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Executions


There were no executions in the past week.




Scheduled Executions




Kimberly McCarthy - Texas Execution - April 03, 2013


Kimberly McCarthy, the first woman scheduled to be executed in the U.S. since 2010, won a reprieve Tuesday. It came only hours before she was to be taken to the Texas death chamber.

State District Judge Larry Mitchell, in Dallas, rescheduled McCarthy's execution for April 3, 2013 so lawyers for the former nursing home therapist could have more time to pursue an appeal focused on whether her predominantly white jury was improperly selected on the basis of race. McCarthy is black.

Dallas County prosecutors, who initially contested the motion to reschedule, chose to not appeal the reprieve.

District Attorney Craig Watkins said the 60-day delay was "appropriate." If no irregularities are discovered, he said he'd move forward with the execution.

"We want to make sure everything is done correctly," he said.





Frederick Treesh - Ohio Execution - March 06, 2013

Lawyers for a condemned man who fatally shot an adult bookstore security guard at the end of a multistate crime spree asked Ohio's parole board Thursday to recommend mercy, saying he accepts responsibility for what happened but that it was an unintentional consequence of a struggle for a gun while he was high.

The request by 48-year-old Frederick Treesh comes a little more than a month ahead of his scheduled March 6 execution.

Prosecutors say Treesh robbed banks and businesses, committed sexual assaults, stole cars, committed carjackings and shot someone to death in a robbery in crimes across Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. He was sentenced to die in Ohio for killing 58-year-old Henry Dupree during a robbery in Eastlake on Aug. 27, 1994.

Attorneys for Treesh argued in favor of clemency in Columbus, while prosecutors' presented their case against sparing Treesh for a murder they say was intentional. The parole board will make a recommendation, but Gov. John Kasich has the final say on clemency.

Treesh declined to be interviewed by the parole board.






New Execution Dates





Richard Aaron Cobb - Texas Execution - April 25, 2013

An execution date of April 25, 2013 was set for Richard Aaron Cobb.

On September 2, 2002, in Cherokee County, Texas, Cobb and co-defendant, Beunka Adams, abducted three victims: a man and two women. They fatally shot the man, Kenneth Wayne Vandever, sexually assaulted and shot the two women and left their bodies in a field.

Cobb was sentenced to death in January 2004.

Co-defendant Beunka Adams was also sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection on April 26, 2012.





Jefferey Demond Williams - Texas Execution - May 15, 2013

An execution date of May 15, 2013 was been set for Jefferey Desmond Williams

On May 19, 1999, Williams shot and killed a police officer who was attempting to arrest him for driving a stolen car. Williams shot the officer in the chest and fled the scene. The officer was able to get back to his car and radio for help, but died as a result of the gunshot.




New Death Sentences


Joel Lebron - Florida Death Row

An Orlando man must die for the execution-style shooting of a teen who was kidnapped from South Beach and brutally gang-raped, a judge ruled Thrusday.

Joel Lebron, 34, is now headed to Death Row for the killing of Ana Maria Angel, a case that shocked South Florida.

Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge William Thomas was emotional, nearly crying as he sentenced Lebron. As the teary judge left the court, he said: "To Mr. Lebron, God bless you. To the family, God Bless you."

By a 9-3 vote, a jury recommended that Lebron be executed.

It is rare for a judge to go against a jury's recommendation in a death penalty case.

Lebron was one of five Orlando men who kidnapped Angel and her boyfriend, Nelson Portobanco, as the couple finished a romantic stroll on South Beach.

The men gang raped Angel, then slit Portobanco's throat and left him on the side of Interstate 95 in Broward County. He survived and alerted police.

Alongside the interstate in Palm Beach County, Lebron and another man later marched Angel down an embankment, into the brush near a sound barrier wall. Lebron shot Angel in the back of the head as she begged for her life, her hands clasped in prayer.

The evidence against Lebron was overwhelming. Investigators traced a phone call made by one of the men to an Orlando address, where the couple's stolen belongings were found.

Lebron confessed in chilling detail to investigators. His boots also had been splashed with Portobanco's blood, and his DNA was matched to semen found inside the victim.

All five of the men have now been convicted. One of them, Victor Caraballo, originally sent to Death Row by Judge Thomas, is awaiting a re-sentencing after the Florida Supreme Court vacated the sentence.





Current Death Row Inmates




Dale Hausner - Arizona Death Row

Arizona death row inmate Dale Shawn Hausner wants the news media kept out of a court hearing on whether the convicted serial killer is mentally competent to waive further appeals.

Hausner's lawyer made the disclosure during a court hearing Friday without explaining why Hausner wants reporters and cameras kept out the April hearing.

The judge will hear from Hausner and mental health experts during the April hearing.

The judge says he'll hold an earlier hearing to allow media organizations to object once a formal motion is filed.

Hausner wants his execution scheduled as soon as possible.

He was convicted of 6 murders and other crimes in Phoenix-area random shootings in 2005 and 2006.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Hausner's only automatic appeal by upholding his death sentences.



Manuel Ortiz - Louisiana Death Row

On Wednesday the state Supreme Court reinstated Manuel Ortiz's death sentence, for his first-degree murder conviction of hiring someone to kill his wife in Kenner 20 years ago to get her $900,000 life insurance policy. Justices reversed retired New Orleans Judge Jerome Winsberg's decision to lift the death sentence because the prosecutor in the case, Ronald Bodenheimer, represented the victim's family in a civil lawsuit to get the life insurance before his involvement with the criminal case had ended.

Ortiz, 55, an El Salvadoran national who had a condo in Kenner, was convicted of first-degree and second-degree murder in the Oct. 23, 1992, death of his wife Tracie Williams, 31, and her friend Cheryl Mallory, 33. Prosecutors said Ortiz was in El Salvador when the person he hired killed his wife and Mallory, who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Prosecutors say the killer was never identified.
manuel ortiz.jpg Manuel Ortiz

Ortiz's convictions have been upheld, leaving open the question of whether he received the death penalty or mandatory life in prison. Ortiz's attorney Nick Trenticosta did not immediately return a call for comment Friday. He has argued that Ortiz is innocent, that Bodenheimer cheated to convict his client by withholding evidence and already has taken the case to federal court in New Orleans.

Winsberg tossed the death sentence in August 2011, finding that before Bodenheimer's involvement in the criminal case had ended, he signed up to represent Williams' family to get the life insurance, eventually netting his private firm about $300,000. Further, Winsberg found that Bodenheimer's argument in the life insurance case was different from what he argued in the criminal trial.


Ortiz's case has attracted wide attention from death penalty foes, including Sister Helen Prejean. Trenticosta, his attorney, argues that a Honduran hitman was the killer and framed Ortiz because of a failed business venture.



Thomas Loden - Mississippi Death Row

A Death Row inmate convicted of killing an Itawamba County woman asked a federal judge to hear his appeal.

Attorneys for Thomas Edwin Loden Jr. on Tuesday filed a 30-page motion seeking an evidentiary hearing before Senior U.S. District Judge Neal B. Biggers.

They contend Loden’s case should be reconsidered for various reasons, including trial counsel’s alleged failure to fully investigate Loden’s mental condition as a factor in the death sentence.

They also claim poor advice from trial counsel led Loden to plead guilty and waive jury sentencing.

Their motion to Biggers insists that the Mississippi Supreme Court was wrong in denying his appeals, especially in doing so without a hearing where “many factual disputes” could be considered.

Loden is one of 10 state inmates awaiting execution from Northeast Mississippi convictions, nearly 20 percent of Death Row.

He pleaded guilty to the June 22, 2000, kidnap and murder of 16-year-old Leesa Marie Gray.

Circuit Judge Thomas Gardner agreed the “heinous” nature of the crime deserved the death penalty.

When Loden’s federal appeal was filed in 2012, his trial defense attorney, David Daniel of Tupelo, denied his former client’s claims of ineffective counsel.

Loden’s fate depends upon the federal appeal of the death sentence. He never filed appeals to any of the other convictions except the capital murder.




Vincent McFadden - Missouri Death Row

The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for a man convicted of fatally shooting a St. Louis area woman a decade ago.

The high court on Tuesday rejected more than a dozen claims by Vincent McFadden in his appeal of his death sentence for the May 2003 slaying of 19-year-old Leslie Addison. She was the sister of McFadden's former girlfriend.

Among other things, McFadden challenged some of the prosecutor's statements. He also challenged some of the evidence that was presented about his actions in a previous murder for which he also was sentenced to death.

Last year, the Supreme Court upheld McFadden's conviction and death sentence for the July 2002 killing of Todd Franklin. Prosecutors in that case had described McFadden as a member of the 6 Deuces gang.

Danny Hembree - North Carolina Death Row

Death row inmate Danny Robbie Hembree walked into Gaston County Superior Court Tuesday with a thick folder of documents in his shackled hands.

The 51-year-old former Gastonia resident temporarily left death row to return to a Gaston County courtroom where he and attorneys took care of pre-trial matters in a second, first-degree murder trial for him.

He’ll face the possibility of a second death sentence for the 2009 killing of Randi Dean Saldana.

Attorneys discussed two matters before Superior Court Judge James Morgan – bringing in jurors from Burke County and omitting information in a third killing for which Hembree’s been charged.

A jury gave Hembree a death sentence in 2011 for one of the three killings.

The conviction was for suffocating 17-year-old Heather Catterton in October 2009 and leaving her partially nude body in a culvert in South Carolina.

Hembree went on trial again in 2011 for the killing Randi Dean Saldana.

Saldana, 30, was found dead in York, S.C., just two weeks after Catterton’s body was discovered.

A judge declared a mistrial in the trial for Saldana’s killing after Hembree alleged an improper relationship with a Gaston County prosecutor.

The first trial captured regional media attention, showing up on TV and in newspapers before and during the proceedings.

Jurors in the first Saldana trial were brought in from Rutherford County.

Morgan adopted a similar strategy in deciding to bring in jurors from Burke County.

Jury selection will take place in Burke County, but the trial will be conducted in Gaston County.

The trial is scheduled for March.



Stanley Jaloweic - Ohio Death Row

Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge rejected a request from Assistant County Prosecutor Tony Cillo this morning that the judge remove himself from the case of convicted killer Stanley Jalowiec.

Cillo said that Burge’s comments Tuesday to the Ohio Parole Board that he is being investigated by the Ohio Supreme Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel could create the appearance of impropriety.

Burge said Tuesday that Cillo told the Disciplinary Counsel that he didn’t agree to indefinitely delay sending Nancy Smith back to prison after the Supreme Court ruled Burge overstepped when he acquitted Smith in the controversial Head Start child molestation case in 2011.

Burge said Cillo and Jack Bradley, one of Smith’s lawyers, asked him not to do anything until he heard from them.

Smith, who remains free, is currently seeking clemency from Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Disciplinary Counsel inquiries are considered confidential and Burge has declined to elaborate on the scope of the investigation beyond his public comments.

The judge said for the purposes of today’s hearing at least he would remain on the Jalowiec case. Jalowiec, who is on death row for the slaying of police informant Ronald Lally in the 1990s, is seeking a new trial based on what his lawyers contend is newly discovered evidence and police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Stays Of Execution





Larry Swearingen - Texas Execution - STAYED

A state district judge has withdrew the execution date for a 41-year-old convicted killer who now has avoided the Texas death chamber four times.

Judge Kelly Case ordered Wednesday that Larry Swearingen's scheduled Feb. 27 lethal injection be put off indefinitely and cleared the way for DNA testing in his case.

Swearingen is on death row for the 1998 abduction, rape and strangling of a 19-year-old Montgomery County community college student. His attorneys, who include lawyers from The Innocence Project, contend he didn't kill Melissa Trotter and say DNA testing of evidence never tested would support their contention.

Montgomery County prosecutors insist Swearingen is guilty and say they've offered to do testing immediately. They accuse Swearingen's attorneys of aiming only to delay punishment.





David Leonard - Texas Execution - STAYED

A 62-page court document filed by David Leonard Wood's defense asserts that the convicted serial killer from El Paso is mentally retarded and should therefore not be sentenced to die.

Gregory W. Wiercioch, the lawyer who represents Wood in the post-conviction appeal, prepared the document, "Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law," to rebut the state's arguments against Wood's claim of mental retardation.

The defense contends that Wood had low IQ scores, suffered an unusually difficult childhood, and failed as an adult to adapt socially, conceptually and practically.

According to documents cited by the defense, Wood was given six IQ tests as an adult between the age of 19 and 54 years old. His scores, in chronological order, were 111, 64, 71, 101, 67 and 57. However, records did not provide details on which IQ tests he took that correspond with three of those scores. The first score was recorded in 1977 and the most recent one in 2011.

"As the school records, trial and hearing testimony, and affidavits demonstrate," the defense document states, "Mr. Wood's significant intellectual and adaptive deficits manifested themselves before he reached the age of 18."

Wood's "disabling condition occurred during the developmental period," the document states, which is one of the three main requirements to prove mental retardation.

In 1989, Wood was convicted and sentenced to death for killing six girls and young women in 1987: Desiree Wheatley, Angelica Frausto, Susanna Ivy Williams, Rosa Maria Casio, Karen Baker and Dawn Smith. Their bodies were found buried in shallow graves in the Northeast El Paso desert, near the present Painted Dunes Golf Course.

He is appealing the death sentence.




Reversed/New Trials/Resentenced/Released/Commuted


Martin Allen Johnson - Oregon Death Row

A Marion County judge ordered a new trial for a death row inmate convicted in the 1998 killing of Tigard-area teen Heather Fraser.

Martin Allen Johnson, 56, was convicted in 2001 of drugging, raping and strangling Fraser and then throwing her body off the Astoria-Megler Bridge into the Columbia River.

Fraser's body washed up on a beach at Fort Stevens State Park in Clatstop County early Feb. 24, 1998, the day after she had gone to Johnson's home to use the Internet on his computer.

Johnson, incarcerated at the state penitentiary in Salem, unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the Oregon Supreme Court in 2006. According to the state Department of Justice, a post-conviction relief process is available to criminal defendants who have gone through the appellate process and wish to raise new challenges.

Marion County Circuit Judge Don Dickey heard Johnson's post-conviction relief case last June and after taking the case under advisement in November, granted the inmate's petition last week.

Johnson's lawyers did not adequately defend him in his Washington County Circuit Court aggravated murder trial, Dickey wrote in his decision. The defense attorneys disagreed with prosecutors' theory that Johnson killed Fraser by strangulation. Instead, they argued that Fraser drowned in the Columbia River after Johnson threw her in alive. They asked jurors to acquit Johnson on a technicality because the death occurred in Clatsop County, not his Washington County home in Aloha.

"In deciding the theme of the case, trial counsel relied upon a single defense, one that was highly likely to fail," Dickey wrote in an 88-page court order last week. "That defense was essentially: 'Petitioner killed Heather Fraser, but he did not kill her in the county alleged in the Indictment.'"




Michael Dale Rimmer - Tennessee

A former death row prisoner from Memphis told a judge Wednesday that he has scrapped his plan to represent himself in his capital murder retrial.

Michael Dale Rimmer, who won a new trial last year when an appeals court said his attorneys in 1998 were inadequate, said he is no longer opposed to having appointed attorneys represent him.

"A wise decision," said Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft, who appointed Robert Parris of Memphis and Paul Bruno of Nashville to represent Rimmer.

No trial date has been set.

Rimmer, 46, was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of former girlfriend Ricci Lynn Ellsworth, who disappeared Feb. 8, 1997, from the Memphis Inn at Interstate 40 and Sycamore View where she was the night clerk.




State By State Capital Punishment News


Kentucky

About two-thirds of Kentuckians support the death penalty as an option for murderers and do not want it replaced with a sentence of life in prison without parole, according to the latest Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll.

Two bills have been proposed in this year’s General Assembly - one in the Senate and one in the House - to abolish the death penalty.

About 67 percent of the 609 registered voters surveyed said they continue to support capital punishment in Kentucky, while 26 percent said they’d like to see it abolished. Another 7 percent of those polled said they were not sure about the issue.

Mike Ackerman, a 38-year-old voter from Prestonsburg, said he believes that people don’t have a respect for the law these days and the death penalty is fitting for those who commit the most heinous crimes.

“You’ve taken someone’s life and you don’t deserve to keep living,” Ackerman said. “The way society is today, they don’t fear the law.”

Despite the 2 to 1 support for the death penalty in the poll, the Rev. Patrick Delahanty, chairman of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said he doesn’t believe it is reflective of the sentiment. Delahanty said he believes if the question was asked reflecting the cost of executing prisoners, the risk of wrongful conviction and mistakes made in previous cases, the outcome would be different.

“I don’t think that’s the reality,” Delahanty said of the poll.

Instead, Delahanty said the legislature must consider how the system actually functions. “What we have here is a system that appears to be pretty broken.”

The poll asked:

“A bill is before the 2013 Kentucky General Assembly to abolish the death penalty and makes the maximum penalty for murder in Kentucky life in prison without the possibility of parole. Do you support keeping the death penalty as an option? Or do you prefer abolishing it and replacing it with life in prison without parole?”

In 1997, the Bluegrass Poll asked about the death penalty for those convicted of murder without suggesting life in prison as an alternative. In that poll, almost 70 percent of Kentuckians were in favor.

Rep. Carl Rollins, D-Midway, pre-filed a bill in the House and said he hopes it would get a hearing. Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, also filed a bill in the Senate. That bill has been filed several times before but has never progressed.