Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 11 to 18 of 18

Thread: Jeffrey Cameron Clark - Louisiana Death Row

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Judge upholds Clark's death sentence

    A state district judge denied a motion to throw out the death sentence given Angola inmate Jeffrey Cameron Clark and also held a lengthy hearing on funding for a co-defendant's trial.

    A jury of St. Tammany Parish residents convicted Clark, 50, of first-degree murder Sunday in the 1999 beating and stabbing death of Louisiana State Penitentiary security Capt. David C. Knapps.

    The jury on Monday sentenced Clark to die by lethal injection, but a court reporter discovered Monday night that one juror may have been skipped when they were questioned individually on whether they agreed with the sentencing verdict, Judge Jerome M. Winsberg announced from the bench Tuesday.

    The juror, Charles Dye, said under oath that he had reached the same death sentence verdict as the other 11 jurors and told Winsberg he thought he had been polled but couldn't be certain.

    Winsberg denied defense attorney Joe Lotwick's motion to sentence Clark to life in prison on the grounds that the jury's verdict was not unanimous. The judge also declined to declare a mistrial.

    Clark is one of five Angola inmates accused of killing Knapps during their failed attempt to escape from Angola's Camp D.

    Tommy Thompson and Clayton M. Perkins, attorneys for defendant Robert G. Carley, asked Winsberg to strike the death penalty as an option for a jury if it convicts Carley of first-degree murder in Knapps' death.

    Thompson said the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections is obligated to pay for Carley's defense because the crime occurred in a state prison, but no money is available to pay experts needed for a trial.

    Office of Corrections Service financial officer Susan Poche testified that enough money remains in the department's 2010-11 Knapps case appropriation to pay the Clark trial expenses, but the department has run out of money for the other Angola 5 cases.

    Poche said more money is included in a supplemental appropriations bill pending in the state Legislature for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. An additional appropriation for the next fiscal year is included in the department's budget request also pending in the current legislative session.

    Winsberg granted prosecutor Tommy Block's motion to set Carley's trial for Aug. 8, and said he will revisit the funding issue on Monday, after Clark is formally sentenced.

    Poche said $5.5 million has been spent on the cases since 2004.

    Thompson argued that he and Perkins have no investigator, psychologist and mitigation specialist working on Carley's defense because they have no guarantee that they will be paid.

    Carley's trial originally was set for March 20, but Winsberg granted a delay because the attorneys said more investigation is needed to assist them in defending Carley against the death penalty if he is convicted.

    Block said the latest motion is another delaying tactic by the Carley team.

    Winsberg said about $700,000 has been spent on Carley's defense, according to Poche's testimony.

    "I would think a lot of work has been done. It's time for you to be ready," the judge told Thompson and Perkins.

    http://www.necn.com/05/18/11/Judge-u...b21d33dae178a3

  2. #12
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Inmate formally sentenced in guard's death

    A state district judge has formally sentenced Jeffrey Cameron Clark to die for murdering a prison security officer, while lawyers later clashed over funding for the next Angola 5 trial.

    A jury chosen in St. Tammany Parish last week convicted Clark, 50, of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death in the Dec. 28, 1999, beating and stabbing death of Louisiana State Penitentiary Capt. David C. Knapps.

    Clark, who represented himself during much of the 10-day trial, told presiding Judge Jerome M. Winsberg on Monday that he waived his right for a 24-hour delay in sentencing and thanked his court-appointed lawyers, Tommy Damico and Joe Lotwick, before Angola officers escorted Clark from the courtroom.

    Clark is one of five Angola inmates - known as the Angola 5 - indicted in Knapps' death, and prosecutors from Jefferson and Caddo parishes are pushing to try co-defendant Robert G. Carley, 43, as soon as possible.

    Carley is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder from St. Bernard Parish.

    Carley's attorneys, Tommy Thompson and Clayton M. Perkins, argued last week and again Monday that the state's budget problems are preventing them from engaging experts in several fields they contend are needed to properly defend Carley.

    The experts either have not been paid or are not willing to work without a guarantee of being paid, Thompson said.

    Lead prosecutor Tommy Block, visibly angered by the defense arguments, told Winsberg that the opposing attorneys' aim is "as transparent as a pane of glass."

    "There is no way this defense (team) want this case to go to trial," Block said.

    Thompson replied that he took "umbrage" at Block's remarks.

    "We're perfectly willing to go to trial when we believe we're effective," Thompson said.

    Block of Jefferson Parish, wanted to try Carley in November, but Winsberg set the trial for March 20.

    In February, however, Winsberg granted a delay in the case after hearing testimony from a Kansas City, Mo., lawyer, Cynthia Short, that more investigation is needed for possible mitigating evidence to present to jurors, who would be called on to decide whether Carley, if convicted, should get a life sentence or the death penalty.

    Last week, Winsberg set the trial for Aug. 8, but pushed it back over Block's objections Monday when the judge said jury selection would begin Aug. 29.

    "It's disingenuous for them to say they want to go to trial," Block said, calling Short's Feb. 18 testimony "a sham" and predicting a "constant flurry of motions" to block a trial.

    Thompson said Short and another expert have stopped work, but Winsberg told the attorneys to use their work product to continue trial preparations.

    The state Office of Corrections Services has run out of money in this fiscal year to fund the Angola 5 cases, Chief Fiscal Officer Susan Poche testified, but a supplemental appropriations bill for the fiscal year that ends June 30 moved out of the House Appropriations Committee on Monday morning.

    The bill includes $530,000 for corrections' legal services, and additional money will be appropriated in the budget for next fiscal year, Poche said.

    Poche said she is holding $123,135 in bills from Carley's defense team until funds are available, but, she said, none has been outstanding more than the 90 days state law allows before payment.

    http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20...0657?p=3&tc=pg

  3. #13
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Judge upholds death sentence for Angola 5 defendant; hearing set for funding appeal

    BATON ROUGE, La. — The state judge presiding over the Angola 5 first-degree murder cases has denied a motion to reconsider inmate Jeffrey Cameron Clark's death sentence but set an Aug. 23 hearing on funding for Clark's appeal.

    A jury picked in St. Tammany Parish convicted Clark of first-degree murder in May and sentenced him to die by lethal injection for the Dec. 28, 1999, slaying of security Capt. David C. Knapps during a botched escape attempt.

    After lengthy delays, a West Feliciana Parish grand jury indicted the 50-year-old and four other Angola inmates in 2004.

    The Advocate reports (http://bit.ly/rpUH4m) a trial for a second defendant, Robert G. Carley is scheduled to begin with jury selection in Covington on Aug. 29.

    The state, through the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, is paying defense attorneys for their work and expenses in defending the five inmates in their trials, but attorney Ben Cohen said neither corrections nor the state Indigent Defender Board has agreed to fund the costs of Clark's death sentence appeal.

    Cohen and other lawyers for the Capital Appeals Project are handling Clark's appeal.

    Prosecutor Tommy Block said corrections lawyers contend state law requires their department to fund the prosecution because the crime occurred in a state prison but the law does not require it to pay for an appeal.

    Judge Jerome M. Winsberg asked Cohen to put the issue in a formal motion "and we'll have some kind of litigation."

    Winsberg, a retired Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judge, briefly heard arguments from Cohen and prosecutor Juliet L. Clark on the motion to reconsider Clark's death sentence, then denied it without comment.

    Cohen argued the question of whether Jeffrey Clark should live or die hinges on society's evolving standards of decency, noting recent bans on imposing the death penalty on juveniles, mentally handicapped defendants and rapists.

    Jeffrey Clark was convicted as a principal to a crime the state contends was committed by all five surviving defendants, but the state should have to prove who killed Knapps "to determine who is the worst of the worst."

    Juliet Clark argued that the evidence was overwhelming against Jeffrey Clark and that he was "more than actively involved" in killing Knapps.

    She also contended Winsberg does not have jurisdiction to set aside the death sentence because the sentence is mandatory when decided by a jury. The state Supreme Court has jurisdiction in death penalty appeals in order to set standards of uniformity in capital sentencing, she said.

    Winsberg did not address the jurisdictional issue in denying the motion.

    In Carley's case, another hearing on several issues is set for Aug. 25 in Covington, when prospective jurors will be asked to answer questionnaires to aid the lawyers in questioning them the following week.

    One pending issue is whether a New York witness may testify via Skype or a regular telephone connection because she has persuaded a judge that she is too ill to travel to Louisiana.

    http://www.therepublic.com/view/stor...--Angola-Five/

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    4,795
    Angola 5 member's death sentence upheld by Louisiana high court in brutal death of security officer

    Saying he played a major role in the 1999 beating and stabbing death of a Louisiana State Penitentiary security officer, the state's top court Monday affirmed "Angola 5" member Jeffrey Cameron Clark's conviction and death sentence in the slaying.

    Clark, who at the time of Capt. David Knapps' killing was serving a life term at Angola for the 1984 murder of a Studebaker's lounge employee in Baton Rouge, was found guilty in 2011 of first-degree murder and condemned to die in the Knapps case.

    Clark claimed in his appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court there was insufficient proof he specifically intended to kill or inflict great bodily harm in an employee restroom at Angola's Camp D building on Dec. 28, 1999, but the justices said "no reasonable hypothesis of innocence was presented in this case."

    Justice Jeff Hughes wrote for the unanimous high court that the 49-year-old Knapps' blood was found on every outer layer of Clark's clothing, on layers of clothing underneath as saturation stains, and on the inmate's hands and shoes.

    Hughes and his six colleagues also rejected another of Clark's contentions that his "minor role" in the killing of Knapps renders his death sentence unconstitutional.

    http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rou...eac38cd7c.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  5. #15
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Clark's petition for a writ of certiorari was granted, judgement vacated and case remanded to the Louisiana Supreme Court for further consideration in light of McCoy v. Louisiana.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  6. #16
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,316
    Distributed for conference April 17, 2020.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/19-8039.html
    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

  7. #17
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,316
    Distributed for conference September 29, 2020.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/19-8039.html
    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

  8. #18
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,316
    Petition for certiorari denied.

    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Louisiana
    Case Numbers: (2012-KA-0508)
    Decision Date: June 28, 2019
    Rehearing Denied: September 6, 2019

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/19-8039.html
    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

Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

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

Posting Permissions

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