Rick Halperin
2018-11-25 16:33:24 UTC
November 25
GEORGIA:
Hearing will determine how Tara Grinstead case moves forward
More than 13 years after Tara Grinstead was reported missing - and more than a
year after 2 men were charged in connection with her murder - a court hearing
will begin Monday to determine how the case proceeds. Among the key issues a
judge must decide: Whether most charges should be dropped because too much time
has passed since the crime, and whether the trial should be moved from Irwin
County in South Georgia.
Chuck Boring, Cobb County assistant district attorney who is not involved with
the case, said moving the trial might be unnecessary. It's okay for jurors
selected for the trial to already have an opinion on the case, he said. "It's
whether that opinion is so fixed that it cannot be changed by the evidence"
that might disqualify them, Boring said.
Though the facts surrounding Grinstead’s disappearance have been widely
publicized, other key details haven't been released, including how and when
investigators believe she was killed.
Grinstead, 30, an Irwin County High School teacher and former beauty queen, was
last seen on Oct. 22, 2005, when she left a cookout and said she was going
straight home. 2 days later, she was reported missing when she didn't show up
to teach history. There were few clues to her disappearance. Her cell phone was
found in her home, but her purse and keys were gone, though her unlocked car
was in the driveway.
There was a massive search that lasted for months to find Grinstead. Her school
portrait appeared on countless billboards. But the case went cold - for more
than 11 years. In early 2017, 2 of Grinstead's former students, Ryan Alexander
Duke and Bo Dukes, were both charged in connection with her disappearance.
According to arrest warrants, investigators believe Duke killed Grinstead and
Dukes helped hide her body. In April 2017, a grand jury indicted Duke on six
counts, including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, burglary
and concealing the death of another. In June 2017, Dukes was indicted on
charges including concealing a death, tampering with evidence, and hindering
apprehension of a criminal.
But according to court documents filed in August by Duke's previous defense
team, investigators knew within weeks of Grinstead's disappearance that Duke
and Dukes were involved. And because it took so long to arrest the suspects,
most of the charges should be dropped due to the statute of limitations, the
motion states. In Georgia, there is no statute of limitations on a murder
charge.
"It is undisputed that Irwin County law enforcement knew of these crimes within
months of the disappearance of Tara Grinstead," a court motion states. "In
fact, a search of the area where Ms. Grinstead's body was allegedly burned was
conducted..."
In August, Cobb County attorneys Ashleigh and John Merchant announced they
would now be representing Duke.
Attorney Philip Holloway is not directly involved in the Grinstead case, but
has been featured on a popular podcast about the Grinstead case, "Up and
Vanished." Whether the delay in pursuing the suspects was an oversight on the
part of law enforcement due to the case changing hands over the years, Holloway
says the defense has a strong argument for dropping most of the charges.
"It's without question that despite what the GBI said, it's clear that he was
on law enforcement's radar, and he was on their radar within months of this
happening," Holloway said.
When Duke was arrested in February 2017, the GBI said the suspect had not
previously been on the radar.
Longtime prosecutor Don Geary, who now works as a defense attorney, said even
if other charges are dropped, prosecutors could seek the death penalty against
Duke, if he's convicted.
"In Georgia, they can still get life without parole," Geary said.
Even if charges are dropped against Duke, evidence used to bring the charges
could still be used in court, according to the attorneys.
The attorneys agree that despite the logistical challenges of moving the trial
to another county, it may be necessary due to the publicity the case has
received over the years.
"The chances of the change of venue being granted are about 99.9 %," Holloway
said. "Nobody can realistically dispute that the jury in Irwin county is
tainted by what they know or what what they think they know."
Moving the trial could eliminate appeals down the road, Geary said.
"If it really is an issue, make it go away," Geary said. "You don't want
someone coming back second-guessing."
Arguments for the change of venue and the other 32 motions will be heard
beginning Monday in the Irwin County courthouse. Judge Bill Reinhardt, the
chief judge of the Tifton Circuit of Georgia, will preside. Duke and his
attorneys, along with Irwin County prosecutors, are expected to attend the
hearing, which could continue Tuesday. It's not known whether Reinhardt will
immediately rule on the motions.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
IDAHO:
Idaho is one of only 4 states without a criminal insanity defense
At a recent court hearing, Timmy Kinner Jr.'s defense attorneys spoke publicly
for the first time about their concerns for their client's mental health.
If Kinner had been arrested in almost any other state in the country, he would
have the option of raising an insanity defense - meaning he did not understand
what he was doing when he stabbed nine people at a Boise apartment complex in
June, nor did he know it was wrong. A successful insanity defense often leads a
defendant to commitment in a hospital, rather than prison. At that hearing in
September, attorneys made no mention of Kinner being insane, but they did say
they were worried about his ability to understand the court proceedings. Public
defender Anthony Geddes told 4th District Court Judge Nancy Baskin about
defenders' difficulty working with Kinner.
"There are days when you can have a fairly normal conversation, and there are
days when it's anything but normal," Geddes said. "Very concerning behavior,
and very bizarre communication."
Kinner, originally from Tennessee, was homeless by the time he came to Boise.
Prosecutors say he stayed with a woman at an apartment complex, where on June
30 he's accused of stabbing 9 people - all of whom were refugees, 6 of whom
were children. One of them, Ruya Kadir, who was celebrating her 3rd birthday
that night, later died of her injuries.
Kinner, Geddes said, had a history of paranoid delusions. According to a motion
filed in the case, he told police the night of the stabbing he didn't want to
hurt any children, but said he felt "crowded" and "ambushed." He told a staff
member in the Ada County Jail he felt other inmates had far too much knowledge
of his case. There were other incidents too, entwined with his criminal record
across multiple states, and Geddes said attorneys are working to piece together
his mental health history.
Currently, a psychiatrist is evaluating Kinner to determine if he is mentally
competent to stand trial.
Being competent for trial is different from being legally sane; to be
competent, Kinner only has to understand the court proceedings and assist his
attorneys in his defense. If he is found competent, his case will move forward
like any other. If he is not found competent, he will be sent to a state
hospital until he is deemed competent for trial, at which point he will return
to court.
Meanwhile, prosecutors filed a notice they would seek the death penalty against
Kinner, who is charged with, among other things, 1st-degree murder.
The tangled case has cast Idaho's state laws regarding the criminal justice
system and the mentally ill into a stark light. Although the insanity defense
is used in less than 1 percent of all criminal cases in the country, it's still
available in every state except Idaho, Kansas, Montana and Utah. And it will
likely remain that way for the foreseeable future - the U.S. Supreme Court 6
years ago turned down an opportunity to rule on Idaho's law.
While Idaho does allow for a "guilty but insane" verdict from a jury, it's
still more punitive than other states' "not guilty by reason of insanity"
defenses.
What's more, although there is a faction of activists working for change, Idaho
also does not exempt people with a "serious mental illness" from punishment by
death, which means if Kinner were convicted, he would face the death penalty
regardless of any evidence of mental illness.
No insanity defense
The man responsible, in large part, for the 1982 repeal of Idaho's insanity
defense is David Leroy, who served as Idaho's attorney general from 1979 to
1983. Prior to that, as Ada County's prosecuting attorney in the 1970s, Leroy
said he saw the insanity defense abused in an array of cases.
"It was being abused all over the country and in Idaho," Leroy said. "It was
being offered as a defense even in traffic cases."
An insanity defense requires expert testimony from mental health professionals
who are qualified to give their opinions to the jury as to a defendant’s mental
health. Such professionals do not offer their services in court for free. It
also means prosecutors must hire their own expert witnesses to impeach those of
the defense. Taxpayers used to foot the bill when county public defenders and
prosecutors argued cases involving an insanity defense. Leroy wanted to change
that, and in the early 1980s he went to the Idaho Legislature with his proposal
which, he remembered, received bipartisan support at the time.
"We greatly reduced the number of questions before jurors into the something
more practical (that) laymen can decide," he said, adding juries no longer had
to choose between "dueling experts."
To make the new law constitutional, Leroy said, the Legislature added a clause
in the statute imploring judges to consider "any state of mind which is an
element of the offense" - thus, although defendants in Idaho cannot claim they
were insane at the time of an offense and so did not understand what they were
doing, judges are still instructed to consider a person's mental health in
crafting a sentence. Those convicted still go to prison, but a judge can order
they receive some sort of mental health treatment, as well.
"We still have a mentally criminally ill category," Leroy said.
But Shaakirrah Sanders, a professor of law at the University of Idaho, points
out there isn’t much oversight on judges.
"It’s not clear how often that (consideration of mental health) happens,
especially with the number of cases that plead out instead of go to trial,"
Sanders said. "It's not clear how judges look at (mental health), in terms of a
qualitative measure."
With the vast majority of defendants never going to trial, Sanders said a judge
might not know the extent of their mental illness.
'Continually prosecuted'
Kathy Griesmyer, of the ACLU of Idaho, said she has concerns about Idaho's lack
of an insanity defense, as well. If a person is found unfit to stand trial -
meaning they cannot assist defense attorneys in their own defense - they are
placed in the custody of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare and treated
until they are considered fit to stand trial. After that, Griesmyer said, they
return to court to face criminal charges like other defendants. It locks them
in a cycle from which escape is difficult.
"We just see folks continually prosecuted," Griesmyer said.
An insanity defense, she said, would give them an out - it would place them on
an alternative path more focused on health care and treatment which, Griesmyer
believes, would be more effective.
"The insanity plea provides a legal out for folks," she said.
The growing number of mentally ill people in the criminal justice system
warrants that defense, she said. She cites the fact that included in Idaho's
proposed $500 million prison expansion package are 500 prison beds specifically
designated for the mentally ill.
Sanders also appeared concerned about the number of mentally ill people in the
criminal justice system. The biggest source of mental health care in Ada
County, she said, is still the Ada County Jail.
Delling v. Idaho
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a chance to review Idaho's unique status
as a state without an insanity defense. The case involved James Delling, a
paranoid schizophrenic who in 2007 became convinced people he knew were trying
to destroy his brain. He shot and killed 2 people in Idaho and allegedly tried
to kill a 3rd in Arizona. Although he understood what he was doing, he believed
he acted in self-defense. Other states would have allowed Delling to plead not
guilty by reason of insanity. When Delling's attorneys argued the law violated
his rights, the court rejected that argument and sentenced him to life in
prison for 2 counts of 2nd-degree murder.
When the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, they in effect told the
lower courts their decisions would stand - something Leroy said validated the
law.
"It has stood the test of time," Leroy said.
3 U.S. Supreme Court justices — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia
Sotomayor - disagreed with the decision not to hear the case.
"The law has long recognized that criminal punishment is not appropriate for
those who, by reason of insanity, cannot tell right from wrong," Breyer wrote
in his dissenting opinion.
He cited briefs provided by the American Psychiatric Association and a
collection of criminal and mental health law professors asking the court to
hear the case. He would have, he said, because he felt some concern Idaho’s law
violated the 14th Amendment.
It was the last time Idaho's law has risen to that level of scrutiny, however.
And it wasn't the 1st time the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case
questioning a state's lack of an insanity defense. Justices in 1994 did the
same thing in a Montana case, and that state has kept its law in place ever
since.
The death penalty for the seriously mentally ill
If Idaho isn't going to allow an insanity defense, Sanders said, then she
believes there should at least be some discussion about how people with serious
mental illnesses are treated by the criminal justice system. A few years ago, a
group of advocates asked Sanders to help bring awareness to their efforts to
restrict the use of the death penalty for the seriously mentally ill. Sanders -
who teaches criminal law and had discussed death penalty cases with her
students - agreed. She worked with the ACLU of Idaho to help draft a piece of
legislation which they expect to introduce to the Idaho Legislature this
session.
In effect, the bill would change the law so a judge would have to determine if
it is fair for prosecutors to seek the death penalty against those with
"serious mental illnesses." That would require a hearing during which both
sides could present evidence. If a judge was convinced by the preponderance of
the evidence, meaning 50 % plus 1, that a person is seriously mentally ill, the
death penalty will not be imposed. That's far different from current law.
Although a jury must decide unanimously to impose the death penalty, sole power
of whether to pursue capital punishment still belongs to the prosecutor.
Much of what the bill does, Sanders said, is define a "serious mental illness."
It details "active symptoms of a psychiatric disorder," including "delusions,
or fixed, false beliefs; hallucinations, or erroneous perceptions of reality;
disorganized thinking; mania; or disruptions of consciousness, memory, and
perception of the environment."
Griesmyer said the bill’s supporters had planned to introduce it in the last
session, but didn’t have time. The bill's language has been sent to lawmakers
now, though, and she expects it will be introduced this session.
For her, it would be a step forward in the way Idaho treats the mentally ill,
but it would only be a step. She, Sanders and Leroy all bemoaned the state's
lack of resources for the mentally ill. Leroy said the state never caught up
with the needs of its residents in that way.
Griesmyer is blunt about it.
"We're so behind on so many of these pieces," she said, "that even if there was
a way for folks to move out of the (criminal justice) system, where would we
send them?"
(source: Cherokee Tribune & Ledger-News)
USA:
Gruesome death: Ghastly execution deaths become the norm
Warning: Graphic content
Controversy is raging across America as death row inmates have been pumped with
untested concoctions of lethal injection drugs in what amounts to grisly human
guinea pig experiments.
In some cases, the drugs have taken longer than expected to work, resulting in
excruciatingly drawn out deaths for the inmates and gruesome spectacles for the
watchers.
In other cases, the drugs haven't worked at all.
Welcome to execution 21st century American style, where state prisons are
saddled with the reality that the old ways of killing aren't available any
more.
And the new ways are proving not only inefficient, but cruel and inhumane.
Just last week, with a lethal cocktail fizzing through his veins, Rodney Scott
Berget asked his executioners at South Dakota State Penitentiary, "is it
supposed to feel like this?"
Berget's execution, for killing prison officer Ronald Johnson with a pipe and
encasing his head in plastic wrap, had been delayed hours for a last ditch
legal battle over his mental capacity to be put to death by the state.
3 months earlier over in the "cornhusker state", Carey Dean Moore heaved and
gasped and then turned purple until Nebraskan officials drew a curtain around
him for 14 minutes.
It was the 1st time the opioid fentanyl had been used in a lethal injection and
it did exterminate the "taxi driver killer" Moore.
But what happened in the mystery quarter hour behind the curtain remains
unexplained.
5 days before that, child killer Billy Ray Irick thrashed about and turned a
dark purple before finally succumbing.
In the 1st Tennessee execution since 2009, Irick ate a burger, onion rings,
drank a Pepsi, and said sorry for his crimes.
Strapped down in a white prison jumpsuit and black socks, Irick was first
injected with Midazolam, a sedative.
Irick had fought execution for three decades since he raped, sodomised and
strangled the 7-year-old girl he was babysitting, Paula Dyer.
Officers then injected Irick with vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride, to
stop his lungs and heart.
As the drugs took effect, he coughed, choked and gasped for air before his face
darkened and he died.
Numbers wise, 2018 has not been a bumper year for executions, just 19 so far
with 2 more scheduled, compared with 35 in 2014.
But the dying has been grim and often macabre, leaving state officials in a
quandary of how to more efficiently kill humans.
In the 1990s, lethal injection gained popularity across America, replacing the
electric chair and older methods such as the gas chamber and firing squad.
The most common lethal injection drug was the anaesthetic sodium thiopental,
used with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
All but 1 of the 35 US states that carry out executions used sodium thiopental.
But in 2011, the drug's sole US manufacturer, Hospira, stopped making it.
Hospira ceased production in its North Carolina drug plant because of
contamination and quality control problems.
When it tried to move production to a "state of the art" facility near Milan,
the Italian government said it would only license manufacture if the drug was
not used in executions.
Several US states' attempts to obtain the drug from other European
manufacturers met with refusals to supply it for death penalty use.
The state of Oklahoma immediately switched to the drug pentobarbital, but a
federal judge ruled it fell "short of the level of risk" considered cruel and
unusual punishment.
Different states began searching for different drugs, sparking court
challenges.
The dilemma facing state executioners is epitomised in the twice postponed
execution of Nevada killer, Scott Dozier.
"Kill me, man!"
Sentenced to death for murdering fellow meth dealer, Dozier is urging state
officials to execute him.
In 2002, Dozier shot 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller in a Las Vegas strip motel and
sawed his body into pieces.
Dozier stuffed them in a suitcase and threw it into a dumpster at the Copper
Sands apartments.
Miller's head, feet and hands were never found.
On death row at Ely state prison, 500km north of Vegas, Dozier has told news
reporters, "I lived a life outside the law ... kill me, man".
But 8 days before Dozier was scheduled in July to become Nevada's 1st inmate
executed in a decade, the state switched lethal injection drugs.
The new 3 drug protocol comprised fentanyl, the sedative midazolam and the
paralytic cisatracurium.
A Nevada trial court declared it unconstitutional.
Medical evidence showed cisatracurium could cause Dozier to experience "air
hunger" and suffocate to death.
Midazolam has been involved in a number of botched executions, notably that of
Dennis McGuire.
In 2014 in Ohio, McGuire received a 2 drug injection of midazolam and
hydromorphone and took 25 minutes to die.
His stomach swelled up like a hernia
In 1989, McGuire had raped and stabbed to death 30 weeks pregnant newlywed Joy
Stewart, 22.
Stewart, described as trusting, had got into McGuire's car while her husband
was out working, and was never seen alive again.
Hikers found her body in nearby woods, but McGuire was identified as her killer
for 3 years.
During that time, Stewart's husband Kenny came under suspicion; he later took
his own life before his name was cleared.
McGuire repeatedly tried to pin the murder on other men, and threw up legal
challenges on his road to execution.
Her finally admitted his guilt a month before he was wheeled into Ohio's death
chamber.
A letter written by Stewart's sister Carol Avery said: "Her murderer destroyed
more than 1 life that day. It is time - past time - for him to pay for what he
did to my sister."
After he was administered the drugs, McGuire's stomach swelled up, as if he had
an instant hernia.
He made alarming snorting noises for several minutes, struggled and gasped
audibly for air, as his daughter and Stewart's family watched on.
His fists clenched, he soundlessly opened and shut his mouth several times, and
puffed uselessly like a fish out of water.
Normally, lethal injection results in movement in the early moments of the
execution, after which the condemned person lies still.
McGuire lay motionless for 5 minutes, before the snorting and gulping began.
Other problematic executions include Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, Joseph Wood
in Arizona, and Ronald Smith in Alabama.
Clayton Lockett's execution, on April 29, 2014 in Oklahoma State Penitentiary,
was described as "a horror movie".
Lockett, 38, was convicted of the 1999 killing of 19-year-old high school
graduate Stephanie Neiman.
Lockett had warned Neiman to keep quiet after raping her friend.
He fired at her twice with a shotgun and buried her alive, the dirt puffing up
from her shallow grave as he left her to die.
Prison officers had to Taser Lockett to get him to the death chamber.
Once there, doctors pricked him more than 16 times in attempts to get an IV
line inserted for the lethal injection.
When a doctor tried to insert a second intravenous line into Clayton Lockett's
groin, he hit the femoral artery and blood began squirting over the execution
chamber.
Lockett lived for 43 minutes, convulsing and writhing on the gurney before
finally dying of a heart attack.
Also in 2014, Joseph Wood's death by execution only came after he had been
injected 15 times with massive amounts of drugs as he lay gasping and gulping
in Arizona's death chamber.
2 years later, Ronald Bert Smith took 13 minutes to die, heaving and coughing,
in punishment for the 1994 slaying of convenience store clerk Casey Wilson.
April in Alabama was the month America's oldest death row inmate, 83-year-old
Walter Leroy Moody, was finally put to death.
Almost 30 years ago, Moody's simmering hatred for the court system literally
exploded with devastating results.
In the 1970s, Walter Leroy Moody had been convicted of possessing a bomb that
had hurt his wife when it exploded.
In 1972, he planned a bombing against an car dealer who had repossessed his
car.
His failure to have that conviction overturned sparked a rage in Moody, who had
attended law school but not finished his studies.
He sent menacing letters to authorities, prepared a "Declaration of War"
against an appeals court and began trying to develop "war gases".
In December 1989, Moody made a bomb out of steel pipe, powder and 80 nails and
mailed it to Judge Robert Vance's home.
When Judge Vance opened the small brown parcel in his kitchen, it exploded
killing him instantly and gravely injuring his wife, Helen.
2 days later, another bomb killed African-American lawyer Robert E Robinson,
and a third bomb mailed to National Association for the Advancement of Coloured
People was intercepted.
A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms chemist noticed a similarity between
the bombs and the one Moody had made in 1972.
Moody denied his guilt, but on April 19 death row officials at Holman
Correctional Facility near Atmore, Alabama, put him to death.
The execution began at 8.16pm and ended at 8.42pm.
Moody kept his eyes closed and did not respond when given a verbal
consciousness check, or respond when asked to give his last words.
His chest moved, his jaw dropping and fingers on his left fingers fluttering.
Moody's lawyer, Spencer Hahn, took issue with the execution.
"I have attended 2 executions. In both, my client moved after the consciousness
check. Ron Smith's was more horrific, but both were disturbing, and raise grave
concerns," Hahn said.
"Further, I'd like to know what they gave him before to knock him out and
prevent him from getting to give his last words.
"There was no dignity in that room. This dishonoured the memory of Judge Vance
and Mr. Robinson."
Robert Earl Butts Jr. was put to death at the Georgia Diagnostic and
Classification Prison for the 1996 murder of a 25-year-old corrections officer.
Butts, then aged 18, and Marion Wilson Jr had asked Donovan Corey Parks for a
ride from a local Walmart store.
They ordered Parks from the car and shot him in the head.
Asked for a final statement before his execution, Butts declined to offer a
prayer and said, "I've been drinking caffeine all day".
Injected with pentobarbital, he said, "It burns, man" as the drugs flowed, then
took a series of deep breaths until there was no movement and he was pronounced
dead.
The last person executed in Florida was Eric Scott Branch, who went down
screaming on the death gurney in February.
Lying strapped to the death bed, Branch began arguing with correctional
officers, telling them to get the Florida state governor and state attorney
general to come and kill him.
"I've learned that you're good people, and this is not what you should be
doing," he said.
The guards turned on the lethal injection process and as the drug began to flow
into Branch's veins, he began to squirm and shout.
Then he screamed: "Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!"
Branch was pronounced dead at 7.05pm.
Branch had been sentenced to die for the brutal rape and killing of 21-year-old
Susan Morris, a video production student at the University of West Florida.
Morris had gone missing in January 1993 after leaving a night class.
Branch grabbed her as she walked to her red Toyota on campus because he wanted
to steal the car and drive it to his home state of Indiana.
He dragged into a wooded area, raped her, beat her, stomped on her and
strangled her to death.
Morris's naked body was found in a shallow grave.
Police said Branch then took the vehicle and drove it over state lines before
being arrested.
His victim's sister Wendy Morris Hill read out a statement shortly after Branch
was put to death.
"25 years ago, Susan's life was suddenly and brutally extinguished," she read.
"We have grieved for her longer that she was with us. Yet because of who she
was ... she will never be forgotten by those who love her."
On the evening of July 29, 1995, 15-year old Tiffany Harville went missing from
her home in Selma, a city in southern central Alabama.
Her mother Mary Coleman filed a missing person's report, and relatives posted
flyers.
Days went by, with no news for Tiffany's anxious family.
On August 16, a man operating a tractor and bushhog in a cotton field off a
county road out of Selma discovered human skeletal remains.
Dental records identified the remains as Harville's, but forensic examiners
found more.
A dozen marks of Harville's skull were consistent with stab wounds.
3 of the knife wounds were so severe they had penetrated the skull and entered
the teenager's brain area.
Marks on her hand and wrist bones were consistent with defensive wounds.
Police charged a man, Rod Suttle who was known as "Tie" with Tiffany Harville's
murder, but the charges were dropped.
In April, 1997 a 20-year-old male in custody at the local county jail told a
police officer he had information about Harville's death.
Dominique Ray said Tie had cut the girl's throat and stabbed her in the head in
the presence of 3 other, complicit females.
4 months later, another man Marcus Owden came forward, saying he had been
reading the Bible and needed to confess.
It proved that he and Ray had been alone with Ms Harville and the man had raped
her while she cried out "God, God, help me. Please help me, God", and then both
had stabbed her.
The men then robbed the girl of $7 and took her underwear.
Owden was sentenced to life in prison, and Dominique Ray received the death
penalty.
Months before his trial, Ray had been handed a life sentence for the 1994
slaying of 2 brothers, 13-year-old Reinhard Mabins and his 18-year-old brother,
Ernest Mabins.
Owden also confessed to a role in those killings, saying the Mabins brothers
were shot after they refused to join a gang organised by Owden and Ray.
Who's next?
December 4, Texas - Joseph Christopher Garcia
In December 2000, s7 prison inmates housed in the Texas Corrections' Connally
Unit outside San Antonio pulled off an audacious escape.
Storming the jail armoury and stealing a prison truck, they headed for Dallas
where on Christmas Eve, they held up a store and stole $70,000 in cash and 44
guns.
During the robbery, a brave police officer Aubrey Hawkins was shot 11 times and
his body was run over.
The so-called Texas 7 were captured a month later, in Colorado, 1 killing
himself before he could be arrested.
The other 6 were sentenced to death, with 3 already executed.
A 4th, Joseph Christopher Garcia, is now due to be put to death by lethal
injection on December 4, almost 18 years since Officer Hawkins died.
December 6, Tennessee - David Earl Miller
David Earl Miller was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of 23-year-old
woman Lee Standifer in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Scheduled for December 6, Miller's execution has been contested by his lawyers.
The longest serving inmate on Tennessee's death row, he is just one of several
to object that Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection method "tortures inmates
to death".
Other Tennessee death row inmates have sought the firing squad, while Miller's
attorneys argued death by electrocution would be quicker.
But they maintained that the electric chair and lethal injection are
unconstitutional and challenged both methods.
However, Miller has until November 26 to decide how he will die.
Miller was just 22 when he raped mentally disabled Ms Standifer, beat her with
a fireplace poker and stabbed her after taking the drug LSD.
Texas - Kwame Rockwell
On a morning in March 2010, Kwame Rockwell and two others dressed in black and
wearing ski masks entered a gas station next to the Fort Worth, Texas used car
yard where they worked.
The men knew the station attendant Daniel Rojas and planned to rob the till.
During the robbery, Rockwell shot Rojas in the head and he died at the scene.
Jerry Burnett, a 70-year-old bread delivery man, was also shot and taken to
hospital.
He died 10 days later.
As the robbery's organiser, Kwame Rockwell was sentenced to death.
One of his co-accused, Chance Smith, who received a 20-year sentence, testified
Rockwell shot the clerk and delivery man inside the store.
Rockwell's lawyers later argued he had a history of schizophrenia, with
hallucinations that snakes and demons invade his body.
In October this year, Texas' highest court stayed Kwame Rockwell's scheduled
execution.
A trial court will consider whether he is mentally competent to be put to
death.
The execution of Kwame Rockwell scheduled for Oct. 24 in Texas has been stayed.
February 13, 2019, Ohio - Warren Henness
Warren Henness is scheduled to be executed in Ohio on February 13 next year.
On March 20, 1992, Henness murdered 51-year-old substance abuse counsellor
Richard Myers in Columbus.
Henness knew his victim because Myers was helping him seek drug counselling and
treatment for Henness' wife.
On the day of the murder, Richard Myers picked Henness up in his car and they
went to a water treatment plant where Henness shot Myers 5 times in the head.
He then stabbed him in the neck, amputated his ring finger and stole his car
and credit cards, which he used to get cash to buy crack cocaine.
Henness has been on death row for 18 years.
(source: New Zealand Herald)
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GEORGIA:
Hearing will determine how Tara Grinstead case moves forward
More than 13 years after Tara Grinstead was reported missing - and more than a
year after 2 men were charged in connection with her murder - a court hearing
will begin Monday to determine how the case proceeds. Among the key issues a
judge must decide: Whether most charges should be dropped because too much time
has passed since the crime, and whether the trial should be moved from Irwin
County in South Georgia.
Chuck Boring, Cobb County assistant district attorney who is not involved with
the case, said moving the trial might be unnecessary. It's okay for jurors
selected for the trial to already have an opinion on the case, he said. "It's
whether that opinion is so fixed that it cannot be changed by the evidence"
that might disqualify them, Boring said.
Though the facts surrounding Grinstead’s disappearance have been widely
publicized, other key details haven't been released, including how and when
investigators believe she was killed.
Grinstead, 30, an Irwin County High School teacher and former beauty queen, was
last seen on Oct. 22, 2005, when she left a cookout and said she was going
straight home. 2 days later, she was reported missing when she didn't show up
to teach history. There were few clues to her disappearance. Her cell phone was
found in her home, but her purse and keys were gone, though her unlocked car
was in the driveway.
There was a massive search that lasted for months to find Grinstead. Her school
portrait appeared on countless billboards. But the case went cold - for more
than 11 years. In early 2017, 2 of Grinstead's former students, Ryan Alexander
Duke and Bo Dukes, were both charged in connection with her disappearance.
According to arrest warrants, investigators believe Duke killed Grinstead and
Dukes helped hide her body. In April 2017, a grand jury indicted Duke on six
counts, including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, burglary
and concealing the death of another. In June 2017, Dukes was indicted on
charges including concealing a death, tampering with evidence, and hindering
apprehension of a criminal.
But according to court documents filed in August by Duke's previous defense
team, investigators knew within weeks of Grinstead's disappearance that Duke
and Dukes were involved. And because it took so long to arrest the suspects,
most of the charges should be dropped due to the statute of limitations, the
motion states. In Georgia, there is no statute of limitations on a murder
charge.
"It is undisputed that Irwin County law enforcement knew of these crimes within
months of the disappearance of Tara Grinstead," a court motion states. "In
fact, a search of the area where Ms. Grinstead's body was allegedly burned was
conducted..."
In August, Cobb County attorneys Ashleigh and John Merchant announced they
would now be representing Duke.
Attorney Philip Holloway is not directly involved in the Grinstead case, but
has been featured on a popular podcast about the Grinstead case, "Up and
Vanished." Whether the delay in pursuing the suspects was an oversight on the
part of law enforcement due to the case changing hands over the years, Holloway
says the defense has a strong argument for dropping most of the charges.
"It's without question that despite what the GBI said, it's clear that he was
on law enforcement's radar, and he was on their radar within months of this
happening," Holloway said.
When Duke was arrested in February 2017, the GBI said the suspect had not
previously been on the radar.
Longtime prosecutor Don Geary, who now works as a defense attorney, said even
if other charges are dropped, prosecutors could seek the death penalty against
Duke, if he's convicted.
"In Georgia, they can still get life without parole," Geary said.
Even if charges are dropped against Duke, evidence used to bring the charges
could still be used in court, according to the attorneys.
The attorneys agree that despite the logistical challenges of moving the trial
to another county, it may be necessary due to the publicity the case has
received over the years.
"The chances of the change of venue being granted are about 99.9 %," Holloway
said. "Nobody can realistically dispute that the jury in Irwin county is
tainted by what they know or what what they think they know."
Moving the trial could eliminate appeals down the road, Geary said.
"If it really is an issue, make it go away," Geary said. "You don't want
someone coming back second-guessing."
Arguments for the change of venue and the other 32 motions will be heard
beginning Monday in the Irwin County courthouse. Judge Bill Reinhardt, the
chief judge of the Tifton Circuit of Georgia, will preside. Duke and his
attorneys, along with Irwin County prosecutors, are expected to attend the
hearing, which could continue Tuesday. It's not known whether Reinhardt will
immediately rule on the motions.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
IDAHO:
Idaho is one of only 4 states without a criminal insanity defense
At a recent court hearing, Timmy Kinner Jr.'s defense attorneys spoke publicly
for the first time about their concerns for their client's mental health.
If Kinner had been arrested in almost any other state in the country, he would
have the option of raising an insanity defense - meaning he did not understand
what he was doing when he stabbed nine people at a Boise apartment complex in
June, nor did he know it was wrong. A successful insanity defense often leads a
defendant to commitment in a hospital, rather than prison. At that hearing in
September, attorneys made no mention of Kinner being insane, but they did say
they were worried about his ability to understand the court proceedings. Public
defender Anthony Geddes told 4th District Court Judge Nancy Baskin about
defenders' difficulty working with Kinner.
"There are days when you can have a fairly normal conversation, and there are
days when it's anything but normal," Geddes said. "Very concerning behavior,
and very bizarre communication."
Kinner, originally from Tennessee, was homeless by the time he came to Boise.
Prosecutors say he stayed with a woman at an apartment complex, where on June
30 he's accused of stabbing 9 people - all of whom were refugees, 6 of whom
were children. One of them, Ruya Kadir, who was celebrating her 3rd birthday
that night, later died of her injuries.
Kinner, Geddes said, had a history of paranoid delusions. According to a motion
filed in the case, he told police the night of the stabbing he didn't want to
hurt any children, but said he felt "crowded" and "ambushed." He told a staff
member in the Ada County Jail he felt other inmates had far too much knowledge
of his case. There were other incidents too, entwined with his criminal record
across multiple states, and Geddes said attorneys are working to piece together
his mental health history.
Currently, a psychiatrist is evaluating Kinner to determine if he is mentally
competent to stand trial.
Being competent for trial is different from being legally sane; to be
competent, Kinner only has to understand the court proceedings and assist his
attorneys in his defense. If he is found competent, his case will move forward
like any other. If he is not found competent, he will be sent to a state
hospital until he is deemed competent for trial, at which point he will return
to court.
Meanwhile, prosecutors filed a notice they would seek the death penalty against
Kinner, who is charged with, among other things, 1st-degree murder.
The tangled case has cast Idaho's state laws regarding the criminal justice
system and the mentally ill into a stark light. Although the insanity defense
is used in less than 1 percent of all criminal cases in the country, it's still
available in every state except Idaho, Kansas, Montana and Utah. And it will
likely remain that way for the foreseeable future - the U.S. Supreme Court 6
years ago turned down an opportunity to rule on Idaho's law.
While Idaho does allow for a "guilty but insane" verdict from a jury, it's
still more punitive than other states' "not guilty by reason of insanity"
defenses.
What's more, although there is a faction of activists working for change, Idaho
also does not exempt people with a "serious mental illness" from punishment by
death, which means if Kinner were convicted, he would face the death penalty
regardless of any evidence of mental illness.
No insanity defense
The man responsible, in large part, for the 1982 repeal of Idaho's insanity
defense is David Leroy, who served as Idaho's attorney general from 1979 to
1983. Prior to that, as Ada County's prosecuting attorney in the 1970s, Leroy
said he saw the insanity defense abused in an array of cases.
"It was being abused all over the country and in Idaho," Leroy said. "It was
being offered as a defense even in traffic cases."
An insanity defense requires expert testimony from mental health professionals
who are qualified to give their opinions to the jury as to a defendant’s mental
health. Such professionals do not offer their services in court for free. It
also means prosecutors must hire their own expert witnesses to impeach those of
the defense. Taxpayers used to foot the bill when county public defenders and
prosecutors argued cases involving an insanity defense. Leroy wanted to change
that, and in the early 1980s he went to the Idaho Legislature with his proposal
which, he remembered, received bipartisan support at the time.
"We greatly reduced the number of questions before jurors into the something
more practical (that) laymen can decide," he said, adding juries no longer had
to choose between "dueling experts."
To make the new law constitutional, Leroy said, the Legislature added a clause
in the statute imploring judges to consider "any state of mind which is an
element of the offense" - thus, although defendants in Idaho cannot claim they
were insane at the time of an offense and so did not understand what they were
doing, judges are still instructed to consider a person's mental health in
crafting a sentence. Those convicted still go to prison, but a judge can order
they receive some sort of mental health treatment, as well.
"We still have a mentally criminally ill category," Leroy said.
But Shaakirrah Sanders, a professor of law at the University of Idaho, points
out there isn’t much oversight on judges.
"It’s not clear how often that (consideration of mental health) happens,
especially with the number of cases that plead out instead of go to trial,"
Sanders said. "It's not clear how judges look at (mental health), in terms of a
qualitative measure."
With the vast majority of defendants never going to trial, Sanders said a judge
might not know the extent of their mental illness.
'Continually prosecuted'
Kathy Griesmyer, of the ACLU of Idaho, said she has concerns about Idaho's lack
of an insanity defense, as well. If a person is found unfit to stand trial -
meaning they cannot assist defense attorneys in their own defense - they are
placed in the custody of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare and treated
until they are considered fit to stand trial. After that, Griesmyer said, they
return to court to face criminal charges like other defendants. It locks them
in a cycle from which escape is difficult.
"We just see folks continually prosecuted," Griesmyer said.
An insanity defense, she said, would give them an out - it would place them on
an alternative path more focused on health care and treatment which, Griesmyer
believes, would be more effective.
"The insanity plea provides a legal out for folks," she said.
The growing number of mentally ill people in the criminal justice system
warrants that defense, she said. She cites the fact that included in Idaho's
proposed $500 million prison expansion package are 500 prison beds specifically
designated for the mentally ill.
Sanders also appeared concerned about the number of mentally ill people in the
criminal justice system. The biggest source of mental health care in Ada
County, she said, is still the Ada County Jail.
Delling v. Idaho
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a chance to review Idaho's unique status
as a state without an insanity defense. The case involved James Delling, a
paranoid schizophrenic who in 2007 became convinced people he knew were trying
to destroy his brain. He shot and killed 2 people in Idaho and allegedly tried
to kill a 3rd in Arizona. Although he understood what he was doing, he believed
he acted in self-defense. Other states would have allowed Delling to plead not
guilty by reason of insanity. When Delling's attorneys argued the law violated
his rights, the court rejected that argument and sentenced him to life in
prison for 2 counts of 2nd-degree murder.
When the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, they in effect told the
lower courts their decisions would stand - something Leroy said validated the
law.
"It has stood the test of time," Leroy said.
3 U.S. Supreme Court justices — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia
Sotomayor - disagreed with the decision not to hear the case.
"The law has long recognized that criminal punishment is not appropriate for
those who, by reason of insanity, cannot tell right from wrong," Breyer wrote
in his dissenting opinion.
He cited briefs provided by the American Psychiatric Association and a
collection of criminal and mental health law professors asking the court to
hear the case. He would have, he said, because he felt some concern Idaho’s law
violated the 14th Amendment.
It was the last time Idaho's law has risen to that level of scrutiny, however.
And it wasn't the 1st time the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case
questioning a state's lack of an insanity defense. Justices in 1994 did the
same thing in a Montana case, and that state has kept its law in place ever
since.
The death penalty for the seriously mentally ill
If Idaho isn't going to allow an insanity defense, Sanders said, then she
believes there should at least be some discussion about how people with serious
mental illnesses are treated by the criminal justice system. A few years ago, a
group of advocates asked Sanders to help bring awareness to their efforts to
restrict the use of the death penalty for the seriously mentally ill. Sanders -
who teaches criminal law and had discussed death penalty cases with her
students - agreed. She worked with the ACLU of Idaho to help draft a piece of
legislation which they expect to introduce to the Idaho Legislature this
session.
In effect, the bill would change the law so a judge would have to determine if
it is fair for prosecutors to seek the death penalty against those with
"serious mental illnesses." That would require a hearing during which both
sides could present evidence. If a judge was convinced by the preponderance of
the evidence, meaning 50 % plus 1, that a person is seriously mentally ill, the
death penalty will not be imposed. That's far different from current law.
Although a jury must decide unanimously to impose the death penalty, sole power
of whether to pursue capital punishment still belongs to the prosecutor.
Much of what the bill does, Sanders said, is define a "serious mental illness."
It details "active symptoms of a psychiatric disorder," including "delusions,
or fixed, false beliefs; hallucinations, or erroneous perceptions of reality;
disorganized thinking; mania; or disruptions of consciousness, memory, and
perception of the environment."
Griesmyer said the bill’s supporters had planned to introduce it in the last
session, but didn’t have time. The bill's language has been sent to lawmakers
now, though, and she expects it will be introduced this session.
For her, it would be a step forward in the way Idaho treats the mentally ill,
but it would only be a step. She, Sanders and Leroy all bemoaned the state's
lack of resources for the mentally ill. Leroy said the state never caught up
with the needs of its residents in that way.
Griesmyer is blunt about it.
"We're so behind on so many of these pieces," she said, "that even if there was
a way for folks to move out of the (criminal justice) system, where would we
send them?"
(source: Cherokee Tribune & Ledger-News)
USA:
Gruesome death: Ghastly execution deaths become the norm
Warning: Graphic content
Controversy is raging across America as death row inmates have been pumped with
untested concoctions of lethal injection drugs in what amounts to grisly human
guinea pig experiments.
In some cases, the drugs have taken longer than expected to work, resulting in
excruciatingly drawn out deaths for the inmates and gruesome spectacles for the
watchers.
In other cases, the drugs haven't worked at all.
Welcome to execution 21st century American style, where state prisons are
saddled with the reality that the old ways of killing aren't available any
more.
And the new ways are proving not only inefficient, but cruel and inhumane.
Just last week, with a lethal cocktail fizzing through his veins, Rodney Scott
Berget asked his executioners at South Dakota State Penitentiary, "is it
supposed to feel like this?"
Berget's execution, for killing prison officer Ronald Johnson with a pipe and
encasing his head in plastic wrap, had been delayed hours for a last ditch
legal battle over his mental capacity to be put to death by the state.
3 months earlier over in the "cornhusker state", Carey Dean Moore heaved and
gasped and then turned purple until Nebraskan officials drew a curtain around
him for 14 minutes.
It was the 1st time the opioid fentanyl had been used in a lethal injection and
it did exterminate the "taxi driver killer" Moore.
But what happened in the mystery quarter hour behind the curtain remains
unexplained.
5 days before that, child killer Billy Ray Irick thrashed about and turned a
dark purple before finally succumbing.
In the 1st Tennessee execution since 2009, Irick ate a burger, onion rings,
drank a Pepsi, and said sorry for his crimes.
Strapped down in a white prison jumpsuit and black socks, Irick was first
injected with Midazolam, a sedative.
Irick had fought execution for three decades since he raped, sodomised and
strangled the 7-year-old girl he was babysitting, Paula Dyer.
Officers then injected Irick with vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride, to
stop his lungs and heart.
As the drugs took effect, he coughed, choked and gasped for air before his face
darkened and he died.
Numbers wise, 2018 has not been a bumper year for executions, just 19 so far
with 2 more scheduled, compared with 35 in 2014.
But the dying has been grim and often macabre, leaving state officials in a
quandary of how to more efficiently kill humans.
In the 1990s, lethal injection gained popularity across America, replacing the
electric chair and older methods such as the gas chamber and firing squad.
The most common lethal injection drug was the anaesthetic sodium thiopental,
used with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
All but 1 of the 35 US states that carry out executions used sodium thiopental.
But in 2011, the drug's sole US manufacturer, Hospira, stopped making it.
Hospira ceased production in its North Carolina drug plant because of
contamination and quality control problems.
When it tried to move production to a "state of the art" facility near Milan,
the Italian government said it would only license manufacture if the drug was
not used in executions.
Several US states' attempts to obtain the drug from other European
manufacturers met with refusals to supply it for death penalty use.
The state of Oklahoma immediately switched to the drug pentobarbital, but a
federal judge ruled it fell "short of the level of risk" considered cruel and
unusual punishment.
Different states began searching for different drugs, sparking court
challenges.
The dilemma facing state executioners is epitomised in the twice postponed
execution of Nevada killer, Scott Dozier.
"Kill me, man!"
Sentenced to death for murdering fellow meth dealer, Dozier is urging state
officials to execute him.
In 2002, Dozier shot 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller in a Las Vegas strip motel and
sawed his body into pieces.
Dozier stuffed them in a suitcase and threw it into a dumpster at the Copper
Sands apartments.
Miller's head, feet and hands were never found.
On death row at Ely state prison, 500km north of Vegas, Dozier has told news
reporters, "I lived a life outside the law ... kill me, man".
But 8 days before Dozier was scheduled in July to become Nevada's 1st inmate
executed in a decade, the state switched lethal injection drugs.
The new 3 drug protocol comprised fentanyl, the sedative midazolam and the
paralytic cisatracurium.
A Nevada trial court declared it unconstitutional.
Medical evidence showed cisatracurium could cause Dozier to experience "air
hunger" and suffocate to death.
Midazolam has been involved in a number of botched executions, notably that of
Dennis McGuire.
In 2014 in Ohio, McGuire received a 2 drug injection of midazolam and
hydromorphone and took 25 minutes to die.
His stomach swelled up like a hernia
In 1989, McGuire had raped and stabbed to death 30 weeks pregnant newlywed Joy
Stewart, 22.
Stewart, described as trusting, had got into McGuire's car while her husband
was out working, and was never seen alive again.
Hikers found her body in nearby woods, but McGuire was identified as her killer
for 3 years.
During that time, Stewart's husband Kenny came under suspicion; he later took
his own life before his name was cleared.
McGuire repeatedly tried to pin the murder on other men, and threw up legal
challenges on his road to execution.
Her finally admitted his guilt a month before he was wheeled into Ohio's death
chamber.
A letter written by Stewart's sister Carol Avery said: "Her murderer destroyed
more than 1 life that day. It is time - past time - for him to pay for what he
did to my sister."
After he was administered the drugs, McGuire's stomach swelled up, as if he had
an instant hernia.
He made alarming snorting noises for several minutes, struggled and gasped
audibly for air, as his daughter and Stewart's family watched on.
His fists clenched, he soundlessly opened and shut his mouth several times, and
puffed uselessly like a fish out of water.
Normally, lethal injection results in movement in the early moments of the
execution, after which the condemned person lies still.
McGuire lay motionless for 5 minutes, before the snorting and gulping began.
Other problematic executions include Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, Joseph Wood
in Arizona, and Ronald Smith in Alabama.
Clayton Lockett's execution, on April 29, 2014 in Oklahoma State Penitentiary,
was described as "a horror movie".
Lockett, 38, was convicted of the 1999 killing of 19-year-old high school
graduate Stephanie Neiman.
Lockett had warned Neiman to keep quiet after raping her friend.
He fired at her twice with a shotgun and buried her alive, the dirt puffing up
from her shallow grave as he left her to die.
Prison officers had to Taser Lockett to get him to the death chamber.
Once there, doctors pricked him more than 16 times in attempts to get an IV
line inserted for the lethal injection.
When a doctor tried to insert a second intravenous line into Clayton Lockett's
groin, he hit the femoral artery and blood began squirting over the execution
chamber.
Lockett lived for 43 minutes, convulsing and writhing on the gurney before
finally dying of a heart attack.
Also in 2014, Joseph Wood's death by execution only came after he had been
injected 15 times with massive amounts of drugs as he lay gasping and gulping
in Arizona's death chamber.
2 years later, Ronald Bert Smith took 13 minutes to die, heaving and coughing,
in punishment for the 1994 slaying of convenience store clerk Casey Wilson.
April in Alabama was the month America's oldest death row inmate, 83-year-old
Walter Leroy Moody, was finally put to death.
Almost 30 years ago, Moody's simmering hatred for the court system literally
exploded with devastating results.
In the 1970s, Walter Leroy Moody had been convicted of possessing a bomb that
had hurt his wife when it exploded.
In 1972, he planned a bombing against an car dealer who had repossessed his
car.
His failure to have that conviction overturned sparked a rage in Moody, who had
attended law school but not finished his studies.
He sent menacing letters to authorities, prepared a "Declaration of War"
against an appeals court and began trying to develop "war gases".
In December 1989, Moody made a bomb out of steel pipe, powder and 80 nails and
mailed it to Judge Robert Vance's home.
When Judge Vance opened the small brown parcel in his kitchen, it exploded
killing him instantly and gravely injuring his wife, Helen.
2 days later, another bomb killed African-American lawyer Robert E Robinson,
and a third bomb mailed to National Association for the Advancement of Coloured
People was intercepted.
A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms chemist noticed a similarity between
the bombs and the one Moody had made in 1972.
Moody denied his guilt, but on April 19 death row officials at Holman
Correctional Facility near Atmore, Alabama, put him to death.
The execution began at 8.16pm and ended at 8.42pm.
Moody kept his eyes closed and did not respond when given a verbal
consciousness check, or respond when asked to give his last words.
His chest moved, his jaw dropping and fingers on his left fingers fluttering.
Moody's lawyer, Spencer Hahn, took issue with the execution.
"I have attended 2 executions. In both, my client moved after the consciousness
check. Ron Smith's was more horrific, but both were disturbing, and raise grave
concerns," Hahn said.
"Further, I'd like to know what they gave him before to knock him out and
prevent him from getting to give his last words.
"There was no dignity in that room. This dishonoured the memory of Judge Vance
and Mr. Robinson."
Robert Earl Butts Jr. was put to death at the Georgia Diagnostic and
Classification Prison for the 1996 murder of a 25-year-old corrections officer.
Butts, then aged 18, and Marion Wilson Jr had asked Donovan Corey Parks for a
ride from a local Walmart store.
They ordered Parks from the car and shot him in the head.
Asked for a final statement before his execution, Butts declined to offer a
prayer and said, "I've been drinking caffeine all day".
Injected with pentobarbital, he said, "It burns, man" as the drugs flowed, then
took a series of deep breaths until there was no movement and he was pronounced
dead.
The last person executed in Florida was Eric Scott Branch, who went down
screaming on the death gurney in February.
Lying strapped to the death bed, Branch began arguing with correctional
officers, telling them to get the Florida state governor and state attorney
general to come and kill him.
"I've learned that you're good people, and this is not what you should be
doing," he said.
The guards turned on the lethal injection process and as the drug began to flow
into Branch's veins, he began to squirm and shout.
Then he screamed: "Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!"
Branch was pronounced dead at 7.05pm.
Branch had been sentenced to die for the brutal rape and killing of 21-year-old
Susan Morris, a video production student at the University of West Florida.
Morris had gone missing in January 1993 after leaving a night class.
Branch grabbed her as she walked to her red Toyota on campus because he wanted
to steal the car and drive it to his home state of Indiana.
He dragged into a wooded area, raped her, beat her, stomped on her and
strangled her to death.
Morris's naked body was found in a shallow grave.
Police said Branch then took the vehicle and drove it over state lines before
being arrested.
His victim's sister Wendy Morris Hill read out a statement shortly after Branch
was put to death.
"25 years ago, Susan's life was suddenly and brutally extinguished," she read.
"We have grieved for her longer that she was with us. Yet because of who she
was ... she will never be forgotten by those who love her."
On the evening of July 29, 1995, 15-year old Tiffany Harville went missing from
her home in Selma, a city in southern central Alabama.
Her mother Mary Coleman filed a missing person's report, and relatives posted
flyers.
Days went by, with no news for Tiffany's anxious family.
On August 16, a man operating a tractor and bushhog in a cotton field off a
county road out of Selma discovered human skeletal remains.
Dental records identified the remains as Harville's, but forensic examiners
found more.
A dozen marks of Harville's skull were consistent with stab wounds.
3 of the knife wounds were so severe they had penetrated the skull and entered
the teenager's brain area.
Marks on her hand and wrist bones were consistent with defensive wounds.
Police charged a man, Rod Suttle who was known as "Tie" with Tiffany Harville's
murder, but the charges were dropped.
In April, 1997 a 20-year-old male in custody at the local county jail told a
police officer he had information about Harville's death.
Dominique Ray said Tie had cut the girl's throat and stabbed her in the head in
the presence of 3 other, complicit females.
4 months later, another man Marcus Owden came forward, saying he had been
reading the Bible and needed to confess.
It proved that he and Ray had been alone with Ms Harville and the man had raped
her while she cried out "God, God, help me. Please help me, God", and then both
had stabbed her.
The men then robbed the girl of $7 and took her underwear.
Owden was sentenced to life in prison, and Dominique Ray received the death
penalty.
Months before his trial, Ray had been handed a life sentence for the 1994
slaying of 2 brothers, 13-year-old Reinhard Mabins and his 18-year-old brother,
Ernest Mabins.
Owden also confessed to a role in those killings, saying the Mabins brothers
were shot after they refused to join a gang organised by Owden and Ray.
Who's next?
December 4, Texas - Joseph Christopher Garcia
In December 2000, s7 prison inmates housed in the Texas Corrections' Connally
Unit outside San Antonio pulled off an audacious escape.
Storming the jail armoury and stealing a prison truck, they headed for Dallas
where on Christmas Eve, they held up a store and stole $70,000 in cash and 44
guns.
During the robbery, a brave police officer Aubrey Hawkins was shot 11 times and
his body was run over.
The so-called Texas 7 were captured a month later, in Colorado, 1 killing
himself before he could be arrested.
The other 6 were sentenced to death, with 3 already executed.
A 4th, Joseph Christopher Garcia, is now due to be put to death by lethal
injection on December 4, almost 18 years since Officer Hawkins died.
December 6, Tennessee - David Earl Miller
David Earl Miller was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of 23-year-old
woman Lee Standifer in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Scheduled for December 6, Miller's execution has been contested by his lawyers.
The longest serving inmate on Tennessee's death row, he is just one of several
to object that Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection method "tortures inmates
to death".
Other Tennessee death row inmates have sought the firing squad, while Miller's
attorneys argued death by electrocution would be quicker.
But they maintained that the electric chair and lethal injection are
unconstitutional and challenged both methods.
However, Miller has until November 26 to decide how he will die.
Miller was just 22 when he raped mentally disabled Ms Standifer, beat her with
a fireplace poker and stabbed her after taking the drug LSD.
Texas - Kwame Rockwell
On a morning in March 2010, Kwame Rockwell and two others dressed in black and
wearing ski masks entered a gas station next to the Fort Worth, Texas used car
yard where they worked.
The men knew the station attendant Daniel Rojas and planned to rob the till.
During the robbery, Rockwell shot Rojas in the head and he died at the scene.
Jerry Burnett, a 70-year-old bread delivery man, was also shot and taken to
hospital.
He died 10 days later.
As the robbery's organiser, Kwame Rockwell was sentenced to death.
One of his co-accused, Chance Smith, who received a 20-year sentence, testified
Rockwell shot the clerk and delivery man inside the store.
Rockwell's lawyers later argued he had a history of schizophrenia, with
hallucinations that snakes and demons invade his body.
In October this year, Texas' highest court stayed Kwame Rockwell's scheduled
execution.
A trial court will consider whether he is mentally competent to be put to
death.
The execution of Kwame Rockwell scheduled for Oct. 24 in Texas has been stayed.
February 13, 2019, Ohio - Warren Henness
Warren Henness is scheduled to be executed in Ohio on February 13 next year.
On March 20, 1992, Henness murdered 51-year-old substance abuse counsellor
Richard Myers in Columbus.
Henness knew his victim because Myers was helping him seek drug counselling and
treatment for Henness' wife.
On the day of the murder, Richard Myers picked Henness up in his car and they
went to a water treatment plant where Henness shot Myers 5 times in the head.
He then stabbed him in the neck, amputated his ring finger and stole his car
and credit cards, which he used to get cash to buy crack cocaine.
Henness has been on death row for 18 years.
(source: New Zealand Herald)
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