[WCADP-list] EXECUTION ALERT: 5 Deaths Scheduled for January

Tue Dec 28 10:35:52 PST 2004

1. James Porter (Texas, January 4, 2005) Judge declares Porter mentally
competent so that he can withdraw all further appeals.

2. Troy Kunkle (Texas, January 19, 2005) Kunkle was schizophrenic teenager
at the time of his crime.

3. Jose Briseno (Texas, January 20, 2005) Texas set to execute man with IQ
of 67

3. Michael Ross (Connecticut, January 26, 2005) Connecticut prepares to
execute mentally ill man.  If Governor will just wait it is likely the
legislature will correct wrongs with state's death penalty.

4. George Jones (Texas, January 27, 2005) Even though the jury selection was
tainted, the courts shift burden of proof to defendant and schedules his
execution.

  _____  

James Porter (Texas, January 4, 2005)  

Texas Governor Rick Perry
 <http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact/contact_email.htm>
www.governor.state.tx.us/contact/contact_email.htm
Phone:  (512) 4632000
Fax:  (512) 463-1849

Pardons and Paroles
Phone:  (512) 406-5852
Fax:  (512) 467-0945

Austin America-Statesman
Email:   <mailto:letters at statesman.com> letters at statesman.com
Phone:  (512) 445-3667
Fax:  (512) 445-3679

Houston Chronicle
Email:  <mailto:hci at chron.com> hci at chron.com  
Phone:  (713) 220-7491
Fax:  (713) 220-6806

Dallas Morning News
Email:   <mailto:letterstoeditor at dallasnews.com>
letterstoeditor at dallasnews.com
Phone:  (214) 977-8494
Fax:  (972) 263-0456

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute James Porter, a white man, Jan. 4
for the May 28, 2000, murder of Rudy Delgado, a Latino man. The murder took
place while both men were serving time in prison at the Telford Unit in
Bowie County. Porter was in prison for murder with a deadly weapon. 

Porter, who has been called a white-supremacist, has reportedly maintained
that his killing Delgado was honorable. He killed Delgado, a gay man, by
bludgeoning him to death. 

Porter asked U.S. District Judge Thad Heartfield in federal district court
to declare him mentally competent so that he could withdraw any further
appeals of his conviction or sentence. 

  _____  

Troy Kunkle  (Texas, January 19, 2005)

    (See Texas contact information above.)

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Troy Kunkle, a white man, Nov. 18
for the 1984 murder of Stephen Horton in Nueces County. Mr. Kunkle was 18
and two months old, had no criminal record, and was under the influence of
alcohol, marijuana, and LSD at the time of the crime. Four other teenagers
were involved in the crime. None of them received the death penalty.
Tragically, Troy, a schizophrenic teenager who received no real guidance or
counsel in making the most important decision of his life, turned down a
plea bargain. The case proceeded to trial without any evaluation of Troy's
mental health or his competency to make such a momentous decision. 

Although Mr. Kunkle is schizophrenic with a family history of mental illness
who was subjected to particularly shocking child abuse, no fact finder or
court has ever considered whether this life history mitigates in favor of a
life sentence. 

Mr. Kunkle was physically and emotional abused by his father, including an
incident where he was thrown against a wall so hard that his spleen was
bruised. Both parents also suffered from mental illness. When Mr. Kunkle was
a baby, his mother was committed to a mental hospital for attempting to
choke him. 

However, at the time, Texas law did not provide jurors with a mechanism for
giving consideration to this mitigation, and Troy's lawyers never did the
investigation necessary to present these facts to the jury. Recent
interviews with the jurors indicate that this information would have saved
Troy's life. When the U. S. Supreme Court forced Texas to change its laws
and allow jurors a chance to spare the lives of defendants like Troy, Troy
asked for a new trial where he could present this evidence to the jury.
However in a cruelly ironic twist, the appellate courts refused to take his
history into account because it was presented to them too late in the
process. 

  _____  

Jose Briseno (Texas, January 20, 2005)

    (See Texas contact information above.)

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Jose Briseno, an Hispanic male,
for the 1991 murder of Dimmit County Sheriff Ben Murray in Webb County.

Briseno already came within four hours of being executed in July of 2002
when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution after his
attorneys found a prison record indicating Briseno had an IQ of 67.
Generally, people with an IQ below 70 are considered mentally retarded. The
U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to execute persons with mental
retardation in June of 2002.

A trial court judge then rejected the notion that Briseno is mentally
retarded, stating that records showed he had tested at an IQ of 72 or higher
twice since June 2002. The record also shows that Briseno began drinking
alcohol at age nine and was abusing other substances such as LSD before the
age of 18. Both the defense and state experts agreed drug use may have
impaired brain functioning as well as academic and social skills.

Both Briseno's attorney at the time and Judge Charles Holcomb - in a
dissenting opinion - disagreed with this decision. They maintained a jury
rather than a judge should have decided whether Briseno has a mental
disability. Since Briseno's original trial conviction, the U.S. Supreme
Court has ruled that mitigating and aggravating circumstances in a death
penalty case must be weighed by juries and not judges (Ring vs. Arizona).

However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Briseno was not
entitled to a jury weigh-in on the mitigating factor of possible mental
retardation because the Ring decision should not be applied retroactively.

In addition to having a strong mental retardation claim that has not been
fairly reviewed by a jury, Briseno has raised concerns of ineffective
assistance of counsel. His direct appellate counsel failed to object to the
trial court's denial of a defense expert serologist that may have countered
to the state's serologist witness. Briseno has also maintained his defense
counsel failed to investigate mitigating circumstances and was inadequately
prepared for trial.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2001 that Briseno did not prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that error on the part of his attorney constituted
of a violation of his due process rights.

  _____  

Michael Ross (Connecticut, January 26, 2005)

Gov. M. Jodi Rell

Executive Office of the Governor
State Capitol 
210 Capitol Avenue 
Hartford, Connecticut 06106 

Email: governor.rell at po.state.ct.us

Phone:  800-406-1527 

Hartford Courant Newspaper

285 Broad St.

Hartford, CT 06115

Email:  http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/letters/thc-letters.customform

The state of Connecticut is scheduled to execute Michael Bruce Ross, a white
man, on Jan. 26 for the 1983 and 1984 New London County murders of Robin
Stavinsky and minors Wandy Baribeault, Leslie Shelley, and April Brunais.
All four victims were white.

If the death sentence is carried out, it will be the first in Connecticut in
nearly 45 years. In 1994, the Supreme Court overturned Ross's death sentence
because the jury had not been able to consider evidence that the murders
were the result of sexual sadism, a psychiatric disorder. At a re-sentencing
in 2000, the jury rejected the sexual sadism claim as a mitigating factor
and once again sentenced Ross to death.

Ross, a graduate of Cornell University, has been diagnosed with mental
illness by several mental health professionals, including the state's own
psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Miller.

According to evidence presented at trial, Ross' childhood consisted of abuse
from his mother. His siblings testified at trial that he often received the
brunt of their mother's anger through physical and mental abuse. Ross'
mother was institutionalized twice for issues pertaining to suicidal
tendencies and for the abuse of her children.

One psychiatrist who evaluated Ross, Dr. Borden, stated, "All you have to do
is look at the Norwich hospital records and right there in black and white
they talked about the child abuse going on." Borden went on to note that
there is reason to believe that the abuse was serious as it was rarely
documented at that time.

After spending years trying to prove that he is suffering from a mental
illness which he says drove him to rape and kill eight women in total, Ross
now says he prefers to be executed. He believes it to be the least painful
scenario for the families of his victims.

The execution of the mentally ill is a deplorable violation of international
human rights standards. In April 2000, the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights urged all states that maintain the death penalty "not to impose
it on a person suffering from any form of mental disorder" and "not to
execute any such person."

The Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles is not able to grant clemency
because Ross has refused to file a clemency petition at this time. Please
write to Governor Jodi Rell asking her to grant Mr. Ross clemency on the
grounds that the execution of the mentally ill violates international human
rights standards. Also urge her to consider granting this reprieve so that
the Connecticut Legislature will have the opportunity to address the State's
death penalty system during the 2005 legislative season.

  _____  

George Jones (Texas, January 27, 2005)

    (See Texas contact information above.)

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute George Alarick Jones on Jan. 27
for the 1993 murder of Forest J. Hall in Dallas County.

A point of contention in Jones' case involves the wrongful exclusion of a
prospective juror at trial. The juror had stated that she would be more
skeptical of the testimony of an accomplice than someone who was not
involved in the crime. However, she made it clear that she would give the
testimony fair consideration.

The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 6-3 in September 1998, that the trial
judge had made improperly excluded the juror, but maintained that the error
had not prevented Jones from receiving a fair trial. The Court claimed Jones
did not prove the mistake affected the outcome of the trial - a presumptuous
ruling considering that a single juror can prevent imposition of a death
sentence during the punishment phase of trial.

The Court applied a new rule of appellate procedure which was adopted in
1997. Before 1997, the state had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
ultimately a trial error did not affect punishment or conviction. Under the
new rule, the burden of proof is now on the defendant to prove that the
error violated his or her constitutional rights. The Court of Criminal
Appeals rarely rules that trial errors meet the heightened standard.

In a dissenting opinion, then-Judge Charles Baird expressed his disapproval
over the court's opinion. Baird wrote that the decision trampled on "the
defendant's constitutional rights to an impartial jury, due process of law
and due course of law."

This is one of countless problems with the death penalty system in Texas.
The state continues to lead the country in executions by putting more people
to death than the next five highest states combined while manifesting
blatant systemic flaws in administration of capital punishment.

  _____  

To change the address where you receive these emails please send us a note
at  <blocked::mailto:info at abolishdeathpenalty.org>
info at abolishdeathpenalty.org.  

To unsubscribe from all future mailings simply send an email to
<blocked::mailto:wcadp-list-request at lists.drizzle.com>
wcadp-list-request at lists.drizzle.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the
subject (you can leave the rest of the email blank).  You will receive a
confirmation email.  Be sure to respond to the confirmation email otherwise
you will not be removed from our list.

We welcome all feedback about how we are doing.  Please send any comments or
criticism to  <blocked::mailto:info at abolishdeathpenalty.org>
info at abolishdeathpenalty.org.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - 
The Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
P. O. Box 3045
Seattle, WA 98114
(206) 622-8952
www.abolishdeathpenalty.org <http://www.abolishdeathpenalty.org/> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drizzle.com/pipermail/wcadp-list/attachments/20041228/4719340f/attachment.html