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Thread: Jorge Avila Torrez - Federal Death Row

  1. #31
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
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    I don't know much about the federal DP other than its a joke as is many states. I think a LI issue is holding them up but could be mistaken.

  2. #32
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    It's supposed to be a LI issue but its been over a decade and there still hasn't been that much movement on it.

  3. #33
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    If any Federal execution in Terre Haute is to be considered and carried out, it has to have the authorisation of President Trump! It has been held up in the courts for years and more likely to be under more scrutiny if a Federal death warrant is to be signed by a judge. Lethal injection is the primary method but that could be changed if applicable to firing squad.

  4. #34
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    That was only his direct appeal. He still has to go through the postconviction process but just in the federal courts.

  5. #35
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    'You are a serial killer': Torrez sentenced after pleading guilty to 2005 double murder in Zion

    By Jim Newton
    The Chicago Tribune

    Convicted murderer Jorge Torrez was sentenced to 100 years in prison Tuesday for the brutal Mother’s Day 2005 slaying of two girls in Zion.

    Torrez was linked by DNA evidence in 2014 to the killings of 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias in the Beulah Park Forest Preserve in Zion. Autopsies determined both girls died of multiple stab wounds.

    “You are a serial killer,” Lake County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Shanes told Torrez in handing down the sentence following a long series of negotiations between Lake County prosecutors and defense attorney Jed Stone.

    In exchange for the guilty plea, 18 other counts of murder were dismissed, and Torrez — who previously had been convicted of murder in an unrelated case in Virginia — will be able to move from Red Onion State Prison in Virginia to a different federal facility.

    While he was extradited to the Lake County jail from Virginia in 2014 to face charges in the Zion case, he is technically on death row and serving life sentences for other murder convictions.

    Jerry Hobbs, Laura Hobbs' father, had previously confessed to the girls' murder and was charged, but he was later exonerated in 2010 by DNA evidence that pointed to Torrez, according to authorities.

    Torrez already has been convicted of the strangulation murder of Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Amanda Snell, 20, who lived in the same barracks as Torrez when he served in the Marines at the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia.

    Along with the murder of Snell, Torrez also has been convicted of abducting three women in Virginia in February 2010, one of whom he raped, sodomized, strangled and left for dead.

    Torrez was sentenced to five life sentences at the state level in Virginia and is sentenced to death at the federal level for Snell's murder.

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburb...919-story.html

  6. #36
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Torrez's petition for writ of certiorari on direct appeal was DENIED.

    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
    Case Numbers: (14-1)
    Decision Date: August 28, 2017
    Rehearing Denied: September 25, 2017

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/17-1189.html

  7. #37
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Resumption of federal death penalty could affect two convicted murderers from Illinois

    When given the chance in court, Jorge Torrez never said he was sorry.

    He didn’t speak at his sentencing for the rape and murders of two young girls in Zion.

    And earlier, when sentenced for murder in a case in Virginia, he told the judge, “There’s nothing I want to say, your honor.”

    But his attorney in the Zion case, Jed Stone, believes there remains a spark of humanity in him. Stone believes that the death penalty he faces — for the Virginia crime — is fundamentally unjust.

    The recent imposition of the federal death penalty means Torrez, who grew up in Zion, once again is in line to be executed, along with one other man convicted of murder in Illinois, Richard Mikos.

    Torrez was convicted in state court of the murder of the two girls in Zion but doesn’t face the death penalty in that case because Illinois law prohibits capital punishment. Instead, Torrez faces execution under federal law for the murder of a Navy petty officer in Virginia.

    Last year, the Trump administration announced it would resume executing death row inmates for the first time since 2003, after an informal moratorium. This month, the Department of Justice used lethal injections on three convicts.

    They included a former white supremacist for his role in the murder of a family of three, a man convicted of the murders of a 16-year-old and an 80-year-old polio patient, and a man convicted of killing five people to hide his dealing of methamphetamine, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Despite the hundreds of murders that occur in Illinois annually, only Torrez and Mikos, who was convicted in federal court, are in line for lethal injection.

    Most murders are prosecuted under state law, which previously allowed for the execution of murderers such as serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1994. But a Chicago Tribune investigation in 1999 found numerous problems with the application of the death penalty in the state and nationwide.

    In 2003, citing errors common in the capital punishment system, then-Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 inmates on death row, over the outraged objections of prosecutors and some victims’ survivors. In 2011, state lawmakers voted to abolish the death penalty.

    The Tribune found numerous cases that were based on historically unreliable jailhouse informants, coerced confessions and bogus forensic evidence. There also were case where Blacks were sentenced by all-white juries, and verdicts that were reversed by court rulings, often based on DNA evidence that proved someone else committed the crime.

    Just such a scenario occurred in the case of 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias, who were found stabbed to death in a park in Zion on Mother’s Day in 2005. After being interrogated over 24 hours Laura’s father, Jerry Hobbs, who had found the girls’ bodies and had a lengthy criminal history — including chasing a man with a chain saw — confessed, and was charged with the murders.

    Hobbs spent five years in jail awaiting trial, but was eventually freed after DNA evidence from semen in one of the victims was matched to Torrez.

    Torrez, now 31, lived two blocks from the park where the girls were found, and was friends with Krystal Tobias’ half-brother and often visited their house. After he graduated from high school in 2006, Torrez joined the Marines.

    He spent two years based in Japan, before being transferred to a Marine base in Arlington County, Virginia. It was in 2008 when a court hearing was held over tests revealing that DNA in the girls’ murders didn’t match Jerry Hobbs, but Lake County state’s attorneys continued to prosecute Hobbs for three more years, according to court records.

    In the meantime, in July 2009, Petty Officer Amanda Snell, 20, was found dead in the same barracks where Torrez lived.

    Authorities didn’t arrest Torrez until 2010, after he abducted two women, and raped and choked one of them and left her to die in a forest in the snow, prosecutors said. She crawled to safety and Torrez was finally arrested.

    A jury in 2014 convicted him of strangling Snell and sentenced him to death.

    After his arrest in Virginia, DNA linked him to the Zion killings, authorities said.

    In 2018, Torrez agreed to plead guilty to the murders of the girls in Zion and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.

    Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes said Torrez crime was “hatefully and shockingly evil,” and that he was beyond rehabilitation.

    As part of the deal, he was transferred from Red Onion State Prison in Virginia to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, the same prison where Ryan had served time, and where two recent executions were carried out.

    Torrez’s former attorney, Stone, said there was no proof of it, but he believed Torrez had been abused as a child. He finds capital punishment “senseless.”

    “It’s simply a barbaric form of retribution, and we’re better creatures than that,” he said.

    U.S. Attorney Zachary Terwilliger said death was the only just outcome for Torrez.

    “Life in prison is simply not an adequate punishment for what he has done,” Terwilliger said in a written statement to the Tribune. “Torrez deserved to be sentenced to death when he was convicted nearly six years ago, and he still deserves that sentence today.”

    Fifty-nine prisoners are on the federal death row nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That includes only one in which the crime occurred in Illinois. That is Ronald Mikos, who was convicted in a largely circumstantial federal court case of killing a former patient who was cooperating in a Medicare fraud investigation of the former podiatrist.

    He was the last person sentenced to death in Illinois.

    Twenty-eight states still have the death penalty. Polls generally find that the majority of Americans favor capital punishment. Amnesty International reported that 56 countries executed people last year, with most occurring in China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

    https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...bza-story.html
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  8. #38
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    I just realized he killed two little girls and has exhausted appeals. He will likely be the August 24 execution.
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

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

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  9. #39
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    No, he hasn’t. Last year the Supreme Court upheld his direct appeal.

  10. #40
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Oh well, then someone needs to fix the list of child killers on death row, cause it says his appeals are exhausted.
    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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