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Thread: Paul Hardy - Federal

  1. #1
    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    Paul Hardy - Federal

    Summary of Offense:

    Was the triggerman in a killing in New Orleans along with a co-defendant Len Davis. Hardy and Davis were sentenced to death on two convictions in May 1996. The Fifth Circuit reversed the sentences for both defendants and one of the two capital convictions for each defendant. The court ordered a new sentencing hearing for both defendants. Davis was resentenced to death.

    For more on Davis, see: http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...eral-Death-Row

  2. #2
    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    No death sentence for 'mentally retarded' US man

    NEW ORLEANS (AFP) – A US judge has overturned the death sentence of a drug dealer convicted of killing a witness on the orders of a corrupt police officer, on the grounds that he was "mentally retarded."

    Judge Helen Berrigan on Wednesday sentenced Paul "Cool" Hardy, 38, to life in prison for fatally shooting Kim Marie Groves, court records show.

    Police officer Len Davis in 1994 ordered Hardy to kill Groves for reporting police abuses to the internal affairs division. A cell-phone conversation planning the murder was secretly recorded by federal agents as part of a probe into police corruption.

    A jury in 1996 found Hardy and Davis, 42, guilty of first degree-murder and sentenced both men to die.

    In her 168-page decision, Berrigan said the tapes revealed "the outrageous arrogance" of a crime that "deserves universal condemnation and severe punishment."

    However, she added, "a preponderance of the evidence (shows) that Paul Hardy is mentally retarded and therefore cannot be sentenced to death."

    Berrigan said the only penalty available for Hardy was life imprisonment.

    At a hearing last year on Hardy's claim of retardation, Berrigan dismissed the prosecution's contention that the fact he trafficked drugs meant he had sufficient mental acumen.

    She said that a mildly retarded person could operate a low-level crack cocaine operation as Hardy had done.

    Berrigan further concluded that Hardy should have been diagnosed as mildly retarded in his youth and that his "willingness to do the bidding of Len Davis" was evidence of his limited capacity.

    Davis, the corrupt police officer, is still on death row.

    Source

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Man who killed woman at request of officer removed from death row

    NEW ORLEANS -- Paul “Cool” Hardy, the reputed drug dealer who executed a woman at the request of former New Orleans police officer Len Davis, has been removed from federal death row after a federal judge determined he was mentally retarded.

    U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan, who sentenced Hardy and Davis to death after their trial in 1996, found that Hardy is not eligible for death under a 2002 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the execution of the mentally disabled.

    In Hardy’s appeal, Baton Rouge attorney Michele Fournet presented evidence of poor academic performance, multiple childhood head injuries and expert analysis to support a finding of mild retardation.

    Berrigan scheduled re-sentencing for March 2, noting that Hardy faces a mandatory penalty of life in prison.

    Hardy was convicted of violating the civil rights of Kim Groves, who was gunned down outside of her Ninth Ward home after she filed a brutality complaint against Davis and his patrol partner. FBI wiretaps captured chilling telephone conversations between Davis and Hardy as the patrol officer ordered the killing, confirmed Groves’ death, then celebrated the news.

    The U.S. Attorney’s office is appealing Berrigan’s ruling to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    Davis, whose sentence is under appeal, remains one of 60 inmates on federal death row.

    http://www.wwltv.com/news/Man-who-ki...113673379.html

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    Sentencing of former death row inmate put on hold

    NEW ORLEANS -- Former death row inmate Paul Hardy, convicted of killing a woman at the request of former New Orleans police officer Len Davis, was scheduled to get a new sentence Wednesday. Instead, that sentence was put on hold while prosecutors try to reinstate Hardy’s death penalty.

    Hardy was removed from death row last year. U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan, who sentenced Hardy and Davis to death after their 1996 trial, found that Hardy can't be executed under a 2002 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting capital punishment for the mentally disabled.

    In Hardy’s appeal, defense attorneys presented evidence of poor academic performance, multiple childhood head injuries and expert analysis to support a finding of mild retardation.

    Hardy was convicted of violating the civil rights of Kim Groves, who was gunned down outside of her Ninth Ward home after she filed a brutality complaint against Davis and his patrol partner. FBI wiretaps captured chilling telephone conversations between Davis and Hardy as the patrol officer ordered the killing, confirmed Groves’ death, then celebrated the news.

    The U.S. Attorney’s office is appealing Berrigan’s decision to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    If prosecutors are unable to reinstate the death penalty for Hardy, he will face up to life in prison. Davis, who also is fighting his sentence, remains one of 58 inmates on federal death row.

    http://www.wwltv.com/news/Sentencing...123493134.html

  5. #5
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    Man gets life in prison for cop-ordered killing

    A hit man who avoided the death penalty for killing a woman at the direction of a New Orleans police officer was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for his role in one of the city’s most notorious crimes.

    Paul Hardy originally was sentenced to die for fatally shooting Kim Groves in October 1994. Former New Orleans police officer Len Davis was convicted of recruiting Hardy, a drug dealer he protected in exchange for favors, to kill Groves after she filed a brutality complaint against him.

    Last year, however, U.S. District Helen “Ginger” Berrigan ruled Hardy is mentally retarded and isn’t eligible to be executed. Hardy declined to say anything before Berrigan handed down his life sentence, but the judge heard emotional words from two of Groves’ children, now adults.

    Jasmine Groves, who was 12 years old when her mother was murdered, said the killing robbed her and her two siblings of their childhoods.

    “I remember like yesterday the hole you left in my mother’s head, the way her brains laid on the ground,” she said, tearfully recalling “the look of sorrow in her eyes for having to leave me, the feeling of seeing my mother take her last breath and there was nothing I could do about it.”

    Jasmine Groves, now 28, told Berrigan she doesn’t support the death penalty but doesn’t believe Hardy is mentally retarded.

    “I sincerely don’t understand how you can organize groups and give orders and be considered mentally retarded,” she said.

    Her brother, Corey Groves, said he believes death would be an appropriate punishment for Hardy but is satisfied with a life sentence.

    “I want Paul Hardy to live so he will have the chance to think every day about what he did and die knowing that hell will have a place for him,” he said.

    Corey Groves, now 33, said watching his mother die sent him on a spiral that started with drug abuse and ended with him in prison, not caring if he lived or died. Now married with five children, he said he struggled to repair his life.

    “Despite all of this, those dark days of 1994 still haunt me and I know they will be with me forever,” he said.

    The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case against Davis, who was sentenced to death for arranging Groves’ murder. Groves had filed a complaint against Davis after she saw his partner pistol-whip somebody in her neighborhood.
    Damon Causey, a third man convicted in Groves’ killing, is serving a life sentence.
    FBI agents had tapped Davis’ phone as part of an undercover drug investigation and taped his order to Hardy to shoot Groves.

    The agency also recorded Davis’ joyful reaction to news that Groves had been shot.
    Davis has opted to represent himself during his post-conviction proceedings. A date for his execution could be set as early as March 2012, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McMahon.

    Herbert Larson, one of Hardy’s attorneys, said he believes a case that spanned 17 years has produced a “just result.”

    “I think ultimately the right thing has been done in this case,” he said.

    McMahon called Hardy a “stone-cold killer” who laughed along with Len Davis and celebrated Groves’ death.

    “Any attempt to humanize this killer disgusts me,” he said.

    http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/2...sey=nav%7Chead

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    Spinning their wheels on death row

    By James Gill
    The New Orleans Advocate

    Len Davis is on federal death row, while Antoinette Frank awaits execution at the state prison in St. Gabriel.

    The similarities are uncanny. Both were New Orleans police officers when they were arrested for unrelated, but equally vicious, murders. Each enlisted a mentally disabled accomplice. Each seems destined to be with us forever. Davis and his sidekick Paul Hardy were convicted in 1994, Frank and Rogers LaCaze a year later.

    The latest ruling in the case of LaCaze came only last week from the state Supreme Court. Meanwhile, on the federal front, we are waiting with bated breath for document No. 2466 in the Davis saga. No. 2465, filed Feb. 15, was the government's response to a request for an evidentiary hearing about something or other. Defense counsel has to keep the wheels turning in a capital case, but this is a case record to set the eyes spinning in any normal head.

    Trial judge Ginger Berrigan sentenced Hardy and Davis to death, but the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently ruled that executing the mentally disabled violates the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment.

    After a woman called Kim Groves complained to NOPD's Internal Affairs that he had pistol-whipped a teenager on the street, Davis ordered Hardy to kill her. When Hardy shot Groves outside her home and called a jubilant Davis on his cell phone, FBI agents investigating a drug ring picked up their conversation.

    That, and other wiretaps adduced at trial, left no room for doubt about guilt, but Berrigan was obliged to resentence Hardy 17 years later because tests showed his IQ was not high enough to qualify for execution. Davis is clearly in no immediate danger either, as the documents pile up, but then a ripe old age is par for the course these days on death row, state or federal.

    State judge Frank Marullo sentenced Frank and LaCaze to death for the murders of Cuong Vy and Ha Vu, at their family's restaurant in New Orleans East, along with New Orleans police officer Ronald Williams, who was working a detail there. Police never did recover the gun used in the murder or the $10,000 that was missing.

    Frank and LaCaze were convicted largely on the strength of testimony from other members of the restaurant family who had hidden in a cooler. It emerged at Frank's trial, which came after LaCaze's, that Frank had obtained a 9 mm gun — the type used in the murder — from the NOPD evidence room per an order that bore Marullo's signature. Marullo at a meeting with counsel in his chambers during Frank's trial, claimed that was a forgery and said he had given a handwriting sample to an expert to prove it.

    When LaCaze challenged his appeal from death row, he cited Marullo's name on the release as evidence of bias. The case was transferred to an ad hoc judge and Marullo, called to testify, denied signing the release but could not remember anything about a handwriting sample.

    LaCaze's conviction and sentence were thrown out, but not on account of the gun. It was because one of the jurors at his trial failed to disclose that he had been a cop. District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro then asked the appeal court to reinstate the conviction, but not the death sentence, which would almost certainly not have stood in the long run anyway. LaCaze's IQ is about the same as Hardy's. The appeal court duly ruled as Cannizzaro requested, and the state Supreme Court agreed that LaCaze had received a fair trial, whatever was the truth about the gun.

    It was, back in the day, standard practice for judges to make confiscated firearms available to law enforcement. Besides, the jury in Frank's case knew that Marullo's name was on order assigning her the gun, and it didn't do her any good.

    Then, last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a reconsideration of the LaCaze verdict to determine whether the gun order rendered the “probability of actual bias” too high to be “constitutionally tolerable.” The justices of the state Supreme Court responded with a profound and learned analysis last week that concluded they had been absolutely right the first time.

    So the LaCaze case seems to be finally closed. Davis and Frank just stay put.

    http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orlea...72194d8cb.html

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