Dallas Death Row Inmate Derrick Lamone Johnson executed in 1999 rape-slaying

Right: Derrick Lamone Johnson


Dallas man executed in 1999 rape-slaying
By Michael Graczyk Associated Press
April 30, 2009
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HUNTSVILLE -- A Dallas man was executed Thursday evening for the rape-slaying of a woman abducted while she was trying to make a call at a pay phone 10 years ago.
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Derrick Lamone Johnson's mother became emotional as she entered the witness chamber and saw her son strapped to the gurney. In a matter-of-fact voice, Johnson told her, "Don't cry. It's my situation. I got it. Hold tight. It's going to shine on the golden child." After telling her he loved her, Johnson said, "That concludes the statement."
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The victim's father and two sisters also were among witnesses. Johnson did not acknowledge them.
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Nine minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow, he was pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m.
Johnson, 28, was the 14th Texas prisoner executed this year in the nation's most active death penalty state.
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LaTausha Curry, 25, of Dallas, was robbed of less than $10, was driven away in her car, raped, beaten with a two-by-four and suffocated with her own blouse. Authorities determined the 1999 slaying was part of a two-week crime spree involving Johnson and a companion that left numerous women robbed or raped from Dallas to south of Waco, some 100 miles away.
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Lawyers for Johnson went to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the punishment, contending Johnson was mentally disabled and ineligible for execution under high court guidelines. About an hour before Johnson could be taken to the death chamber, the high court turned down his request for a reprieve and a review of his case.
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In their appeals, attorneys argued Johnson's sentence should be commuted to life, that he was the product of a difficult childhood where both his parents were imprisoned for drug convictions, that he was beaten by relatives who raised him, that he had a history of school suspensions and expulsions beginning with the sixth grade and that IQ testing put him within the range of what the courts have defined as mental retardation.
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The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument earlier Thursday, a day after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals turned Johnson down.
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Greg Davis, a former Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Johnson for capital murder, said he remembered the grief of Curry's mother, who died not long after the trial. "I remember her mother coming in and saying how she lost more than a daughter," Davis said. "She said, 'I lost my best friend.' It did break the mother's heart. I think this case ultimately killed her as well."
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Several women who survived attacks from Johnson and a partner, Marcus Maxwell, then 15, testified at Johnson's trial.
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Maxwell, who was set to be tried as an adult, took a plea deal and is serving 40 years in prison.
Johnson declined an interview request from The Associated Press but said he was wrongly convicted and complained about his court-appointed defense attorneys on a Web site devoted to death row inmates.
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"That's a real shock," Wayne Huff, one of Johnson's trial lawyers, said sarcastically. "The system is corrupt and there is no 'Justice' if you are of the low class," Johnson wrote. "It is sad that if you are a poor man in the system there is no justice for you."
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In a confession to police, Johnson said he and Maxwell raped and killed Curry, who worked as a security guard and had a 4-year-old child. He told officers where to find her body in an overgrown part of a park in Dallas' Oak Cliff area. His fingerprints were in her car and DNA tied him to her rape.
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After they killed Curry, records show the pair robbed a woman at a gas station. Later, driving Curry's car, they rammed into another woman's car in a carjacking attempt. That woman called police but Johnson and Maxwell ran off.
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Johnson was arrested four days later at his mother's apartment, Police found bags of cocaine inside a hollowed-out pager he was carrying.
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His mother was the only defense witness at his capital murder trial. She testified he'd been raised by family members after she was sent to prison with a 15-year drug sentence.
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Records showed Johnson was arrested two years earlier for robbery, pleaded guilty and received 10 years probation that included a stint in a boot camp. He was released from the camp after 65 days for good behavior.
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Johnson was among at least six Texas inmates with execution dates extending into the summer. Scheduled to die next, on May 19, was Michael Lynn Riley, 50, condemned for the slaying of Winona Harris. The victim was stabbed more than 23 years ago during the robbery of a convenience store in Quitman, about 80 miles east of Dallas.
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Johnson would be the 198th Texas inmate put to death since Rick Perry became governor when George W. Bush resigned following his presidential election in 2000.
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Capital punishment opponents from Amnesty International USA and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty planned to gather for a 200-minute vigil outside the criminal courthouse in Houston Thursday to mark what soon will be the 200th execution of Perry's tenure. During Bush's six years as governor, 157 executions were carried out in Texas.

Florida Governor Crist Signs 2 Death Warrants

Monday, April 20, 2009
cfnews13.com

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Gov. Charlie Crist signed two death warrants for men awaiting execution in separate 1983 killings.

Forty-seven-year-old John Richard Marek was scheduled to be put to death May 13 at the Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted in the kidnapping, rape and slaying of Adella Marie Simmons.

David Eugene Johnston is condemned in the stabbing and strangulation of 84-year-old Mary Hammond in Orlando. The 51-year-old is scheduled for execution May 29.

Marek was tried with a co-defendant, who was given a life sentence but died of natural causes in prison.

I hope they are making room for Casey Anthony.

With Casey Anthony's life at stake, court costs will soar

Right: Village mob from Orlando "Burn her..."
(image from Monte Python's "Holy Grail")

Sarah Lundy Sentinel Staff Writer
April 15, 2009

When prosecutors decided this week to seek the death penalty against Casey Anthony, they set the stage for what could turn out to be a pricey case for the state and the defense.

Death penalty cases are not cheap. Because the stakes are so high, attorneys file more motions, conduct more research and interview more witnesses. The trials also take more time.

For Anthony, the young mother charged with killing her 2-year-old daughter, the possibility of execution promises to prolong and complicate the trial, scheduled tentatively for October in Orlando.

"It can make the case 10 times more expensive. It's a very complex issue that has to be litigated by both sides," said Kevin McNally, a Kentucky-based death penalty attorney who is director of the Federal Death Penalty Project, which collects information on federal cases.

Jurors face tough scrutinyCapital punishment cases need a special jury, and the case comes in two parts: the guilt-innocence phase and the penalty phase — all adding days or weeks to the process.

The first hurdle is selecting a jury. A juror on a death penalty case must be willing to sentence someone to die if needed. That shrinks a potential jury pool, eliminating people who say they can't vote for the death penalty no matter the circumstances.

Unlike other cases where jurors are questioned in groups, jurors in death penalty cases are interviewed individually."It is a battle over each one," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "It can take weeks. ... That doesn't happen in regular cases."

Veteran defense attorney Cheney Mason said it took three weeks to pick a jury in the first-degree murder case against his client, Nelson Ivan Serrano, who was sentenced to death in 2007 for the murders of four people in Polk County.

Once a jury is picked, the trial begins with the guilt-innocence phase, like most trials. Prosecutors present their evidence, and the defense tries to poke holes in the case. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder. If the jury finds the person guilty, the trial moves to stage two: the penalty phase.

Prosecutors present "aggravating factors" — outlined by law — that add weight to the argument that the person should be sentenced to death. Those factors could include whether the killing was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner.

The defense then puts on its case, presenting "mitigating circumstances" why the defendant's life should be spared, such as the defendant acted under extreme duress."It's a second trial within a trial," Mason said. That's where much of the cost starts to ratchet up.

...The two phases often mean double the work for defense attorneys. To prepare for the penalty phase, they do intensive research into the client's background. Every school record, medical record and even birth record may be examined, Mason said.Mental health issues are explored, if they weren't already, he said.

Some defenses pay a mitigation specialist to dig up anything positive they can about the client. These details could sway a juror to vote against the death penalty."It's totally time-consuming," Bartow defense attorney David Carmichael said.

A private attorney in a death penalty case can charge $100,000 to $500,000 in attorney's fees. Mason said he would need to have several hundred thousand dollars more available to pay any experts needed and other costs to prepare for a defense.

In 2006, defending three killers who beat six people to death in Deltona cost more than $1.37 million. Troy Victorino and Jerone Hunter got the death penalty. The third, Michael Salas, got life in prison without parole. Victorino's court-appointed attorneys spent nearly $35,000 in investigative costs and $19,000 in mental-health evaluations. Hunter's court-appointed attorneys spent $33,000 on mental-health experts, according to bills submitted to the court.

...It is too soon to say how much the Casey Anthony case will cost the State Attorney's Office.
Prosecutors' spokesman Randy Means said death penalty cases are not budgeted separately from other cases. But because capital punishment cases typically take longer and have two parts, he says they cost more than non-death cases.

The time prosecutors put in is "three to 10 times as much," Dieter said. "Time is worth something. ... That means they won't be spending it doing something else." More cost may accrue in the penalty phase if the defense has experts testify. Prosecutors would put their own experts on the stand to counter the arguments, Means said.

Seminole-Brevard Chief Assistant State Attorney Wayne Holmes agreed with Means. Many of the "aggravators" that need to be shown are often used in the guilt-innocence phase. The "mitigating" details are what need to be fought.

All of these costs come from prosecutors' budgets, which are funded by taxpayers. Holmes said that is why he keeps track of any major expenses requested by attorneys.

Scott Peterson's Life on Death Row

By Vickie Bane

People.com
Saturday April 11, 2009

Sitting in a 4-by-9-foot cell on San Quentin's Death Row, Scott Peterson doesn't have a lot of choices in life, but he can decide how to decorate his wall. While many cons plaster their cells with pictorial collages, Peterson has only one photo hanging across from his bunk: a smiling shot of him and his wife, Laci.

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It's a much different pose from his most recent mug shot – taken in June of 2007 – where his dark hair was clipped short by fellow cons in the exercise yard. Under his half-smiling face is a placard with his inmate number and the word: "Condemned."

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Peterson, 36, was sentenced to death by lethal injection in March of 2005 after being convicted of murdering Laci and their unborn son, Conner, and tossing them in the San Francisco Bay on Christmas Eve day of 2002. His case is on appeal, which means he isn't likely to face execution for two decades.

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In the four years he has called San Quentin home, not much has changed except the view: eight months ago Peterson moved from a fifth tier cell on East Block with a slivered view of the bay to being "on the yard side," says Samuel Robinson, a lieutenant with the California Department of Corrections who has been at San Quentin since before Peterson arrived.

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Plays Cards, Basketball

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It's the same yard where Peterson now spends five hours a day shooting hoops, doing pull-ups and playing cards with other inmates like William Noguera, a prison artist who was convicted of murder for financial gain in 1983. "There are a group of guys that he hangs with," Robinson tells PEOPLE, "but it's not anyone of any (criminal) notoriety."

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Predictions that Peterson might be ostracized – or worse – because of Conner's death have proven not to be true. "In Scott's case," says Robinson, "the perception [among the inmates] is that he killed his wife, and yeah she was pregnant, but he killed his wife. He hasn't encountered the challenges others face who have killed kids individually."

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Robinson says Peterson still gets regular visits – several each month – from family and friends. He also receives numerous letters from female admirers who send him checks for his commissary account. "He has a significant amount of money in his account from people all over the world," says Robinson. Peterson can spend $180 a month on items such as soda, candy, cookies, toothpaste and deodorant.

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Blogging from Prison

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Peterson's only communication with the outside world is the blogging he has done for nearly a year on his family's Web site: scottpetersonappeal.org, where he comments on his case and news events. Since Robinson says inmates are not allowed to have computers or access the Internet, his blogs are composed on a typewriter and mailed to his family to post. His most recent post, headlined "Media spotlight wrong again," concerned the arrest of a man in the Chandra Levy murder.

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Despite being locked in a cell for 19 hours a day, Robinson believes Peterson has adjusted well to his confinement. "You're still able to forge relationships with people who live around you and you try to make the most of your condition," says Robinson. "I think that's what Scotty is doing."

Florida Death Row inmate Wayne Tompkins seeks stay of tonight's execution--Loses bid...

Oops!

By Ron Word Associated Press
February 11, 2009

Florida inmate Wayne Tompkins is seen in this undated photo released by the Florida Department of Corrections.

The state of Florida is scheduled to execute Tompkins on Wednesday Feb. 11, 2009.

Tompkins was sentenced to death for the 1983 slaying of a 15-year-old girl. (AP Photo/Florida Dept of Corrections / February 10, 2009)

JACKSONVILLE - A rapist convicted of murdering his girlfriend's teenage daughter 26 years ago was to be executed Wednesday night if no judges agreed to reconsider his claims of innocence.

Wayne Tompkins, 51, was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison for the murder of 15-year-old Lisa DeCarr, who disappeared from the Tampa home she shared with Tompkins and her mother on March 24, 1983.

Her mom and others thought she had run away, but her body was found a year later under the home's porch. She had been strangled with the belt of the pink bathrobe she had been wearing.

Tompkins, who had been arrested in early 1984 after he robbed and sexually assaulted two convenience-store clerks in separate attacks, was charged with her murder.

A cellmate testified that Tompkins confessed, saying he had strangled the girl after she kicked him in the groin while rebuffing his advances.

That cellmate, Kenneth Turco, now says a prosecutor told him to lie to the jury. The state Supreme Court has ruled Turco's recantation a harmless error that would not have affected the outcome of the trial.

Attorneys Martin McClain and Neal Dupree filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court and an application for a stay of execution Wednesday morning.The appeal raises many of the same issues already turned down by Florida courts, including whether Gov. Charlie Crist had the right to schedule the execution because he let four years pass before setting a new execution date.

Tompkins also is appealing the Turco action. Tompkins had a final visit with his mother, Gladys Staley of Brooksville, on Wednesday morning and ordered a final meal of fried chicken and banana-split ice cream, said Gretl Plessinger, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections.

The Florida Supreme Court, in a one-page order, denied all of Tompkin's appeals Wednesday morning. His attorneys had asked the court to delay the execution, saying more time was needed to complete testing on DNA evidence found on and near the girl's body. The court said it would not entertain any motions for rehearing.

Also turning down Tompkins was the trial court in Tampa, which denied his motion to vacate his judgment and sentence, and his motion for a stay of execution. Crist is the third Florida governor who has sought to execute Tompkins. He did not have to sign a death warrant because the state moved to a nonexpiring death warrant, so the final warrant signed by Gov. Jeb Bush was still in effect. Gov. Bob Martinez signed two in 1989, and Bush signed a third in 2001. Courts stopped each one.

The Innocence Project of Florida filed a motion Wednesday to preserve the evidence in Tompkin's case, arguing that more DNA testing is needed to "banish all doubt." It asks that a robe, sash and samples of the victim's bones be preserved for additional DNA testing. On Tuesday, the Innocence Project asked the governor to delay the execution so more testing could be done.

...A total of 66 inmates have been executed in Florida since it resumed the death penalty in 1979, 22 by lethal injection and 44 of them in the old electric chair.


UPDATE
JACKSONVILLE - A rapist convicted of murdering his girlfriend's teenage daughter 26 years ago was executed Wednesday after the courts refused to reconsider his claims of innocence.

Wayne Tompkins, 51, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. at Florida State Prison. He had been condemned for the murder of 15-year-old Lisa DeCarr, who disappeared from the Tampa home she shared with Tompkins and her mother on March 24, 1983.

"I'm good," Tompkins replied when officials asked if he had any last words.

At the start of the execution, Tompkins breathed deeply and closed his eyes and then opened them again.

The victim's mother, Barbara Wallace, and three of her daughters and her son witnessed the execution, as did Tompkins' attorney Neal Dupree.

Texas Inmate Ricardo Ortiz Executed for Killing Fellow Prisoner

Thursday, January 29, 2009

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Texas has executed a prison gang member who fatally injected a fellow inmate with an overdose of heroin in retaliation for snitching on him.

Ricardo Ortiz was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. Thursday.

The 46-year-old was the fifth Texas inmate to die this year and the second of two executions in consecutive nights this week in the nation's most active death penalty state.

Ortiz was condemned for the retaliation slaying of 22-year-old Gerardo Garcia more than 11 years ago. Authorities say Garcia was killed so he couldn't testify about bank robberies the pair was suspected of carrying out.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Thursday to delay the execution. Ortiz had argued he should get federal money to pay for help filing a state clemency request.

Kentucky Executes Child-Killer Marco Allen Chapmen Who Asked for Death

Chapman Execution Day Arrives
Killer scheduled to die tonight
Friday, November 21, 2008

EDDYVILLE, Ky. -- Marco Allen Chapman has arrived at the end of the road in Kentucky's penal system. Barring a last-minute stay, the confessed child killer will be executed tonight for the murders of two children.

Marco Chapman fired his attorneys and ended all appeals in his attempt to be put to death for his crimes. He pleaded guilty to the 2002 attack on a Gallatin County family.

Chapman entered a home in Warsaw, Kentucky and stabbed to death 6-year-old Cody Sharon and his 7-year-old sister, Chelbi. Their mother, Carolyn Marksberry, and her daughter, 10-year-old Courtney, survived the attack. Chapman is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the Kentucky State Penitentiary at 7 o'clock Central Time tonight (8 p.m. Eastern).

There have been 164 men executed at the prison since 1911. All but one died in the electric chair. The last execution in Kentucky took place in 1999 when Eddie Lee Harper received a lethal injection.

Nine reporters have been chosen to witness Chapman's execution. The victims' family is also allowed to watch. Chapman has declined to choose his own witnesses.

The Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has organized several vigils across the state tonight. They will be in Louisville, Bowling Green, Owensboro, Berea, at the penitentiary in Eddyville and outside the governor's mansion in Frankfort.

Kentucky Executes Child-Killer Who Asked for Death

Friday, November 21, 2008

EDDYVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky has executed a confessed child-killer who resisted all appeals.
In the state's first execution in nine years, 37-year-old Marco Allen Chapman was given a lethal injection Friday at the Kentucky State Penitentiary. He was pronounced dead at 7:34 p.m. CST.

Chapman pleaded guilty in 2004 to killing two children in their northern Kentucky home in a 2002 attack that wounded their mother and another child. He asked to be put to death and fought for the right to fire his attorneys to clear the way.

I'm glad he's dead. He murdered in cold blood:

Cody Sharon, 6 year old son murdered, in first grade

Chelbi Sharon, 7 year old daughter murdered, in second grade.

Carolyn Marksberry, their mom wounded
Courtney Sharon, 10 year old daughter wounded

Child killer Joseph Duncan III says he won't appeal death sentence

November 18, 2008

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A killer convicted of kidnapping and torturing two young siblings from Idaho says he doesn't plan to appeal his death sentence.

Joseph Edward Duncan III says in a letter filed Tuesday with a federal judge that any appeal initiated on his behalf was done against his wishes. The notice comes a day after Duncan's attorneys said he would appeal.

Duncan was given three death sentences and three life imprisonment sentences in federal court this year after kidnapping Dylan and Shasta Groene and killing the boy.

He was also given life in prison in state court for murdering their brother and their mother and her fiance.

Carnation killings: Defense for Michele Anderson and Joseph McEnroe, vows fight to save suspect's life

By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter

For months, Michele Anderson has insisted that she deserves to be executed for killing six members of her family during a Christmas Eve gathering in Carnation.

"I want the most severe punishment, which would be the death penalty," Anderson told The Times during a jailhouse interview in June. "I think if I kill a bunch of people, I'm not sure I deserve to live ... I want to waive my trial."

But after King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced Thursday that he would ask jurors to consider the death penalty for Anderson, 30, and her former live-in boyfriend Joseph McEnroe, 29, her attorney says they will mount a vigorous defense to keep her from becoming the first woman to be executed in Washington state.

"Now that the prosecutor has decided to seek the death sentence, Ms. Anderson and her defense team will fight to save her life," said defense attorney Stephan R. Illa.

Illa acknowledged that Anderson has told the media she was guilty, but he said that Anderson changed her mind about being executed after he and attorney Lisa Mulligan took over her case in August. Anderson fought with her previous defense team and even prevented them from presenting evidence to Satterberg on her behalf, he said.

Illa and Kathryn Ross, who is representing McEnroe, said they believe that "mitigating evidence" will keep jurors from sending their clients to death row. Neither would elaborate.

On Thursday, Satterberg said both Anderson and McEnroe are deserving of capital punishment because they killed three generations of her family, including two young children.

Anderson and McEnroe are accused of fatally shooting Anderson's parents, Wayne and Judy Anderson; Anderson's brother and sister-in-law, Scott and Erica Anderson, both 32; and the couple's children, 5-year-old Olivia and 3-year-old Nathan.

"The death penalty is this state's ultimate punishment and is to be reserved for our most serious crimes," Satterberg wrote in a statement. "I believe this is one of those crimes."

Several relatives of the victims attended a brief hearing Thursday during which Senior Deputy Prosecutor James Konat filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty against both defendants. Neither Anderson nor McEnroe attended the hearing.

Pam Mantle, mother of victim Erica Anderson, said that her daughter would have wanted to see the defendants face a death sentence.

If found guilty, Anderson and McEnroe face only two possible sentences for the six counts of aggravated murder they each face: execution or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Satterberg's decision ends months of speculation over whether he would seek to have the pair executed for what many consider to be among the most heinous crimes in King County history. The victims were all gunned down in the rural Carnation home of Michele Anderson's parents as they were preparing for a Christmas Eve gathering.

Anderson told The Times during her jailhouse interview on June 27 that the pair killed her family in a fit of rage, claiming she had suffered years of physical and emotional abuse.
Anderson's confession and insistence that she wanted to plead guilty had been moot until Satterberg's decision. State law prevents a defendant from entering a plea other than not guilty in a death-penalty case before a decision on execution is made.

This is the first time that Satterberg has weighed the death penalty since taking over as prosecutor after the death of Norm Maleng in May 2007. Satterberg, who was named interim prosecutor after Maleng's death, was elected to the position last November.

It's also only the second time King County has pursued the death penalty since Maleng sought it for Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway, whose case has become a litmus test of sorts with regard to the death penalty in Washington state.

Prosecutors eventually opted against capital punishment in exchange for Ridgway's cooperation, during which he provided detectives details that helped solve dozens of open murder cases. Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder in 2003 and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Some defense attorneys and death-penalty opponents have argued that since Ridgway was sentenced to life, how can the state seek the death penalty against defendants accused of killing fewer victims.

James Conroy, the attorney for Conner Schierman, who also faces a potential death sentence in King County, has argued that it is unfair for his client to face the execution when Ridgway did not. Schierman, 27, is accused of killing his Kirkland neighbor Olga Milkin, 28; her sister Lyubov Botvina, 24; and Milkin's two sons, Justin, 5, and Andrew, 3, on July 17, 2006, and setting fire to their home.

But in 2006, the state Supreme Court ruled that Dayva Cross, who killed his wife and two of her daughters in Snoqualmie in 1999, should not be spared the death penalty because of the Ridgway case. In the 5-4 decision, the majority ruled that the Legislature was the appropriate body to sort through the moral question of fairness with respect to other cases.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear Cross' case.

State Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, says the issue of how the death penalty is applied needs to be reviewed by the Legislature. He sponsored a bill last year that would have created a bipartisan task force to review the death-penalty statute and determine the uniformity of decision-making by prosecutors in aggravated-murder cases. He said the bill died before making it out of the House.

"There is a randomness in how the death penalty is applied in our state. If you hide the bodies, like in the Green River case, you'll get cut some kind of deal. If you burn a house down and all the bodies are found you will get charged with the death penalty," Williams said.

Williams said he hopes to revive a similar bill in the coming legislative session.

But convincing a jury to impose the death penalty post-Ridgway may not be the toughest issue Satterberg will face.

Of the 77 inmates Washington state has executed since 1904, all have been men. In more than a quarter-century, Washington prosecutors have only sought to execute two women.

The most recent was in 2003 in Snohomish County, where jurors decided against execution and instead sentenced Barbara Opel to life in prison without parole for persuading five teens, including her 13-year-old daughter, to fatally beat Jerry Heimann of Everett.

Seattle attorney Jeff Ellis, president of the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said he had hoped that Satterberg would not seek the death penalty.

"We are profoundly disappointed in prosecutor Satterberg's decision. It was our hope we would not see the death penalty anymore in King County," said Ellis, who handles death-penalty cases across the country. "The death penalty constitutes throwing a lot of money at something I think is immoral."

Ohio executes Richard Cooey

Originally published Tuesday, October 14, 2008


LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Ohio on Tuesday executed a 5-foot-7, 267-pound double murderer who argued he was too fat to die humanely by lethal injection, the state’s first execution since the end of an unofficial national moratorium.

Richard Cooey, 41, died at 10:28 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

There were no immediate reports of problems finding suitable veins to deliver the deadly chemicals, a problem that delayed previous executions in the state.

Cooey’s attorneys had argued that his weight problem would make it difficult for prison staff to access a vein. A prisons spokeswoman said Cooey received a pre-execution exam early Tuesday and was cleared.

Cooey, who killed two University of Akron students in 1986, walked into the death chamber at 10:15 a.m. wearing gray pants and was strapped onto the gurney.

“You (expletive) haven’t paid any attention to anything I’ve said in the last 22 1/2 years, why would anyone pay any attention to anything I’ve had to say now,” Cooey said looking at the ceiling. He made no other comment.

Cooey tapped the fingers of his left hand several times before he died and his face took on a purple shade.

Six family members of one of his victims watched the execution. Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh said the family was disappointed that Cooey was vulgar and hateful at the end.

Cooey was the first inmate executed in Ohio in more than a year, and the state’s first since the end of the unofficial moratorium on executions that began last year while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky’s lethal injection procedure.

Before the moratorium, Ohio had one of the nation’s busiest death chambers.

Cooey lost a final appeal earlier Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down without comment his complaint that the state’s protocol for lethal injection could cause an agonizing and painful death. Cooey wanted the state to use a single drug rather than a three-drug combination, and asked for a stay of execution pending a hearing on that motion.

The court on Monday denied a separate appeal based on Cooey’s claim that his obesity was a bar to humane lethal injection. The argument also had been rejected by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati and the Ohio Supreme Court, with both courts ruling that he missed a deadline for filing appeals.

Cooey is 75 pounds heavier than when he went to death row — the result of prison food and 23-hour-a-day confinement, his lawyers said.

They also argued that a migraine medicine prescribed by a prison physician could reduce the effect of the anesthetic used as part of the three-drug lethal injection.

They claimed that Ohio has a history of botched executions.

waaaa.

Please review his crime. From Widipedia:

Richard Wade Cooey II (June 9, 1967 – October 14, 2008) was an American murderer. With Clinton Dickens, he was responsible for the murder of two women in Akron, Ohio, in 1986.

Early on the morning of September 1, 1986, Cooey, Dickens and Kenneth Horonetz, Jr. were throwing chunks of concrete off the Stoner Street Bridge onto U.S. Interstate 77 in Akron. One of the objects dropped by Dickens struck the car of a University of Akron student, Wendy Offredo, age 21. Also in the car was another student, Dawn McCreery, age 20.

Pretending to rescue the two students, the three men kidnapped them. Cooey, then age 19, and Dickens, age 17, took the women to a field where they beat, stabbed, tortured and raped them for three and a half hours, eventually beating them to death and abandoning the bodies.

Cooey and Dickens each blamed the other for the actual murders, Horonetz having left the car before the violence began. Cooey was convicted on November 14, 1986, and subsequently sentenced to death. Dickens, a minor at the time of the murders, could not be sentenced to death under Ohio laws, and as of 2008 is serving a life sentence in prison.

Two other suspects, Terry Grant (age 19) and Kenneth Horonetz, Jr (age 18), were charged with obstruction of justice in the case for participating in the destruction of evidence. Grant was sentenced to two years' probation. Horonetz was released on parole after serving one year of a three-to-seven year prison sentence for felonious assault.

Following a long series of appeals, requests for clemency, and stays of execution, Cooey's final appeal was rejected. He argued that his obesity rendered lethal injection an inhumane form of execution.

However, he was executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at 10:28 AM on October 14, 2008. At his execution, he was asked if he had any final words. Cooey replied "You fucking haven't paid any attention to anything I've said in the last 22 1/2 years, why would anyone pay any attention to anything I've had to say now?"

You are right Richard, just die and stop poisoning the air with your breath...

Ray and Faye Copeland: The Elderly Murderers

Ray and Faye Copeland were by no means the first couple to kill together, but they were certainly the strangest. At the time of their murders, both were senior citizens.

When the two met in 1940, Ray had already gotten into trouble with the law several times for cattle theft and forgery. They were married approximately six months later and they had five children: four sons and a daughter.

During the course of the marriage, Ray was continuously in and out of prison for livestock theft and passing bad checks. The Copeland family moved from place to place quite a bit before settling at a small farm in Missouri in 1967.

Ray was an unpleasant man, despised by all of his neighbors for his poor demeanor and abusive treatment of his wife and children. After realizing that he spent more time in prison than not, Ray began using others to commit his crimes for him.

This is how the killings began...

The Nebraska emergency phone line received a strange call from a Jack McCormick on August 20, 1989. He claimed to have worked on a farm for an elderly couple in Missouri.

He went on to tell how his employer, Ray Copeland, used drifters to carry out illegal livestock scams. When Ray became aware of his suspicions, he tried to kill him. He also reported seeing human bones scattered around the farm.

This information was forwarded to the authorities in Missouri. Aware of Ray's extensive criminal record, Missouri authorities worked to gather enough evidence against him to obtain a search warrant.

The warrant was granted and on October 9, 1989, Sheriff Leland O'Dell and 40 other officers arrived at the Copeland farm to conduct a search. Nothing was found until a week later. On October 17, 1989, officers discovered three dead bodies in a barn that was frequently used by Ray.

The victims each exhibited a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. They were identified as 21-year-old Paul Jason Cowart; 27 year-old John Freeman; and 27 year-old Jimmie Dale Harvey.

Faye Copeland, once oldest woman on death row, released on parole

Sept 3, 2008

CHILLICOTHE, Missouri An inmate who at one time was the oldest woman on Missouri's death row has been paroled because of a severe medical condition, a state official said.

Faye Copeland, convicted along with her husband of fatally shooting five transients, was paroled Friday, Department of Corrections spokesman Tim Kniest said Sunday.

Copeland, 81, was serving a sentence of life without parole, but Kniest said state law allows the parole board to release such inmates if they are terminally ill or have a medical condition that cannot be cared for in prison.

Al Copeland said his mother suffered a stroke on Aug. 10 that left her partially paralyzed..

Bush OKs Execution Of Army Death Row Prisoner

Fort Leavenworth Federal Prison, Leavenworth, Kansas

Jul 28, 2008



WASHINGTON (AP) ― President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, administration officials said.



It was the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.


With his signature from the Oval Office, Bush said yes to the military's request to execute Ronald A. Gray, said the officials, who revealed his decision only on grounds of anonymity.


Gray had had been convicted in connection with a spree of four murders and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area over eight months in the late 1980s while stationed at Fort Bragg.


Unlike in the civilian courts, a member of the U.S. armed forces cannot be executed until the president approves the death sentence. Gray has been on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 1988.


Members of the U.S. military have been executed throughout history, but just 10 have been executed by presidential approval since 1951 when the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military's modern-day legal system, was enacted into law.


President Kennedy was the last president to stare down this life-or-death decision. On Feb. 12, 1962, Kennedy commuted the death sentence of Jimmie Henderson, a Navy seaman, to confinement for life.


President Eisenhower was the last president to approve a military execution. In 1957, he approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.


The death penalty was outlawed between 1972 and 1984, when President Reagan reinstated it.Gray was held responsible for the crimes committed between April 1986 and January 1987 in both the civilian and military justice systems.


In civilian courts in North Carolina, Gray pleaded guilty to two murders and five rapes and was sentenced to three consecutive and five concurrent life terms.


He then was tried by general court-martial at the Army's Fort Bragg. In April 1988, the court-martial convicted Gray of two murders, an attempted murder and three rapes. He was unanimously sentenced to death.


The court-martial panel convicted Gray of:


--Raping and killing Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay of Fayetteville on Dec. 15, 1986. She was shot four times with a .22-caliber pistol that Gray confessed to stealing. She suffered blunt force trauma over much of her body.


--Raping and killing Kimberly Ann Ruggles, a civilian cab driver in Fayetteville. She was bound, gagged, stabbed repeatedly, and had bruises and lacerations on her face. Her body was found on the base.


--Raping, robbing and attempting to kill Army Pvt. Mary Ann Lang Nameth in her barracks at Fort Bragg on Jan. 3, 1987. She testified against Gray during the court-martial and identified him as her assailant. Gray raped her and stabbed her several times in the neck and side. Nameth suffered a laceration of the trachea and a collapsed or punctured lung.


The six-member court-martial panel returned its unanimous verdict after about two hours of deliberations. The panel also reduced Gray from Spec. 4 to private, forfeited all his pay and ordered him to be dishonorably discharged from the Army.


Gray has appealed his case through the Army Court of Criminal Appeals (then known as the U.S. Army Court of Military Review) and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Services. In 2001, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.


Bush got the secretary of the Army's recommendation to approve Gray's death sentence in late 2005. Since then, it's been under review by the Bush administration, including the White House legal counsel.


Complicating the administration's deliberation was a case under review this year by the Supreme Court.


The court ruled in April to uphold the most common method of capital punishment used across the United States. The justices said the three-drug mix of lethal-injection drugs used by Kentucky and most other states does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.


The ruling in the case of Baze v. Rees cleared the way for a resumption of executions nationwide.

It was unclear where Gray would be executed. Military executions are handled by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.


Bush's decision, however, is not likely the end of Gray's legal battle. Further litigation is expected and these types of death sentence appeals often take years to resolve.


The military also has asked Bush to authorize the execution of Dwight J. Loving, who has been at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since 1989 after being convicted of killing two taxicab drivers while he was an Army private at Fort Hood, Texas.


But that request is not yet ripe for a presidential decision.


The White House declined to discuss the case.

Nine Iranians Convicted of Adultery Set to Be Stoned to Death

Sunday, July 20, 2008
Foxnews.com

TEHRAN, Iran — Eight women and one man convicted of adultery are set to be stoned to death in Iran, activists said Sunday.

Lawyer and women's rights activist, Shadi Sadr, said the nine were convicted of adultery in separate cases in different Iranian cities.

"Their verdicts are approved, and they may be executed at any time," she told reporters.
Sadr, who has been leading a campaign in Iran against stoning deaths since 2006, said trial protocol was not applied properly in the cases. Six of the nine were convicted based solely on judges' decisions with no witnesses or the presence of their lawyers during their confessions, she said.

Most of the nine come from areas of Iran that have low rates of literacy and some did not understand the cases against them, she said.

One of Sadr's colleagues, Mohammad Mostafai, said his client, Malak Qorbani, had plead guilty to adultery even though she did not know the meaning of the charge.

The nine are between 27 and 50 years old, among them a male music teacher who was convicted of adultery for having an affair with one of his students, the activists said.

"We are trying to stop the implementation of their verdicts. And secondly, we want to amend the country's penal law, in which death by stoning is prescribed," Sadr said.

Calls to judiciary officials were not immediately returned on Sunday.

Under Iran's Islamic laws, adultery in the only capital offense punishable by stoning. Other capital offenses in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, drug trafficking, prostitution, treason and espionage.

The punishment is also applied in some other countries such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Nigeria.

A man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies.

Stoning was widely imposed in the early years after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and brought hard-line clerics to power. But in recent years, it has seldom been applied, though the government rarely confirms when it carries out stoning sentences.

The last stoning death confirmed by the government was in July 2007.
In the recent years, reformist legislators demanded an end to death by stoning as a punishment for adultery, but opposition from hard-line clerics sidelined their efforts.

Along with adultery, other capital offenses in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, drug trafficking, prostitution, treason and espionage.

Texas death row inmate Charles Dean Hood granted reprieve. Terry Lyn Short not so Lucky.

Right: Charles Dean Hood

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A former topless-club bouncer condemned for a double slaying almost 20 years ago won a reprieve Tuesday just over an hour before he could have been put to death, while Oklahoma executed its first death row inmate since last August.

Charles Dean Hood cried Tuesday when informed he could live.

"I just thank God," he said. "I just walk by my faith. If it didn't happen, I was going home to the Lord."

State District Judge Curt Henderson did not give a reason for lifting the death warrant. He later recused himself from the case.

Hood's attorneys lost several last-day appeals, including one in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in which they claimed the now retired judge who oversaw Hood's 1990 trial, Verla Sue Holland, was having an affair at the time with the prosecutor assigned to the case, then-Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell.

After that appeal was rejected, lawyers from the Texas Defender Service filed a motion in Henderson's court seeking all correspondence from the prosecutor's office that may be related to the alleged affair.

Holland and O'Connell have declined to address the allegations.

Hood, 38, was convicted of murder for the 1989 slayings of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace at Williamson's home in the Dallas suburb of Plano.

When arrested in Indiana, Hood was driving Williamson's $70,000 Cadillac but insisted he had Williamson's permission. Hood says he's innocent. Tuesday's was his fifth execution date.

Meanwhile, Terry Lyn Short, an Oklahoma man convicted of killing 22-year-old Japanese exchange student Ken Yamamoto in 1995, was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening.

Short, seen at right, was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m., said Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie.

Yamamoto, a student at Oklahoma City University, lived one floor above Short's ex-girlfriend and died after Short threw a gasoline-filled bottle into her apartment that ignited the building.

Short acknowledged during a clemency hearing last month that he threw the firebomb, but claimed he did not intend to kill Yamamoto, whom he did not know.
A de facto moratorium on executions was lifted when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures in April.