    “We want to pursue the best sentence, which would be the imposition of the death penalty,” he said. “It will open a lot of old wounds and memories we’d prefer not to have, but I think from our perspective, we can deal with it, and try to get the best sentence possible.”

    Sampson, 54, pleaded guilty to the July 2001 carjacking and killing of McCloskey’s father, 69-year-old Phillip McCloskey, and of Rizzo, a 19-year-old George Washington University student from Kingston. He also confessed to the killing of Robert “Eli” Whitney, 59, of New Hampshire, in that state during the same week.

    Prosecutors sought the death penalty, and a jury agreed in a sentencing trial in 2003. US District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf handed out the sentence.

    In 2011, however, after years of appeals and new hearings, Wolf vacated the decision, finding that one of the original jurors had lied about a previous involvement with law enforcement as a crime victim. Wolf said he would have excluded her from the jury had he known about her past.

    The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the decision in July. Now, with the success of further appeal unlikely, prosecutors can either move on and let Sampson serve life in prison, or seek the death penalty in a new trial.

    Former US Attorney Michael Sullivan, who brought the punishment a decade ago, said in an interview that Sampson deserves the death penalty and Ortiz should pursue it again.

    “The death penalty has always been reserved for the worst of the worse, and clearly this is the worst of the worse,” said Sullivan, who was a Plymouth County prosecutor when Sampson committed the murders, in that district. When he became US attorney, he indicted Sampson in federal court.

    “I think justice requires a jury to make that determination again,” Sullivan said. “We’re now talking 12 years after those horrific events, and justice has not been served.”

    Since 1988, when federal death penalty laws were first passed, juries nationwide have had to choose a punishment for 282 defendants, and they chose death in 73 instances, or 34 percent of the time, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel.

    Sampson’s death penalty had been the first handed out in a federal court in Massachusetts, and the first deriving from a crime in the state in more than a half-century. Federal prosecutors authorized the death penalty two other times in Massachusetts. In the case of Darryl Green and Branden Morris, two Dorchester gang members, federal prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges and the men were tried in state court.

    In the case of Kirsten Gilbert, the former nurse who was convicted in 2001 of administering lethal injections to patients, a jury chose a life sentence rather than the death penalty.

    Prosecutors are now considering whether to seek capital punishment for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect.

    Attorney David Hoose, of Sasson, Turnbull, Ryan & Hoose in Northhampton, who has defended several death penalty cases, said they can become a lengthy, complex and costly process. Both local prosecutors and defense attorneys make a recommendation to the US attorney general, who then decides whether to seek a death sentence. If so, a jury would then decide after hearing arguments from both sides in a full-scale trial.

    Sampson had argued several mitigating factors, or arguments against the death sentence, to both the US attorney general and to the jury: They noted that he had tried to surrender to authorities before the first murder, but an FBI clerk accidently disconnected the call. Also, his lawyers argued in his appeals that the jurors did not hear enough about brain injuries he had that had caused him to have a mental illness.

    Hoose said that prosecutors could bypass some of the death penalty approval stages because a US attorney general has already sanctioned the punishment for Sampson.

    But, Hoose said, lawyers will still need to go over the case and the evidence before it is presented to a jury, and then formulate final arguments for and against the death penalty. Family members will play a key role in the trial, he said.

    “In an emotionally laden case like this, prosecutors aren’t going to do anything without the victims’ approval, in my opinion,” Hoose said. “The real decision is: Do we want to go through another sentencing hearing, and what are the pros and cons of it?”

    http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...NqJ/story.html
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    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  6. #16
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    Opinion piece

    Feds undecided on killer's fate

    Federal prosecutors have abandoned their fight to reverse convicted spree killer Gary Lee Sampson's successful appeal that overturned his death penalty, but have not decided whether they'll retry his death penalty or just let him serve out his life behind bars.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark T. Quinlivan notified the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston last week his office would not seek a rehearing of the court's July 25 judgment upholding U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf's 2012 order vacating the death penalty phase of Sampson's trial, while leaving his conviction intact. Wolf found after an exhaustive investigation that 1 of the jurors who ordered Sampson put to death a decade ago lied about her family's criminal history during her selection process, thus violating his constitutional right to an impartial jury.

    A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined comment yesterday on prosecutors' plans for moving forward with the 54-year-old Abington native's case.

    Sampson pleaded guilty in 2003 to a weeklong rampage in July 2001, when he carjacked and stabbed to death Philip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton and college student Jonathan Rizzo, 19, of Kingston, before driving Rizzo's car to New Hampshire, where he strangled Robert "Eli" Whitney, 58, of Concord, N.H., in a cottage. A trial was held only to determine what the drifter's punishment should be.

    (Source: The Boston Herald)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  7. #17
    AdamSmith
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    Juror misconduct is a free ticket.

    Serial killer = 3 or more killings over an extended period of time, by the FBI definition.

    Spree killer = 3 or more killings over a very short period of time.

    Mass killer = more than 2 killings at one time.

    The Boston Globe story confused these definitions. He is a spree killer.

  8. #18
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    Prosecutors won't fight appeals court ruling throwing out Sampson 2003 death sentence

    Federal prosecutors won't challenge an appeals court ruling striking down the death sentence of Gary Lee Sampson because of a juror problem at his 2003 sentencing hearing.

    The Boston Globe reports (http://bo.st/174ISgT) U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said in a brief filing Thursday her office won't appeal the July decision by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf is expected to hold a hearing to ask prosecutors if they want a new death penalty hearing, or to allow Sampson to serve life.

    Sampson pleaded guilty to federal charges he carjacked and killed 69-year-old Phillip McCloskey and 19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo when each picked him up hitchhiking in Massachusetts in July 2001.

    He pleaded guilty to a New Hampshire state charge that he killed 59-year-old Robert Whitney in a burglary there a few days later.

    http://www.therepublic.com/view/stor...--Murder-Spree
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  9. #19
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    Federal judge asks whether serial killer needs mental evaluation

    A federal judge is asking lawyers in the case of convicted serial killer Gary Lee Sampson whether Sampson's mental status should be examined if prosecutors go to court again to seek the death penalty against him.

    US District Court Judge Mark Wolf asked the US attorney's office and defense attorneys to confer and report to him on "whether an evaluation and hearing to determine Sampson's current competency to stand trial should be ordered."

    Federal prosecutors are currently pondering whether to seek the death penalty again against Sampson. Sampson admitted to killing 3 people in a weeklong span in 2001. After he was convicted in 2003, a jury, in the penalty phase of his trial, sentenced him to death.

    But Wolf in 2011 vacated the sentence and ordered a new penalty phase of the trial after finding that one of the jurors withheld information about previous contacts with law enforcement. And the First US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Wolf's decision in July.

    Now, prosecutors are weighing whether to press for the death penalty in a new penalty phase proceeding. If they do not, Sampson will still serve life in prison.

    In an order issued today, Wolf said he also wanted the prosecution and defense to report by an upcoming hearing whether "they have reached an agreement to resolve this matter without another trial."

    A hearing in the case is tentatively slated for Dec. 19.

    The Globe reported in late September that some relatives of Sampson's victims said they wanted prosecutors to seek the death penalty, despite the emotional strain it would impose on them.

    (Source: The Boston Globe)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  10. #20
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    Prosecutors to again seek death penalty for serial killer

    Federal prosecutors today said they will once again seek the death penalty for Gary Lee Sampson, the admitted serial killer who has fought off capital punishment in a series of court appeals.

    The prosecutors said in a letter to US District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf that they are seeking to empanel a new jury to decide whether Sampson should be executed.

    “The United States continues to believe that the 2003 Jury, after careful deliberation, reached the correct and just decision as to Sampson’s sentence,’’ US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s office said in court papers today.

    Sampson, now 55, had pleaded guilty to the July 2001 carjacking and killing of 19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo and later of Phillip McCloskey, 69, in what prosecutors called one of the most horrendous crimes of the time. That same week, he also killed Robert “Eli” Whitney, 59, of New Hampshire, in that state. He also pleaded guilty to that murder.

    A jury in 2003 had agreed to hand out the death sentence for Sampson, who was seeking a sentence of life in prison. But after years of hearings, Wolf vacated the decision in 2011 after finding that one of the jurors in the death sentence trial failed to disclose that she had past encounters with law enforcement: her daughter had been in prison for drugs abuse and her ex-husband once threatened her with a gun.

    The judge said he would have excluded her from the jury had he known based on a possible prejudice against someone charged with a violent crime.

    The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the decision in July, and prosecutors were left to decide whether to let Sampson serve a life prison sentence or seek a new sentencing trial, what could be a costly, drawn out and emotional process.

    Relatives of Rizzo and McCloskey told the Globe in September that they wanted prosecutors to pursue the death penalty again, regardless of the process. Xhttp://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/09/28/prosecutors-victims-contemplate-whether-pursue-death-penalty-against-gary-lee-sampson/yoreMgH4Uaa6R0IkY2RNqJ/story.html X

    The prosecutors’ announcement Friday comes as US Attorney General Eric Holder is deciding whether to seek the death penalty for Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston marathon bomber. Holder must decide by the end of January.

    Sampson’s death penalty had been the first handed out in a federal court in Massachusetts, and the first deriving from a crime in the state in more than a half-century. Federal prosecutors authorized the death penalty two other times in Massachusetts. In the case of Darryl Green and Branden Morris, two Dorchester gang members, federal prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges and the men were tried in state court.

    In the case of Kirsten Gilbert, the former nurse who was convicted in 2001 of administering lethal injections to patients, a jury chose a life sentence rather than the death penalty.

    http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...UXK/story.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

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