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Thread: Rasheed Scrugs Sentenced to LWOP in 2009 Murder of LEO John Pawlowski

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    Rasheed Scrugs Sentenced to LWOP in 2009 Murder of LEO John Pawlowski

    Jury selection in Philly officer slaying case continues

    By Joseph A. Slobodzian
    Inquirer Staff Writer
    After a break for Columbus Day, a Common Pleas Court judge, the prosecution, and defense lawyers will try again this week to complete a jury for the death penalty trial of Rasheed Scrugs, accused killer of Police Officer John Pawlowski. Last week, eight jurors were chosen from more than 350 prospects called to the Criminal Justice Center. Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes had said she hoped to begin testimony Tuesday, but the pace flagged, with just one juror picked since Thursday. A panel of 12 and four alternates is required.
    Scrugs, 35, a West Philadelphia parolee, could face the death penalty if found guilty of first-degree murder.
    He is accused of initiating a Feb. 13, 2009, shoot-out with police at Broad Street and Olney Avenue after a cabdriver called 911 and said Scrugs was threatening him.
    Pawlowski, 25, a five-year veteran, was hit in the upper chest by a bullet that passed over the top of his bulletproof vest. He was the most recent city police officer killed in the line of duty - the seventh in three violent years.
    Jury selection is often protracted in death penalty cases because of the need to find jurors who are open to a sentence of death by lethal injection, but also willing, if warranted, to impose life in prison without parole.
    The death penalty issue is further complicated when a police officer is the victim and the subject of intense media coverage.
    Lawyers in the Pawlowski case also have come up against a challenge becoming more commonplace in large cities such as Philadelphia: prospective jurors who know a homicide victim or a convicted murderer.
    As of Sunday, according to the Philadelphia police, 248 homicides were recorded this year. That is slightly above the total of 237 for the same period in 2009.
    Familiarity with a killing or a killer does not automatically exclude a potential juror. But it can make defense lawyers and prosecutors uncomfortable enough to exercise a preemptory challenge, a veto of a prospective juror without having to state a reason.



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    Scrugs pleads guilty to killing officer

    DURING a February interview, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams told the Daily News that because the death penalty is seldom carried out in Pennsylvania, he'd be hard-pressed to seek it if a first-degree murder defendant offered to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without parole.

    "I would think that in the supermajority, in nine times out of 10," he said, "I would be willing to show mercy."

    Yesterday, Williams said the case of confessed cop-killer Rasheed Scrugs was the one in 10 in which mercy was not warranted.

    "I think a case such as this one, given the defendant's record and the nature of the facts, this was an appropriate case that we would request the death penalty," Williams said during a break in the first day of Scrugs' trial.

    Scrugs, 35, a longtime criminal from North Philadelphia, learned as much shortly after he started the day in stunning fashion by pleading guilty to murdering police Officer John Pawlowski, 25, on Feb. 13, 2009.

    "I'm guilty of first-degree murder, and I'm sorry," the bearded man, dressed in a black pinstriped suit and sneakers, said when asked to stand and enter a plea.

    The admission caught Common Pleas Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes off-guard, and she asked the jury to leave the courtroom.

    Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann rejected a defense request that the death penalty not be sought in exchange for the guilty plea.

    Hughes cautioned Scrugs that by pleading guilty to first-degree murder the jury would be left with only one decision: whether to return a sentence of life without parole or death.

    She told him that he'd lose the ability to convince the jury that he'd committed third-degree murder, which carries a 20-to-40 year maximum sentence, and that he'd lose most of his appellate rights.

    Scrugs, standing next to his two court-appointed attorneys, Lee Mandell and David Rudenstein, said he understood what he was doing.

    He said he wanted to plead guilty to the murder, to attempting to murder Pawlowski's partner, Officer Mark Klein, and to related offenses, because he was guilty.

    "So, Mr. Scrugs, you're prepared to plead guilty to everything?" Hughes asked, as the late officer's wife, Kim, other family members and tightly packed rows of police officers and spectators listened.

    "Yes," he replied softly.

    "You have no defense." Hughes continued. "You knowingly and intentionally shot an officer in cold blood."

    After a break for lunch, Hughes explained to the jury that due to the guilty plea, the trial would move to the guilt phase, during which the prosecution team would argue that Scrugs should be executed and that the defense team would argue that his life should be spared.

    The three aggravating circumstances the prosecution will cite for the death penalty are that Scrugs killed a cop in the line of duty, that he created a grave risk of death to others besides Pawlowski and that he has a significant history of violent felony convictions.

    The defense team will present mitigating circumstances related to Scrugs' life and the shooting, the judge told the jury.

    Pawlowski, a 5 1/2- year police veteran, and Scrugs crossed paths at Broad Street and Olney Avenue on the evening of the killing.

    Pawlowski and his partner were responding to a 9-1-1 call that a man - Scrugs - was trying to rob a cabdriver.

    The driver, Emmanuel Ceser, would later tell authorities that before the police responded to his call, Scrugs warned: "If you call the cops, I'll shoot you and the cops."

    As Pawlowski approached Scrugs, the officer ordered him to show his hands. Instead, Scrugs kept his hands in his coat pocket and fired a .357 handgun, striking Pawlowski three times and shooting three times in Klein's direction.

    The bullet that ripped through Pawlowski's back, both lungs, and aorta proved fatal, McCann said, causing the officer's widow to sob audibly.

    Rudenstein told the jury during his opening statement that Scrugs suffers from low intelligence and was an abuser of the drug PCP - angel dust - which he smoked the day of the murder. "It's a reason, not an excuse," for his actions, Rudenstein said.

    Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Juliano Coelho reminded the jurors that Scrugs warned that he'd shoot if the cops came - and he did.

    "His actions were cool, calculated, determined and deliberate," she said. "It's his actions and words together that determine his intent."

    Testimony is expected to take more than a week.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20...tml?page=2&c=y

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    Philly hearing in death penalty case resumes

    A Philadelphia jury meets again Monday to resume a hearing on whether a man convicted of shooting a police officer to death last year deserves capital punishment or life in prison without parole.

    35-year-old Rasheed Scrugs pleaded guilty last week to 1st-degree murder in the February 2009 death of 25-year-old officer John Pawlowski.

    Another officer testified Friday about the death of Pawlowski, the last of 7 city officers slain in the line of duty over a period of less than 3 years. He said they were answering a report of an attempted robbery of a cab driver in North Philadelphia.

    The Philadelphia Inquirer says a cab driver and a bystander also testified that Scrugs warned the driver not to call the police and added "If you call the cops I'll shoot you and the cops."



    (source Associated Press)

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    Solemn death penalty hearing for confessed cop killer

    In a space of seconds, the voice on the police radio screamed into hoarseness: "Assist Broad and Olney! Assist Broad and Olney! He's down! He's down!"

    On the witness stand Friday, Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Klein, 26, listened to the tape, face flushing, jaw clenched, as his desperate call hung in the silence of the courtroom.

    It was about 8:25 p.m., Feb. 13, 2009. Klein was radioing for help for John Pawlowski, his partner of a year and friend since high school, shot and killed in a brief standoff with a man at Broad Street and Olney Avenue.

    Klein's testimony brought to a solemn close the second day of testimony in the death penalty hearing for Rasheed Scrugs, 35, the West Philadelphia paroled robber who has admitted killing Pawlowski.

    Scrugs pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree murder on what was to have been the first day of his trial in the shooting of Pawlowski, 25. A recently married expectant father, the officer had been on the force just five years.

    With his plea, Scrugs focused the proceeding on the jury's choice of sentence: death by lethal injection, or life in prison without parole.

    Klein, a boyish redhead who said he joined the force because of his friend, told the Common Pleas Court jury he and Pawlowski were on patrol on their 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift when a call came in about a man with a knife at Broad and Olney.

    They were 10 blocks away.

    "Mobile 35 on," said Pawlowski, the driver, responding to the call.

    As they arrived, Klein said, Pawlowski pulled over near a shuttered newsstand on the northeast corner of the intersection, where freelance cabbie Emmanuel Cesar was waving at them.

    Cesar told them a man in a brown coat - Scrugs - standing about 15 feet away, in front of the SEPTA transit station, had roughed him up and was giving him "a hard way to go," Klein said.

    The partners got out of the car and moved to the sidewalk, Klein said. They both ordered the suspect, his hands stuffed in his coat pockets, to "show us your hands."

    Instead, Klein said, Scrugs backed away. Muzzle flashes erupted through his coat pocket.

    Deputy District Attorney Edward McCann asked Klein what happened to his partner.

    "I could tell John got hit," Klein said. "He tensed up and then collapsed. I heard him screaming."

    Klein said he ducked down to pull Pawlowski to safety as Scrugs walked by to cross to the west side of Broad Street, firing the remaining three shots in his .357-caliber revolver.

    As Scrugs reached the medial island, Klein fired 10 shots from his pistol and watched as Scrugs fell wounded to the concrete.

    By then, fellow Officer Stephen Mancuso arrived and helped him pull Pawlowski into the squad car to go to nearby Albert Einstein Medical Center.

    "He wasn't good," Klein said. "It was pretty much pulling deadweight."

    Klein drove with Mancuso and his partner in the backseat, leaving behind on the street Pawlowski's handheld radio and handcuffs and broken auto glass and a red ribbon they had tied to the antenna of their squad car.

    When they arrived at Einstein, emergency room crews took over and moved the mortally wounded officer inside.

    "After that, I pretty much sat on the curb and cried," Klein said.

    His testimony riveted the courtroom.

    Kimmy Pawlowski, the officer's widow and mother of their now 17-month-old son, John III, wept quietly. Her father, Edward Leigh, his face a red mask of anguish, leaned from behind and rubbed her back.

    To her right, John L. Pawlowski, 59, the officer's father and namesake and a retired police lieutenant, sat hunched with his hands clasped between his knees, rocking back and forth and fighting tears.

    On the other side of the courtroom, Scrugs' mother and family sat grimly facing front. A few feet in front of them, Scrugs hunched over the defense table.

    The jury, which resumes work Monday at the Criminal Justice Center, also heard from Cesar, the cabbie, and Luke Cooper, a bystander who was waiting on Broad Street for his bus.

    Cooper corroborated Cesar's testimony about what Scrugs said as the cabbie walked away to call police: "You better not be calling the cops. If you call the cops I'll shoot you and the cops."

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20...tml?page=2&c=y

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    Father Of Fallen Police Officer Testifies In Son’s Murder Trial



    A Philadelphia jury has now heard tearful testimony from a heartbroken, devastated father of the victim in the penalty phase of the trial for Rasheed Scruggs, who admitted killing police officer John Pawlowski in February of last year. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.

    John Pawlowski detailed the night his son and namesake — a hero — died. He has testified there was a call from another son, Robert, a police Corporal, who was screaming. Then a marked police car picked him up and took him to the hospital.

    When he arrived at the hospital, officer John Pawlowski was dead and the father says he hugged and kissed his lifeless son and he cried. And he says there have been tears, grief and anger ever since — an instant, that made a wife and expectant mother a widow.

    When John Pawlowski completed his testimony — a so-called victim impact statement — he returned to his seat next to his son’s widow, Kim, who cried, sobbing during most of his testimony, and she put her head on his shoulder.

    http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/201...-murder-trial/

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    Wife, Brother Of Slain Officer Testify In Court

    The prosecution has finished its case in the penalty phase of the trial of admitted cop killer Rasheed Scrugs and the case ended with tears and sobs filling the courtroom.

    Kim Pawlowski and Robert Pawlowski testified through their own tears, at times sobbing, as they took the jury to a very dark place, a hospital room on the night of February 13th, 2009.

    Their beloved John lay dead on a table. Robert Pawlowski saw the gaping gunshot wound, it haunts him when he closes his eyes.

    And he described the terror in Kim’s eyes as she arrived, as she puts it, she had everything, and it was gone.

    The father of their unborn son, was gone. He would never hold their son, give him a bath, play football with him. Now she can only sit at his grave and talk to him, her husband and best friend.

    Reported By: Tony Hanson, KYW Newsradio

    http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/201...tify-in-court/

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    Cop-killer's kin, exes plead for his life to be spared

    The women who love confessed cop-killer Rasheed Scrugs - a sister and the two mothers of his four children - yesterday took turns asking a Philadelphia jury not to send him to death row.

    "That's basically why I'm here - to spare his life," said Shonna McNeil, Scrugs' ex-wife and the mother of his two youngest sons, ages 5 and 6.

    "Everybody should have a father. They should know who he is," McNeil, the last of the three women to testify, said through tears.

    Her plea for mercy was too much for another mother - Kimberly Pawlowski, 25, widow of the man who Scrugs confessed to murdering, police Officer John Pawlowski, also 25.

    Kimberly Pawlowski, who gave birth to the couple's first child four months after the Feb. 13, 2009, murder, bolted from the Common Pleas courtroom and did not return.

    After confessing to the murder at the start of the trial, Scrugs, 35, is facing a sentence from the jury of either life without parole or the death penalty.

    He gunned down the 5 1/2-year police veteran at Broad Street and Olney Avenue while being questioned about the attempted robbery of a cabbie.

    The prosecution rested its case yesterday afternoon by calling to the witness stand Kimberly Pawlowski and her husband's brother, Police Officer Robert Pawlowski.

    Both delivered tearful victim-impact statements before a capacity audience that included Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and District Attorney Seth Williams, who sat in the front row.

    "My life was ruined that night, and for no good reason," said Kimberly Pawlowski, who met her husband when she was in fifth grade, he in sixth. "My husband was simply doing his job."

    She told the jury that she was "miserable, lonely and sad" in the wake of her husband being killed the day before their first Valentine's Day as a married couple and before their first wedding anniversary.

    She cried hardest when lamenting what her son had lost: "Baby Johnny will never be kissed by his dad."

    Robert Pawlowski, 37, told the jury that he was working in the police radio room the night the call came in that an officer was down in the 35th Police District.

    He spoke of how frantic he was while trying to find out if it was his younger brother. After getting the bad news, he raced to the Albert Einstein Medical Center, Pawlowski said, where he saw doctors and nurses trying - but failing - to save his brother.

    "I couldn't wish this pain on a dog. Even dogs know the young ones aren't supposed to die," he said.

    Scrugs - who has been a poster boy for bad behavior in the months between being arrested and the start of his trial this month - appeared moved.

    As the late officer's wife and brother testified, he bowed his head, wept and sniffled.

    The jury also heard from Sgt. Joseph Fanelli, of the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, where Scrugs is being held.

    While there, Scrugs tried to pick the lock of his handcuffs during a hospital visit, exposed his penis to female guards and cursed the memories of the city's last seven slain officers - including Pawlowski - Fanelli testified.

    Scrugs' two-attorney defense team began its case by calling to the stand mitigation specialist Roya Pallar, who offered a list of findings in support of the jury sentencing him to life in prison.

    Among them, Pallar said, is that Scrugs had poor schooling; he and his mother suffer from depression; he has been a drug abuser; his father was not in his life; his stepfather abused his mother; and he has good relationships with his four kids, who would suffer if he were executed.

    "I would die also if he was executed," said Scrugs' sister Bayyenah Abdul Azziz, 28. "Maybe not in a physical sense, but I would die also."

    http://www.philly.com/dailynews/loca...be_spared.html

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    Scrugs jury reads his post-shooting note

    The scrawl tumbles crazily over three white pages, stream of consciousness, fragments of sentences and words: "I cannot believe I shot at a phila cop. . . . My life is over."

    It is 9:45 a.m. on Feb. 15, 2009, and Rasheed Scrugs has awoken after surgery for multiple gunshot wounds received a little more than 36 hours earlier in a showdown at Broad Street and Olney Avenue.

    Police Officer John Pawlowski, 25, five years a cop, four months married, and an expectant father, is dead.

    Scrugs, 35, is groggy and intubated, and cannot speak.

    The handwritten statement he produced then was introduced by his lawyer Friday during Scrugs' death-penalty hearing in Common Pleas Court.

    Defense lawyers David Rudenstein and Lee Mandell are expected to argue next week that Scrugs' note demonstrates early remorse and justifies a life sentence, not death by lethal injection.

    Prosecutors Edward McCann and Jacqueline Juliano Coelho are expected to argue that the note is self-serving and is at best Scrugs' first realization of the desperate situation he put himself into.

    Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes ruled that the note must speak for itself - literally. It was projected onto large-screen monitors, and each juror got a copy to silently read and return.

    Regardless of interpretation, for the jury of eight women and four men, the note was a rare window into the mind of an admitted killer.

    According to a prefatory statement agreed to by the prosecution and defense, the note was written when Scrugs was in recovery at Albert Einstein Medical Center, two blocks from the shooting scene.

    Scrugs awoke and asked the attending nurse for paper and pen, and began to write about the shot officer. The nurse removed the paper and told Scrugs to write only about medical issues. The nurse handed Scrugs a clean sheet of paper, and again he began to write about the officer. Again the nurse removed the paper and gave Scrugs a clean sheet.

    This time, Scrugs began, "I have a cough. Please give me a little water" - and then wrote about the shooting. This time, the nurse let Scrugs write on and, after he finished, handed the pages to a police officer on guard.

    "I do not know every that happ - I cannot believe I shot at a phila cop. I want to say to the family. Please tell me exactly what what," the note trails off.

    Scrugs writes for his mother to call him, leaves a partial phone number, and adds: "My life is over. I have 4 beautiful children.

    "I was smoking wet [marijuana soaked with PCP]. I got into a argument. And I felt a sharp pain in my back.

    "Nothing I can say," the note continues. "Did I kill a police officer. Please tell me he is still alive. Read it to me."

    It concludes: "What time. Please tell me officer. If I shot a cop my life is over. I was wrong for carrying a gun. I'm sorry. Can't breathe."

    Scrugs, a paroled robber from West Philadelphia who had been laid off and was working as a gypsy cabdriver, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder Oct. 21 on the first day of his trial.

    That moved the case into the penalty phase, in which the jury must decide whether Scrugs should spend his life in prison without chance of parole or die by lethal injection.

    Hughes told the jurors Friday that the defense would complete its case Monday. On Tuesday, she said, the lawyers will make closing arguments, she will instruct them about the state's death-penalty law, and they will begin deliberations.

    Earlier Friday, a defense-hired forensic psychologist provided the jury with mixed views of Scrugs' mental state at the time of the shooting.

    Jonathan Mack said Scrugs' hair-trigger personality during the Feb. 13, 2009, confrontation with Pawlowski could have been caused by a combination of brain damage and use of the illegal street drug PCP.

    But under questioning by Rudenstein, Mack also said he believed Scrugs knew the difference between right and wrong and could have formed the intent to kill.

    And Mack testified that he could not say whether Scrugs' brain damage was of long standing or the result of loss of blood and a fall after he was shot by police during the confrontation.

    Mack's testimony is crucial to the defense effort to convince the jury of a mitigating factor that warrants a sentence of life in prison over death.

    Mack testified that Scrugs had a violent reaction to PCP before - a 1997 incident in which he was involuntarily committed, restrained, and administered antipsychotic drugs.

    Scrugs has admitted smoking PCP-laced marijuana before he roughed up a cabdriver and then shot Pawlowski when he and a partner responded to the cabbie's 911 call.

    The cabbie testified that Scrugs, whom he knew, seemed unusually aggressive and angry that night and became infuriated when he called police, warning: "If you call the cops, I'll shoot you and the cops."





    Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local...#ixzz13tVThI5M

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    Closing arguments today in cop-killer's sentencing

    After hearing two weeks of testimony for and against executing confessed cop-killer Rasheed Scrugs, a Philadelphia jury this morning is scheduled to hear closing arguments from prosecution and defense attorneys.

    Scrugs, 35, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder on Oct. 21, told Common Pleas Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes yesterday that he would not testify in his own defense during the penalty phase.

    Scrugs faces grim prospects for fatally shooting Officer John Pawlowski, 25, at Broad Street and Olney Avenue, on Feb. 13, 2009.

    The jury can return a sentence of death or life in prison without parole.

    Defense attorneys have called a series of expert witnesses who have testified that Scrugs was depressed and high on PCP the night he shot the officer. They also said he had a subpar upbringing, is brain-damaged and suffers from low intelligence.

    Members of Scrugs' family pleaded with the jury to spare his life.

    The final relative to do so was his mother, Anna Abdul Ghaffar, who spent about 20 minutes on the witness stand yesterday.

    Shortly after defense attorney David Rudenstein began questioning her, Ghaffar interrupted him and looked toward the slain officer's family.

    "I have to apologize. I have to apologize. I want to express my deepest sympathy to the Pawlowski family for myself and my son," she said.

    Ghaffar said Scrugs' father, William Burnette, was constantly in and out of prison while their son was growing up. She and Burnette never married.

    She said that in 1986, she got married and moved Scrugs and his four siblings from New Jersey to the Olney section of Philadelphia.

    She said that because of her work as a nurse and other responsibilities, she did not do the best job raising Scrugs, who was kicked out of Ben Franklin High School in 11th grade for bringing a replica gun and cocaine to school.

    "Looking back, hindsight being 20-20, there's a lot I could have done," Ghaffar said, mentioning that she should have sent her son to camp and allowed for better male role models in his life.

    When Rudenstein asked if she wanted the jury to spare his life, Ghaffar was emphatic. "I will appeal to them. I will plead with them to spare his life," she said, describing how close he is with his four children.

    "He's a loving, caring, devoted father," she said. "They listen to him intently. They love and care for their father."

    Prosecutors argued that Scrugs' actions were premeditated and deserving of the death penalty. Before Pawlowski and his partner arrived at Broad and Olney to investigate a cabbie's claim that Scrugs had tried to rob him, the jury was told, Scrugs warned the cabbie that he'd shoot him and the cops if he called them


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    Judge tells deadlocked jury in Rasheed Scrugs death penalty phase to try again

    In an emotionally agonizing afternoon for the families of victim and murderer, the Philadelphia jury considering the death penalty for admitted police killer Rasheed Scrugs said it was deadlocked Friday, but, after getting terse instructions from the judge, decided to try again Monday.

    Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes had taken the unusual step of handing each juror a piece of paper on which to write, privately, "what the court could do to facilitate your deliberations."

    That stunned not only Scrugs' attorneys, but also defense lawyers experienced in death-penalty cases, who gathered in court as word circulated that the jury was deadlocked.

    Scrugs' attorney, David Rudenstein, lodged a continuing objection to Hughes' instructions and the jury's resumed deliberations - indicating a potential ground for appeal. The concern was that Hughes' action could be interpreted by jurors as coercion or a suggestion to return a death sentence. A deadlocked jury usually means an automatic life sentence.

    Hughes apparently was persuaded by prosecutors who submitted to her a 22-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that affirmed similar instructions from a Louisiana trial judge in a death-penalty case.

    "We're all just waiting now to see what happens," Rudenstein said to Scrugs' mother, Annah Abdul-Ghaffar. She had begun weeping when the jury said it was deadlocked, which would have spared her son's life.

    On the other side of the courtroom, the family of Police Officer John Pawlowski, 25 - shot to death by Scrugs in a Feb. 13, 2009, confrontation at Broad Street and Olney Avenue - seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief when the jury announced it would continue deliberating.

    Earlier, the news of a deadlock shocked and angered the Pawlowski family. Edward Leigh, father of Kimmy Pawlowski, the officer's widow, stared red-faced at Scrugs, muttering under his breath.

    Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey was next to him, in dress uniform, staring grimly ahead.

    Under Pennsylvania's death-penalty law, juries in first-degree murder cases must decide whether to sentence defendants to death by lethal injection or life in prison without chance of parole. If they cannot decide, the judge must impose a life sentence. Usually, judges ask deadlocked capital juries whether the impasse is insurmountable or whether they wish to cede sentencing to the bench.

    That's what Hughes did in August, when a jury could not decide on a sentence for two men convicted of first-degree murder in the May 3, 2008, shooting of Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

    But at 3:13 p.m. Friday, with the jury of eight women and four men in the box, the judge went further, asking jurors to explain in private notes what they thought caused the deadlock.

    The jurors were sent out and brought back at 3:40, after Hughes and prosecution and defense lawyers had reviewed the 12 notes.

    "It's clear to me that some of you lack clarity on the law," Hughes quietly told the jury. "It's important that even if one person has a question, that you present it to me so I can address it."

    She added, "It is also clear to me that you need to listen to one another."

    The judge again sent the jurors out to decide whether they wanted to continue deliberations. At 4:30, they left the Criminal Justice Center after sending a note saying they believed they "could work together" and wanted to return Monday.

    The contents of the jurors' notes were not made public. One source familiar with the proceedings said at least one juror wrote that she thought some other jurors did not understand the law.

    Rudenstein and co-counsel Lee Mandell appeared angry at the development, although they, like the prosecutors, are bound by a gag order.

    Other defense attorneys said they had never heard of a judge taking such action in a death-penalty case in Pennsylvania or elsewhere.

    The 1988 Supreme Court opinion in Lowenfield v. Phelps, submitted by prosecutors Edward McCann and Jacqueline Juliano Coelho, involved a judge who twice polled a jury about whether further deliberations would be helpful.

    After the second poll, the judge warned the jurors "to consult and consider each other's views with the objective of reaching a verdict, but not to surrender their own honest beliefs in doing so." The jury returned a death sentence 30 minutes later.

    In its 5-4 ruling, the high court wrote that "in context and under all the circumstances, the two jury polls and the supplemental charge did not impermissibly coerce the jury to return a death sentence."


    http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front...try_again.html

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