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Executions



Robert Charles Gleason, Jr. - Virginia Execution - January 16, 2013




Summary of Offense: Robert Charles Gleason Jr., fatally shot Michael Kent Jamerson to death in Amherst County on May 8, 2007. He was sentenced to life plus three years in 2008. On May 8, 2009, he tied up, beat and strangled Harvey Gray Watson Jr., his 63-year-old Wallens Ridge State Prison cell mate. In July 2010 Gleason strangled Red Onion State Prison inmate, 26-year-old Aaron Cooper. Gleason was sentenced to death September 06, 2011

Victim(s): Harvey Gray Watson Jr., 63, and Aaron Alexander Cooper, 26

Time of Death: 9:08 p.m.

Manner of execution: Electrocution

Last Meal: Unknown

Final Statement: "Put me on the highway going to Jackson and call my Irish buddies. ... God bless." “Pog mo thoin.” "Kiss my ass."




Scheduled Executions





Larry Swearingen - Texas Execution - February 27, 2013

After Texas courts rejected a litany of scientific testimony that Larry Swearingen’s lawyers say proves that he was in jail at the time of the 1998 murder for which he is set to be executed next month, his lawyers are seeking new DNA testing and asking the state’s highest criminal court to reconsider its latest rejection.

In a motion filed Thursday with the state's Ninth District Court in Montgomery County, James Rytting, a lawyer for Swearingen, and lawyers from the New York-based Innocence Project asked the court for a fourth time to allow DNA testing on evidence they say could prove Swearingen’s innocence in the death of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter and perhaps lead to her real killer. Rytting, in a separate motion filed Wednesday with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, has also asked the judges to again review the dispute over whether scientific evidence proves it was impossible for Swearingen to have killed Trotter.

“Our belief is we have proved he’s innocent 10 times over,” Rytting said.

A jury convicted Swearingen of kidnapping, raping and killing Trotter in Montgomery County, sentencing him to death in 2000. He is scheduled to be executed on Feb. 27.


Bill Delmore, an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County, said there was no need for additional review by the Court of Criminal Appeals. He hadn’t seen Swearingen’s DNA request, but Delmore said he would probably object to it.

“I think we’ve already explored all the potential DNA samples and what have you that might be tested,” Delmore said.




Christopher Sepulvado - Louisiana Execution - February 13, 2013


Attorneys for a DeSoto Parish man scheduled to be executed Feb. 13 for fatally scalding his 6-year-old stepson in 1992 are asking a Baton Rouge court to order state corrections officials to turn over records relating to Louisiana’s lethal injection procedures and protocols.

The New Orleans-based Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, which represents Christopher Sepulvado, also is seeking a preliminary injunction until the requested records are produced and all litigation challenging lethal injection has been resolved or terminated.

“It would probably have that effect,” CPCPL director Gary Clements said Thursday when asked in a telephone interview if the request for an injunction is essentially a request for a stay of execution.

In a lawsuit Clements filed Tuesday at the 19th Judicial District Court, he says the Louisiana Supreme Court is currently considering lethal injection litigation that involves Sepulvado and all other Louisiana death-row inmates.

“The State brought Mr. Sepulvado into ongoing lethal injection litigation, but it now seeks to execute him by the very method that is at issue in pending litigation of which he is a party,” CPCPL attorney Kathleen Kelly argues in the suit.

Clements contends in his suit that the Department of Public Safety and Corrections arbitrarily denied him access to a large majority of the records he requested Dec. 18, including records reflecting the country and company of origin for each of the lethal injection drugs currently in the department’s possession.

Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections spokeswoman Pam Laborde said Thursday the department had not been served with the suit filed earlier in the week.

“Therefore we will reserve comment at this time,” she said.

Sepulvado was convicted in 1993 of the first-degree murder of Wesley Alan Mercer. Three days after Sepulvado married Wesley’s mother, the boy was hit in the head with a screwdriver handle until he lost consciousness, then thrown into a tub of scalding water, according to reports.

His mother, Yvonne Sepulvado, is serving a 21-year sentence for manslaughter. Jurors acquitted her of murder.

Clements’ suit has been assigned to state District Judge William Morvant.




New Execution Dates




Paul Augustus Powell

Gov. Rick Scott signed a death warrant for a man convicted of killing a Florida state trooper.

The governor's office announced Friday that 47-year-old Paul Augustus Howell is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Raiford at 6 p.m. Feb. 26.

Trooper Jimmy Fulford was blown apart when he opened a booby-trapped package during a routine traffic stop on Interstate 10 in February 1992. The pipe bomb, hidden in a gift-wrapped microwave oven, was intended to kill two women in Marianna because they knew too much about a drug-related murder in 1991.

Howell was convicted of building the bomb and sentenced to death in 1995.





Steven Ray Thacker - Oklahoma Death Row

A March execution date was set for a man convicted of killing a Bixby woman in 1999.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and the attorney general's office said Wednesday that 42-year-old Steven Ray Thacker is to be put to death March 12 for the death of Laci Dawn Hill.

Prosecutors say Thacker wen to Hill's home after seeing an ad she placed to sell a pool table. Prosecutors say he kidnapped and raped Hill before strangling her — then stabbing her to death.

Thacker has also been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for killing a Missouri man after going to that state following Hill's death and he faces a death penalty in Tennessee where authorities say he killed a tow truck driver after traveling there from Missouri.




John Manuel Quintanilla Jr. - Texas Execution - May 14, 2013

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has listed an execution date of May 14, 2013 for Quintalla.

Summary of Offense:

On November 24, 2002, in Victoria, Quintanilla and two men entered an action amusement center through a partially opened back door, demanded cash from an employee and advised all other patrons to get down on the floor. Victor Billings attempted to disarm Quintanilla and was fatally shot three times. A woman was also shot, but the injury was not fatal.

Quintanilla was sentenced to death in December 2004.





New Death Sentences




Nathan Burris - California Death Row

A Richmond man who gunned down his former girlfriend and her friend on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toll plaza because he believed the pair was romantically involved was sentenced to death Friday.

Nathan Burris, 49, received the sentence after a lengthy, tense and oftentimes emotional hearing in a Martinez courtroom Friday morning.

The sentence comes two months after a jury convicted Burris on capital murder charges and returned a death sentence for the double murder of Deborah Ross, 51, and Ersie “Chuckie” Everette,” 58, on the busy bridge toll plaza during peak evening commute hours on Aug. 11, 2009.

“This was an extremely difficult trial,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Harold Jewett told the court Friday morning. “We have been treated every day to that same kind of hateful arrogance that undoubtedly precipitated the crime itself.”

Burris reiterated Friday as he did throughout the trial that it didn’t matter whether he received the death penalty or not because he believes legal battles over the penalty in the state of California make his execution unlikely.

“You’ve made yourself very clear that you don’t believe the death penalty will be carried out, and only time will tell,” Judge John W. Kennedy told the defendant Friday.

Nonetheless, the judge handed down two life sentences for two first-degree murder convictions with special circumstances because the crime was committed while lying in wait and because Burris was convicted for multiple first-degree murders.




Current Death Row Inmates





Russell Peeler Jr. - Connecticut Death Row

Former drug kingpin Russell Peeler Jr., on death row for ordering the executions of an 8-year-old boy and his mother, will face another murder trial next month.

Under heavy guard, Peeler entered a Main Street courtroom Thursday dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit and carrying a large packet of documents.

During the brief hearing, he attempted to interrupt Superior Court Judge John Kavanewsky Jr. as the judge scheduled jury selection to begin Feb. 4 for the outstanding murder trial.

Peeler, who ran an extensive drug ring in the city, is on death row after being convicted of capital felony for ordering the Jan. 7, 1999, murders of 8-year-old Leroy "B.J." Brown Jr . and his mother, Karen Clarke, in their North End home.

At the time of the murder, the boy was to be a witness against Peeler for the 1998 murder of Clarke's then-boyfriend, Rudolph Snead Jr ., a rival drug dealer, in a Boston Avenue barbershop.




Joseph Corcoran - Indiana Death Row

A Fort Wayne man on Indiana's death row for his conviction in the fatal 1997 shootings of four men lost his latest appeal.

A federal judge in South Bend last week denied Joseph Corcoran's death sentence appeal, finding that he failed to show that Indiana's decisions to uphold the death penalty in his case were contrary to decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Journal Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/13y6bfE ) Corcoran's attorneys said they plan to appeal. Corcoran's case has been reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court twice, a federal court twice and the Indiana Supreme Court five times.

The now 37-year-old Corcoran was convicted in 1999 of killing his brother, his sister's fiance and two other men in July 1997. His attorneys have said he was mentally ill.


Willie Jerome Manning - Mississippi Death Row

Mississippi prosecutors now have until Feb. 11 to respond to a death row inmate's ongoing effort to win a new trial for the killing of two university students in 1992.

In an order signed this week, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a request from Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood for more time. Hood's original deadline was Jan. 10.

Willie Jerome Manning has argued that defense attorneys should have done a better job and that black residents were inappropriately excluded from his Oktibbeha County jury. Manning is African-American.

Manning, now 44, received two death sentences for the 1992 slayings of two Mississippi State University students, Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller. Manning was arrested after he attempted to sell certain items belonging to the victims.




Wayne Powell - Ohio Death Row

On Thursday the Ohio Supreme Court canceled its own set date for the execution of Wayne Powell for the arson deaths of four people, including two children, in a 2006 Toledo house fire.

The postponement of the scheduled May 7, 2014 execution is a routine procedure designed to move the case into the next round of appeals after the state’s high court upheld his convictions and sentences last year.

Powell, 47, was convicted of pouring gasoline into the house at 714 St. John Ave. through a crack in a door early in the morning of Nov. 11, 2006 and then setting the house ablaze. The fire killed his ex-girlfriend, Mary Rose McCullum, 33; her ailing mother, Rose Mary McCollum, 52; her adopted son, Jamal, 4, and niece, Sanaa' Thomas, 2.

In addition to the four death sentences, Powell faces a 10-year prison sentence for aggravated arson. He is incarcerated on death row at Chillicothe Correctional Institution.




Ronald Lott - Oklahoma Death Row

A federal appeals court on Monday rejected the appeal of a man sentenced to death for killing two Oklahoma City women more than 25 years ago.

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver rejected claims by Ronald Lott, 53, who was convicted in December 2001 of raping and killing Anna Laura Fowler, 83, in September 1986 and Zelma Cutler, 93, in January 1987. His trial was delayed several times.

Lott was sentenced to death in January 2002 for both murder convictions.

Lott's attorney did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The appeals court rejected several arguments by Lott, including ineffective counsel during the sentencing phase of the trial, prosecutorial misconduct, insufficient evidence, erroneous jury instructions and violation of his right to a speedy trial.

The court did agree with Lott's contention that the victim impact testimony by the granddaughter of one victim, who testified that she believed Lott should be put to death, should not have been allowed. But the court found that because of “overwhelming evidence of Lott's gift” the testimony “did not have a substantial and injurious effect” on the jury's decision to impose the death sentence.

The evidence against Lott included DNA taken from the victims that was matched to Lott.



Lemaricus Davidson - Tennessee Death Row

A judge in Knoxville ordered a new trial in the slaying of a young Knoxville couple, but not for the convict who faces the death penalty in the case.

The Knoxville News Sentinel (http://bit.ly/VIj310 ) reported Senior Judge Walter Kurtz ruled Tuesday, ordering a retrial of George Thomas in the 2007 kidnapping and torture killing of 21-year-old Channon Christian and 23-year-old Christopher Newsom.

However, Kurtz denied new trials for Lemaricus Davidson and his brother, Letalvis Cobbins. Davidson is on death row and Cobbins is serving a life prison term with no parole allowed. Kurtz noted DNA evidence linked both to the crime.

Kurtz said Thomas deserved a new trial because the trial judge had not ruled on whether he could serve as a "13th juror," as statute requires.



Richard Aaron Cobb

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case of an East Texas man on death row for a robbery a decade ago where three people were abducted and shot, one of them fatally.

The high court Monday without comment rejected the case of 28-year-old Richard Cobb.

Cobb was 18 in 2002 when evidence showed he and a companion, Beunka Adams, walked into a convenience store in Rusk and announced a holdup. They took two female clerks and 37-year-old Richard Vandever from the store and drove to a remote area where one of the women was raped. All three captives were ordered to kneel and were shot. The women survived and one was able to summon help.

Adams was executed last year. Cobb doesn't yet have an execution date.





Reversed/New Trials/Resentenced/Released/Commuted



Angela Johnson - Federal Death Row

Jurors will answer a single question at the upcoming death penalty retrial of Angela Johnson: whether she deserves to die for 5 drug-related murders instead of spending the rest of her life in prison.

U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett said Wednesday jurors will be instructed that he will impose a prison sentence of life without parole even if 1 of them doesn't believe the former Iowa woman should be executed.

The ruling is a victory for Johnson's defense, which argued jurors could be persuaded to support her death if they feared she could one day be released from prison.

The June trial will determine the sentence Johnson should receive for the 1993 killings. Bennett threw out a Johnson's original death sentence last year after finding her defense was inadequate.




Death Row Inmate Deaths


Richard J. Glassel - Arizona

The first inmate to be sentenced to death under the Arizona statute that makes juries, rather than judges, responsible for death penalty convictions died Tuesday in a Tempe hospital due to natural causes, authorities said.

Richard J. Glassel was on death row after an April 2000 shooting in which he walked into the Ventana Lakes Property Owners Association Board of Directors meeting in Peoria and shot and killed two people and wounded three others.

After boycotting his own trial, Glassel was sentenced to death in 2003 with no known execution date.

Glassel was taken from the Arizona State Prison Complex at Eyman to Tempe St. Luke’s Hospital on Jan. 9, police said. He first entered the prison ten years earlier on Jan. 13, 2003.

The death will be investigated by the county medical examiner’s office.


David C Copenhefer - Pennsylvania

An Erie County death row inmate is dead. A spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections said that 65 year old David Copenhefer died Sunday of natural causes at the state prison in Greene County.

Copenhefer was sentenced to death by an Erie County jury for the 1988 kidnapping and murder of 37-year old Sally Weiner, the wife of a Corry banker. It was part of a scheme by Copenhefer to extort money.

He was just one of two local inmates on Pennsylvania's death row.

Copenhefer had spent years fighting to overturn the death sentence. Just last year, a federal appeals court upheld that sentence, after considering arguments from Erie County District Attorney Jack Daneri.




US Supreme Court Denials


David Lee Roberts - Alabama Death Row*
Rodney Hardy - Arizona Death Row
Ronnie Joseph - Arizona Death Row
Frederick Mendoza - Nevada Death Row
Gary Haugen - Oregon Death Row
Richard Aaron Cobb*




State By State Capital Punishment News


Arkansas

The Arkansas Board of Corrections is backing a push to move from a three-drug cocktail to a single drug in lethal injections.

Department of Correction spokeswoman Shea Wilson says the board voted Friday to back the attorney general's office going forward with legislation that would involve a single-drug protocol in executions.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's spokesman Aaron Sadler says legislation could be filed in the next week or two.

The move comes after the Arkansas Supreme Court last year threw out the state's lethal injection law, siding with death row inmates who said it violated part of the state's constitution that deals with separating the branches of government.

Wilson says the board hopes that narrowing the drug protocol will take care of the court's concerns.

*All appeals exhausted