FEDERAL COURTS

Federal Judge's Ruling Bans Executions in Calif.

Also on Friday, Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush suspends all executions in his state

Justin Scheck, The Recorder

By outlawing California's lethal injection system Friday, Judge Jeremy Fogel struck the Northern District of California's latest blow at the California prison system for how it treats inmates. . . . Already under close scrutiny by Senior U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson for having a health care system that fails to keep inmates alive, the prison system, Fogel wrote, is failing to kill them in a humane manner. Fogel found that lethal injection may be unconstitutionally cruel as practiced by the state, indefinitely prolonging his February injunction on California executions. . . . The federal case, Morales v. Tilton, 06-219, is an appeal by convicted rapist and murderer Michael Morales, who is trying to escape the death chamber with an argument that the state's method of execution violates his Eighth Amendment rights. . . . By staying narrowly focused on the mechanics of death, Fogel's ruling will probably make it easier for the state to change how it administers lethal injections, rather than continue the court battle. . . . "Defendants' implementation of lethal injection is broken," Fogel wrote on Friday, "but it can be fixed." . . . The problem, he said, is that no one in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office seems willing to take the issue seriously. . . . "Indeed," Fogel wrote that after the setting of intravenous lines in the killing of Stanley "Tookie" Williams was botched last year, "the execution team members' reaction to the problem at the Williams execution was described by one member as nothing more than 'shit does happen, so.'"

November 2006

CALIFORNIA

Lying Juror and Prison Movie May Reverse Death Row Conviction

New York Lawyer, By Mike McKee, The Recorder

11-21-06 -- An overly aggressive jury foreman may have given death row inmate Maurice Boyette a second chance at life. . . . On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court ordered the director of the state Department of Corrections to show why Boyette's conviction for two West Oakland murders shouldn't be reversed for alleged improprieties by jury foreman Pervies Ary Sr. . . . The unanimous court wants to know whether Ary lied about his felony history during the voir dire stage of the 1993 trial, and whether Ary improperly urged fellow jurors to watch "American Me," a 1992 movie about gang life inside Folsom State Prison, during deliberations.

NEW YORK  

Death Penalty May Be Revived By High Court

By Joseph Goldstein, Staff Reporter of the Sun

11-20-06 -- When New York's highest court decides an appeal of the state's remaining death sentence case next year, the judges may show little allegiance to the court's landmark 2004 decision striking down the death penalty, legal observers say. . . . John Taylor, 42, is the lone convict on New York's death row, but for a condemned man his future is uncertain. His appeal will come before a court expected to be more sympathetic to capital punishment and, some attorneys speculate, less willing to be fettered by precedent. . . . Prosecutors have signaled they will ask the court to overturn the 2004 decision, which ruled a key component of the state's death penalty to be unconstitutional. That decision, in which the court threw out the death sentence of Stephen LaValle, divided the seven judges, 4–3. . . . Because of retirements in the court, the judges who hear Taylor's appeal will likely include two newcomers who did not take part in the LaValle case. One judge who voted against capital punishment, Albert Rosenblatt, yesterday heard his final day of arguments before his December retirement. Choosing a replacement for Judge Rosenblatt, considered a swing vote on capital punishment, will be one of Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer's first decisions.

High Court Moves to Reinstate Calif. Man's Death Sentence

Mark Sherman, The Associated Press

11-14-06 -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday moved to reinstate the death penalty for a California man convicted of murdering a 19-year-old woman during a burglary. . . . Justices reversed an appeals court ruling that threw out Fernando Belmontes' death sentence because the trial judge misled jurors who were considering whether to give Belmontes the death penalty or life in prison. . . . The 5-4 decision was the Court's first since starting its new term in October. It reflected an increasingly common division in death penalty cases between the Court's conservative and liberal blocs. . . . Justice Anthony Kennedy said it was implausible to conclude that jurors failed to take all the evidence into account before settling on a sentence of death. . . . Belmontes beat Steacy McConnell to death with a dumbbell bar in the burglary of her home in 1981. He was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, a decision upheld by state courts and a federal judge. . . . The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, twice commuted the sentence. The second time was after the Supreme Court told it to reconsider Belmontes' sentence under a decision that restored the death penalty in another California murder case.

Ninth Circuit Reverses Death Sentence for Attorney Incompetence

Requested Instruction on Accomplice Testimony Prejudiced Client and Was ‘Quite in Error,’ Panel Says

By Kenneth Ofgang, Staff Writer

11-09-06 -- The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an Idaho murder conviction and death sentence, saying the defendant’s trial lawyer rendered ineffective assistance by requesting an instruction on accomplice testimony that was erroneous and in conflict with other instructions. . . . Judge Jay Bybee, writing for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the errors were prejudicial because Mark Lankford’s guilt was proven only by circumstantial evidence and by the uncorroborated testimony of his accomplice—his brother—and a correctly instructed jury might not have found him guilty. . . . The attorney, Bybee pointed out in a footnote, was a part-time public defender whose only previous major felony trial was that of a defendant charged with cattle-rustling. . . . Lankford has been on Idaho’s death row for more than two decades for the 1983 killings of Marine Capt. Robert Bravence and his wife, Cheryl. Their van was found abandoned at a Los Angeles bus terminal, and hunters later discovered their remains hidden at a remote campground in very rural Idaho County. . . . Yesterday’s ruling requires the state to release or retry him within a reasonable time. . . . Lankford was tried in rural Idaho County. There were no eyewitnesses, but the defendant’s brother testified that Lankford beat the victims with a small club or nightstick.

TEXAS

Texas Inmates Protest Conditions With Hunger Strikes

By Ralph Blumenthal

11-7-06 -- Likening themselves to prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, a dozen inmates on death row in Texas have staged hunger strikes over the last month to protest what they call abusive conditions, including 23 hours a day of isolation in their cells. . . . The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said that the first inmates began refusing food Oct. 8 and that two were still on hunger strikes in the Polunsky prison unit in Livingston, about 45 miles east of the execution unit in Huntsville. The Polunsky Unit houses death-row inmates until their executions. As of Tuesday, one inmate had missed 35 consecutive meals and one 17 meals, but no one has yet been force-fed, said a department spokeswoman, Michelle Lyons. . . . Two other prisoners who had not eaten since Oct. 8 began taking food Oct. 27 and Nov. 4, Ms. Lyons said, and others abandoned their protests after a short time. . . . But Vickie McCuistion, program coordinator of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said some inmates had been reported as eating when they were still refusing food. Ms. Lyons said that a prisoner needed to miss nine meals to be considered on hunger strike and that some who had refused meals had eaten snacks at visiting sessions.