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Thread: Jeffrey Day Rieber - Alabama Death Row

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    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    Jeffrey Day Rieber - Alabama Death Row




    Summary of Offense:

    Convicted in 1992 of shooting to death Glenda Craig, a 25-year-old clerk, during the robbery of a Mobil Mart in 1990.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    January 22, 1999

    Professor, students take on death row appeal

    At Holman Correctional Facility, just north of the Florida panhandle in Atmore, Ala., Jeffrey Day Rieber waits to die - and some Madison lawyers, UW-Madison law students and a law professor are laboring to prevent his death.

    Convicted in the shooting death of a convenience store clerk in 1992, Rieber is one of about 160 inmates on Alabama's death row. A jury sentenced Rieber to life in prison without parole, but the judge overruled the verdict and sentenced him to death. Alabama is one of only four states that allows a judicial override of a jury verdict.

    Rieber's case now rests with UW-Madison Law Professor Frank Tuerkheimer, several law students and two Madison attorneys. They are seeking to overturn Rieber's death penalty verdict because of what they believe was inadequate legal representation.

    Because of attorney-client privilege and confidentiality concerns, Tuerkheimer and his students are prevented from discussing the specifics of their legal work on the case. But in general, they are re-examining the defense by Rieber's former attorney, researching death penalty laws at the state and federal levels and investigating Rieber's background.

    "We are going back and doing everything his lawyer should have done," says Tuerkheimer, a former U.S. attorney and former Watergate special prosecutor.

    Like most of his fellow death row inmates, Rieber is poor and was represented by a court-appointed lawyer during the robbery/murder trial in Huntsville, Ala., where he had been living and where the crime occurred. In overriding the jury's verdict, the judge in the case cited evidence that the clerk was shot twice, the second time when she was helpless.

    After Rieber exhausted his appeals and lost his state-funded attorney, a UW-Madison alumnus who works with Alabama death row inmates turned to her alma mater for assistance.

    Ellen Wiesner, a 1992 UW law school graduate and lawyer with the Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative, called Tuerkheimer in 1996. She asked him to represent Rieber, who has been on death row since 1992, saying her firm can only handle a few death row cases at a time.

    After getting the support and financial backing of LaFollette & Sinykin, the Madison law firm where he also works as an attorney, Tuerkheimer took the case. LaFollette & Sinykin attorneys Larry Bensky and James Friedman are assisting.

    Yet Tuerkheimer knew he needed additional assistance to prepare the defense for such an important case. He recruited students to help and created a clinical class at the Law School titled "Law and Contemporary Problems: The Death Penalty."

    Tuerkheimer first recruited Elliott Milhollin, who joined Rieber's defense team as a first-year law student in 1997. Milhollin was later joined by law students Fred Burnside, Tina Galbraith and Mary Sowinski.

    Among other things, Milhollin is researching state and federal Supreme Court decisions on standards of review concerning attorney performance. He has also interviewed Rieber twice on death row: in the summer of 1997 with Tuerkheimer and Bensky, and this past summer with Friedman and the other students.

    The student journeys to the prison where Rieber is incarcerated mark the first time Wisconsin law students have visited death row while working on a capital case. Capital punishment is legal in 38 states, but not Wisconsin.

    "It was strange at first to meet your client on death row," says Milhollin, who is from Washington, D.C., and will graduate this spring. "It puts an interesting take on things. I'm doing all this research on constitutional standards, which is very abstract until you meet Jeff."

    Tuerkheimer recruited Galbraith and Burnside for the case after they clerked at LaFollette & Sinykin this past summer. Sowinski, who researched Rieber's social and family background, graduated in December and is now working in the Milwaukee district attorney's office.

    "When I started working on the case, I wondered if you can separate yourself as an attorney from your clients, and in some sense you can," says Galbraith, a second-year law student from Westfield. "With this case, I think it's a lot different. When it's 10 p.m., I can close my books on my homework, but I stay up and work on this project. The stakes are different."

    Galbraith and Milhollin say their work on the Rieber case has deepened their opposition to the death penalty. Their main concern, they say, is that the death penalty is applied predominantly to poor people with inadequate legal representation.

    Tuerkheimer, however, does not consider a student's stance on the issue when recruiting them for the case.

    "I don't believe in litmus tests or political preconditions for taking a course," he says.

    A motion to set aside the conviction is currently pending before an Alabama judge. The motion maintains that Rieber had a significant drug problem that his attorney failed to mention. Tuerkheimer and his team have asked the court for permission to retain experts and examine numerous documents. Following that, they plan to file an amended petition, which, if granted, means Rieber could be resentenced or get a new trial.

    Tuerkheimer says the students' efforts on the case have been invaluable.

    "Their assistance is essential; we couldn't do the representation without them," he says.

    http://www.news.wisc.edu/818

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Supreme Court won't review case of Huntsville man on death row

    By Ivanka Hrynkiw
    AL.com


    The Supreme Court of the United States won't review the case of an inmate on Alabama's Death Row.

    The court announced in its weekly order list that they denied the writ of certiorari, or request to review, the case of Jeffery Day Rieber. The court didn't issue an opinion.

    Rieber, 50, was convicted of capital murder during the course of a robbery for the 1990 killing of Glenda Phillips Craig.

    Craig, 25, worked at the Mobile Mart on Winchester Road in Huntsville. She was a wife and mother.

    According to court records, Craig was alive when she was found shot and lying behind the store counter, but she died shortly after.

    When Rieber was arrested, court records show, he told Huntsville police that he did not visit the Mobile Mart on the day of the murder and robbery; however, a customer at the store that day told police he knew Rieber from high school and saw him there.

    Another man told police he had seen Rieber in the parking lot of the Mobile Mart a few days before the murder. He said Craig was uneasy about the man-- who police said was Rieber-- and said she was afraid. Later, the man came back to the store and saw Rieber patrolling the lot. The man told Craig she should call police.

    Video surveillance from the store was also shown in court.

    Records state the tape showed a man entering the mart at 7:55 p.m. on Oct. 9, 1990, and walking to the counter. On the video, a man shot Craig and she fell to the floor. The man then reached over the counter and took money from the register, before shooting wounded clerk again.

    Rieber was convicted in 1992, and the jury recommended by a vote of seven to five that he be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The judge overrode the jury's recommendation and sentenced Rieber to death.

    In April 2017, Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a bill that says juries have the final say on whether to impose the death penalty in capital murder cases. This law ended judicial override in Alabama, as it had been the only state to still allow a judge to overrule a jury.

    http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/in...ew_case_1.html
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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On March 2, 2018, Rieber filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/al...cv00337/165532

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    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court DENIED Rieber's certiorari petition.

    Lower Ct: Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama
    Case Numbers: (CR-15-0355)
    Decision Date: September 1, 2017
    Discretionary Court Decision Date: February 2, 2018

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/18-5103.html

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    Habeas relief and COA denied by the federal district court.

    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal...337/165532/19/
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    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    On November 29, 2023, Rieber filed an appeal to the 11th Circuit.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci.../ca11/23-13958
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

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