History > 2007 > USA > States > Justice (V)

Ashley Jones, a killer at 14,

with her mother, left,

and grandmother Mary Nalls in 2001.

Photograph: Jessica McGowan

The Birmingham News, 2001

In Connecticut, a Paroled Serial Rapist

is Met With a Wave of Fear and Anger

NYT

13.10.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/nyregion/13rape.html

Death Sentence Mulled

in Baby Theft Case

October 26, 2007
Filed at 5:08 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Prosecutors say a woman who killed an expectant mother and cut the baby from her womb is a cold-blooded predator who deserves to die. Defense lawyers say their client is a victim of sexual abuse who should be treated mercifully.

Jurors began deciding Thursday whether Lisa Montgomery should receive life in prison or execution. They were to resume deliberations Friday.

Montgomery, 39, was convicted Monday of killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, on Dec. 16, 2004, in the victim's home in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore. She was arrested in Melvern, Kan., a day after the attack, after she showed off the newborn as her own.

In closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors said Stinnett's killing and mutilation is the kind of crime for which capital punishment is intended.

''The death penalty is reserved for the worst crime,'' federal prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark told the jury. ''This is the worst crime.''

Ketchmark argued that Montgomery had violated Stinnett in the ''most wicked way possible,'' then failed to seek medical attention for the infant, who was four weeks shy of her due date.

Defense attorney Fred Duchardt, who claims sexual abuse during Montgomery's childhood led to mental illness, asked the jury to spare his client's life. He said emotional abuse from her mother and sexual abuse from her stepfather ''killed Lisa's soul.''

''I'm not ashamed to ask you all for mercy,'' Duchardt told the jury. ''I ask for it on behalf of Lisa and all the people who love her.''

Ketchmark said Montgomery deserved the death penalty because of the heinousness of the crime. She showed jurors crime scene photos highlighting the blows to Stinnett's head, injuries to her elbows, defensive cuts to her hands and strangulation marks.

''Look at the ragged abdominal cuts,'' she said. ''This is vicious. This defendant mutilated her.''

Ketchmark highlighted the premeditation that went into the killing, including Internet searches on performing Caesareans and e-mails Montgomery sent to Stinnett to arrange the fatal meeting.

''This defendant is a cold-blooded predator and Bobbie Jo is her prey,'' she said.

Ketchmark also described how the gruesome death had hurt Stinnett's family, particularly her husband, Zeb, who was forced to raise their daughter alone, and her mother, Becky Harper, who found her daughter's body.

During a break earlier in the day, Harper was seen talking to two of Montgomery's daughters. The exchange ended with an embrace.

Death Sentence Mulled in Baby Theft Case, NYT, 26.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pregnant-Woman-Slain.html

Pa. Coroner Says

Homicide in Beating

October 26, 2007
Filed at 10:58 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- The death of a college student found severely beaten on a street in Pennsylvania Dutch country has been ruled a homicide, and charges were expected against three suspects.

Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim said Thursday that Kyle Quinn died of blunt force trauma to the head. Quinn, a 19-year-old sophomore, died after he was attacked by three men as he walked home from his brother's apartment to his Kutztown University dormitory room in the middle of the night Sept. 7.

Grim said toxicology test results this week showed that nothing in Quinn's system contributed to his death.

Berks County District Attorney Mark Baldwin said he will file homicide charges against Terry D. Kline Jr., 22; his brother Kenneth R. Kline, 21; and Timothy R. Gearhart, 23, all of Allentown. Each had been charged with aggravated assault.

Baldwin's office didn't know Friday whether the suspects had hired attorneys.

    Pa. Coroner Says Homicide in Beating, NYT, 26.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Student-Killed.html

Fla. Mother Acquitted in Piercing Case

October 26, 2007
Filed at 2:19 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

NAPLES, Fla. (AP) -- A woman who had her 13-year-old daughter's genitalia pierced to make it uncomfortable for her to have sex was acquitted of aggravated child abuse on Thursday.

The girl, now 16, had testified that her mother asked a friend in 2004 to shave the girl's head to make her unattractive to boys and later held her down for the piercing.

A jury deliberated for about three hours before deciding the mother's actions didn't involve punishment or malicious intent, or cause permanent damage or disfigurement.

The 39-year-old woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her daughter's identity, could have faced up to 30 years in prison if convicted of the charges.

The girl was not in court for the verdict. Her guardian declined comment.

''She was trying to protect me, but it hurt me,'' the girl testified earlier this week. ''It not only hurt me physically, but it hurt me mentally. ... That's emotionally scarring. That's physical abuse.''

Prosecutors said the mother called on a friend to shave the girl's head and do the piercing after realizing that she had been having sex, including with the mother's boyfriend.

Defense attorneys told jurors that the mother had trouble with her rebellious daughter and that the girl agreed to the piercing to help rebuild her mother's trust.

Child welfare officials were called after the girl became infected from the piercing.

Tammy Meredith, 43, who did the piercing in her home, was sentenced to a year in jail for her role. An arrest warrant has been issued for the mother's boyfriend on allegations he had sex with the girl.

    Fla. Mother Acquitted in Piercing Case, NYT, 26.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Piercing-Trial.html

Man Gets 3 Years for Puppy Toss

October 26, 2007
Filed at 10:51 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- An incredulous judge sentenced a man to three years in prison for tossing a 10-week-old puppy off an apartment balcony during an argument with his girlfriend.

The puppy was in a soft-sided container, suffered head injuries and had to be put to death.

Javon Patrick Morris, 22, apologized for throwing the puppy off the balcony last March and pleaded guilty to animal cruelty.

''You mean he threw a helpless animal off three floors because he was mad at someone?'' Circuit Judge Edward Cottingham asked a prosecutor before sentencing Thursday.

The judge, who has owned nine dogs, said he was obligated to issue a tough sentence.

''There is nobody in this world that can understand that,'' Cottingham said.

He sentenced Morris to five years, suspended to three years in prison and two years of probation. He also ordered Morris, who will be eligible for parole in 20 months, to get anger management counseling.

''I've got to send a message to all dog lovers that we are going to protect that interest in our courtrooms,'' Cottingham said.

    Man Gets 3 Years for Puppy Toss, NYT, 26.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Puppy-Tossed.html

Court Orders Man Freed in Sex Case

October 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- Georgia's Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a young man who has been imprisoned for more than two years for having consensual oral sex with another teenager.

The court ruled 4-3 that Genarlow Wilson's 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.

Wilson, 21, was convicted of aggravated child molestation following a 2003 New Year's Eve party at a Douglas County hotel room where he was videotaped having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was 17 at the time.

Wilson was acquitted of raping another 17-year-old girl at the party.

The 1995 law Wilson violated was changed in 2006 to make oral sex between teens close in age a misdemeanor, similar to the law regarding teen sexual intercourse. But the state Supreme Court later upheld a lower court's ruling which said that the 2006 law could not be applied retroactively.

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion that the changes in the law ''represent a seismic shift in the legislature's view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants.''

Sears wrote that the severe punishment makes ''no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment'' and that Wilson's crime did not rise to the ''level of adults who prey on children.''

The state Supreme Court had turned down Wilson's appeal of his conviction and sentence, but the justices agreed to hear the state's appeal of a Monroe County judge's decision to reduce Wilson's sentence to 12 months and free him. That judge had called the 10-year sentence a ''grave miscarriage of justice.''

Dissenting justices wrote that the state Legislature expressly stated that the 2006 change in the law was not intended to affect any crime prior to that date.

They said Wilson's sentence could not be cruel and unusual because the state Legislature decided that Wilson could not benefit from subsequent laws reducing the severity of the crime from a felony to a misdemeanor.

They called the decision an ''unprecedented disregard for the General Assembly's constitutional authority.''

A spokeswoman for Wilson's lawyer said his legal team received no advance notice of the decision.

    Court Orders Man Freed in Sex Case, NYT, 26.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Teen-Sex-Case.html?hp

Penalty Phase Starts in Stolen - Baby Case

October 24, 2007
Filed at 6:19 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Jurors deciding whether to recommend the death penalty for a woman convicted of killing an expectant mother and cutting the baby from her womb listened Wednesday to a 911 call in which the victim's mother described the gruesome crime scene.

''It's like she exploded or something,'' a sobbing Becky Harper told the dispatcher in the recording. ''There's blood everywhere.''

The federal jury convicted Lisa Montgomery on Monday of killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett on Dec. 16, 2004, in the pregnant woman's home in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore. The baby survived, and Montgomery was arrested the next day after showing the infant off as her own in her hometown of Melvern, Kan.

The penalty phase of the trial began Wednesday. Prosecutors say Montgomery, 39, deserves a death sentence for the kidnapping resulting in death conviction. Her attorneys argue that she should get life in prison without parole -- the only other punishment the jury can choose -- because physical and sexual abuse she suffered as a child left her mentally ill.

Montgomery's daughter, Desiree Boman, 20, testified that she thinks her mother was not in her right mind during the killing. ''I don't think anybody could have been,'' she said.

Boman described how she made old-fashioned dresses and bonnets with her mother, and how Montgomery went to the school board so her daughter could play football as a child.

Asked by prosecutors if her mother had ever apologized for the crime, Boman said: ''No. She doesn't remember doing it.''

Montgomery's husband, Kevin, testified that he continues to talk to his wife and visit her and would maintain a relationship with her if she were sentenced to life in prison.

''I've kept up my love for her,'' he said.

Earlier in the day, Harper described her slain daughter as intelligent and fun-loving.

''She never knew a stranger,'' Harper said.

Stinnett's husband, Zeb, said her death ''devastated my life.''

He described his wife preparing for the baby's birth. Prosecutors showed photos of the plastic tubs she had filled with baby clothes and blankets. Prosecutors also showed a photo of a baby monitor the couple used to listen to the baby's heartbeat.

''It was very exciting,'' Zeb Stinnett testified.

Prosecutors say Montgomery had a history of pretending to be pregnant to get attention and avoid work. Her ex-husband, Carl Boman, had told Montgomery he would use the fake pregnancy against her to obtain custody of two of the couple's four children. A custody hearing had been set for January 2005.

The defense said Montgomery suffered from pseudocyesis, a mental condition that causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy. They said her delusion of being pregnant was being threatened, causing her to enter a dreamlike, dissociative state when the killing happened.

    Penalty Phase Starts in Stolen - Baby Case, NYT, 24.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pregnant-Woman-Slain.html

Woman Convicted in Fetus Theft Case

October 23, 2007
Filed at 7:26 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Rejecting an insanity defense, a jury convicted a woman of killing an expectant mother, cutting the baby from her womb and taking the infant home.

Jurors deliberated for about four hours Monday before finding Lisa Montgomery, 39, guilty of kidnapping resulting in death in the 2004 attack on 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Montgomery's attorneys must now try to persuade the same jurors to spare their client's life.

The jury was to take a break Tuesday and begin hearing evidence Wednesday in the penalty phase of the trial. Prosecutors said they plan to seek the death penalty. Jurors can also recommend life in federal prison without the possibility of parole.

In reaching their verdict, the jury was asked to determine why -- not whether -- Montgomery attacked Stinnett on Dec. 16, 2004, at Stinnett's home in Skidmore. Jurors could have acquitted her outright or found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

After the verdict was read, Montgomery dried her eyes and one of her attorneys patted her back. Her husband, Kevin, and Stinnett's husband, Zeb, showed no emotion.

Defense attorneys claimed Montgomery was suffering from pseudocyesis, which causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy. They portrayed her as a victim of severe mental illness whose delusion of being pregnant was being threatened, causing her to enter a dreamlike state when the killing took place.

They also argued that she had post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by mental, physical and sexual abuse in her childhood.

Prosecutors said Montgomery is not criminally insane and was faking mental illness to help her defense. They said she had a history of pretending to be pregnant to get attention and avoid work.

By the fall of 2004, prosecutors said, Montgomery was facing mounting pressure to have a baby.

Her relatives were telling Kevin Montgomery and his parents that Montgomery was incapable of having children after undergoing a tubal ligation in 1990. And Montgomery's ex-husband, Carl Boman, told her he suspected she was faking the pregnancy and that he planned to use that against her to obtain custody of two of the couple's four children. A custody hearing had been set for January 2005.

As Montgomery's purported Dec. 13, 2004, due date approached, she began conducting Internet searches on Stinnett and researching different aspects of childbirth. The defense portrayed those efforts as evidence that she believed she was pregnant; the prosecution called them proof of premeditation.

Prosecutors said Montgomery used a rope to choke Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant. But Stinnett was conscious and trying to defend herself as Montgomery used a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from the womb, prosecutors said.

Montgomery was arrested the next day after spending the morning showing off the infant as her own in her hometown of Melvern, Kan.

After initially denying the crime, Montgomery told investigators she had taken a knife, rope and umbilical cord clamp with her to Stinnett's home. Montgomery said she had thought she was leaving the home when ''something out of character'' happened and ''then this took place.''

Montgomery's attorneys and a spokesman for Stinnett's family declined to comment after the verdict was announced. Stinnett's baby is living with her family.

''The only good thing that comes from this tragedy is that little Victoria is a healthy baby and is reunited with her family,'' U.S. Attorney John F. Wood said.

------

Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth contributed to this report.

    Woman Convicted in Fetus Theft Case, NYT, 23.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pregnant-Woman-Slain.html

Closing Arguments in Pregnant Woman Case

October 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:33 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A woman accused of killing a pregnant woman and cutting out her fetus was a cold, calculated plotter, prosecutors told a jury Monday during closing arguments, while defense attorneys countered that she was delusional.

Lawyers for Lisa Montgomery said she was suffering from pseudocyesis, which causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit signs of pregnancy.

Montgomery, 39, is on trial for kidnapping resulting in death. Her attorneys are presenting an insanity defense. Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty if she is convicted after the trial, now in its third week.

Prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark told jurors that Montgomery was driven by fear because she believed her ex-husband, Carl Boman, would expose that she was lying about being pregnant. Montgomery was cold and calculated and plotted up until the slaying of Bobbie Jo Stinnett on Dec. 16, 2004, in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore, Ketchmark said.

''It's not pseudocyesis or post traumatic stress disorder,'' Ketchmark said. ''And even if you wrap them up and put delusions around them, it's not insanity.''

Prosecutors said Stinnett was conscious and trying to defend herself as a kitchen knife was used to crudely cut the baby from her womb.

Mental health experts testifying for the defense said threats to Montgomery's delusion about being pregnant caused her to enter a dreamlike, dissociative state when the slaying took place. Montgomery was arrested the day after the killing; prosecutors say she had spent the morning showing off Stinnett's baby as her own.

''Obviously she's believing she was pregnant or might be, because physical changes were manifesting,'' defense lawyer John O'Connor said in his closing statement. ''There were physical manifestations. That's the key.''

Montgomery had undergone a tubal ligation in 1990 after the birth of her fourth child. But soon after, she began claiming to be pregnant again, according to testimony.

Boman had become suspicious of her latest pregnancy claim and threatened to use it against her as he sought custody of two of the couple's four children. A custody hearing had been set for January 2005.

Montgomery's mother and sister also had been telling her husband, Kevin Montgomery, and his parents that it was impossible for Montgomery to carry a child.

As Montgomery's purported Dec. 13, 2004, due date approached, she began conducting searches on the Internet about Stinnett and researching different aspects of child birth. The defense views those efforts as evidence that she believed she was pregnant. The prosecution views them as proof of premeditation.

Besides convicting or acquitting her, jurors could find Montgomery not guilty by reason of insanity. If that is the verdict, she would undergo a mental evaluation and a judge would decide if she will be released or committed to a mental institution.

------

Associated Press Writer Andale Gross contributed to this report.

    Closing Arguments in Pregnant Woman Case, NYT, 22.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pregnant-Woman-Slain.html

Fugitive's Trial Begins in Auto Crash

October 20, 2007
Filed at 2:24 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KELSO, Wash. (AP) -- A man accused of causing a car wreck that killed three college students fled to Ireland only because he feared for his own safety amid the outcry over the crash, his lawyer told jurors Thursday.

Francisco Duarte, the lead attorney for Frederick Russell, also implied in his opening remarks that a key prosecution witness may have been the one who caused the crash.

Russell, 28, is charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of vehicular assault in the 2001 crash that killed three Washington State University students and injured three others.

After his arrest and release on bail in 2001, Russell fled to Ireland, where he was found in 2005 after making the U.S. Marshals Service's ''Most Wanted'' list. He was extradited to the United States in 2006, the first time in 20 tries that the Irish government granted a request to extradite someone to the U.S.

Duarte told the jury that his client jumped bail because he feared for his life after becoming ''public enemy No. 1.''

Assistant Attorney General Melanie Tratnik told jurors Russell had been drinking vodka at a party the night of the crash, then continued drinking at a bar.

''This accident occurred because of actions and decisions made and taken by the defendant just seconds before this accident, but also throughout the evening,'' she said.

Tratnik said Russell came upon a slower vehicle and, even though he was in a no-passing zone, tried to pass at speeds of at least 90 mph before striking an oncoming car, then plowing into a car carrying seven Washington State students.

Killed were seniors Brandon Clements, 22, of Wapato; Stacy Morrow, 21, of Milton; and Ryan Sorensen, 21, of Westport. They were coming back from a movie in Moscow, Idaho.

Russell had minor injuries.

Brad Raymond, who came upon the accident and spoke to Russell at the scene, testified Friday that he smelled alcohol on Russell. At a hospital after the crash, Russell's blood-alcohol level measured .128 percent. The legal limit in Washington state is 0.08 percent.

Duarte spent much of his opening statement trying to discredit the driver that prosecutors said Russell first passed. He drew a sketch of the road, and used toy cars to show jurors what he said was a changing story by the witness on certain details, such as where he pulled over to let Russell pass.

''I'm going to ask you to think carefully about all the evidence in this case and make a determination about who caused the accident,'' he said.

If convicted, Russell faces 10 to 14 years in prison.

    Fugitive's Trial Begins in Auto Crash, NYT, 20.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Auto-Crash-Fugitive.html

New Trial for Rapper on Murder Charge

October 17, 2007
Filed at 10:24 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The rapper sometimes known as C-Murder will be tried a second time on a second-degree murder charge.

A Feb. 11 trial date for Corey Miller was set during a telephone conference with prosecutors and defense attorneys, Judge Martha Sassone said in court Tuesday.

Miller, 36, is accused in the shooting death of Steve Thomas, 16, at a Harvey nightclub on Jan. 12, 2002. The teen used a fake ID to get into the club.

The rapper's 2003 conviction was tossed after Sassone found that prosecutors withheld criminal background information on witnesses from his attorney. The state Supreme Court upheld Sassone's ruling in March 2006, when she set $500,000 bail for Miller and ordered his house arrest.

He faces a mandatory life sentence without parole.

Although Miller changed nicknames from ''C-Murder'' to ''C-Miller'' after he was charged with murder, the byline for his new novel, ''Death Around the Corner,'' is ''Corey Miller a.k.a. C-Murder.''

Sassone said she had approved trips that Miller made in July to New York and last week to Mississippi.

Tuesday's hearing was called to discuss a drug test Miller supposedly failed before going to Mississippi to promote his book. But the test, administered by a home incarceration officer, wrongly concluded that Miller had methamphetamine in his urine, officials said.

Follow-up testing in a laboratory confirmed the false positive test result could have been caused by cold medicine that Miller took, Assistant District Attorney Roger Jordan said in court.

    New Trial for Rapper on Murder Charge, NYT, 17.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-Corey-Miller.html

Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance

October 17, 2007
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times

American Exception
Without Parole

This is the first in an occasional series of articles that will examine commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are actually unique in the world.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt — Mrs. Nalls’s husband and daughter — by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Ms. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister.

Mrs. Nalls, who was badly injured in the rampage, showed a visitor to her home a white scar on her forehead, a reminder of the burns that put her into a coma for 30 days. She had also been shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the chest.

“I forgot,” she said later. “They stabbed me in the jaw, too.”

But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance.

“I believe that she should have gotten 15 or 20 years,” Mrs. Nalls said. “If children are under age, sometimes they’re not responsible for what they do.”

The group that plans to release the report on Oct. 17, the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Ala., is one of several human rights organizations that say states should be required to review sentences of juvenile offenders as the decades go by, looking for cases where parole might be warranted.

But prosecutors and victims’ rights groups say there are crimes so terrible and people so dangerous that only life sentences without the possibility of release are a fit moral and practical response.

“I don’t think every 14-year-old who killed someone deserves life without parole,” said Laura Poston, who prosecuted Ms. Jones. “But Ashley planned to kill four people. I don’t think there is a conscience in Ashley, and I certainly think she is a threat to do something similar.”

Specialists in comparative law acknowledge that there have been occasions when young murderers who would have served life terms in the United States were released from prison in Europe and went on to kill again. But comparing legal systems is difficult, in part because the United States is a more violent society and in part because many other nations imprison relatively few people and often only for repeat violent offenses.

“I know of no systematic studies of comparative recidivism rates,” said James Q. Whitman, who teaches comparative criminal law at Yale. “I believe there are recidivism problems in countries like Germany and France, since those are countries that ordinarily incarcerate only dangerous offenders, but at some point they let them out and bad things can happen.”

The differences in the two approaches, legal experts said, are rooted in politics and culture. The European systems emphasize rehabilitation, while the American one stresses individual responsibility and punishment.

Corrections professionals and criminologists here and abroad tend to agree that violent crime is usually a young person’s activity, suggesting that eventual parole could be considered in most cases. But the American legal system is more responsive to popular concerns about crime and attitudes about punishment, while justice systems abroad tend to be administered by career civil servants rather than elected legislators, prosecutors and judges.

In its sentencing of juveniles, as in many other areas, the legal system in the United States goes it alone. American law is, by international standards, a series of innovations and exceptions. From the central role played by juries in civil cases to the election of judges to punitive damages to the disproportionate number of people in prison, the United States is an island in the sea of international law.

And the very issue of whether American judges should ever take account of foreign law is hotly disputed. At the hearings on their Supreme Court nominations, both John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they thought it a mistake to consider foreign law in constitutional cases.

But the international consensus against life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders may nonetheless help Ms. Jones. In about a dozen cases recently filed around the country on behalf of 13- and 14-year-olds sentenced to life in prison, lawyers for the inmates relied on a 2005 Supreme Court decision that banned the execution of people who committed crimes when they were younger than 18.

That decision, Roper v. Simmons, was based in part on international law. Noting that the United States was the only nation in the world to sanction the juvenile death penalty, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said it was appropriate to look to “the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive” in interpreting the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

He added that teenagers were different from older criminals — less mature, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better. Those findings, lawyers for the juvenile lifers say, should apply to their clients, too.

“Thirteen- and 14-year-old children should not be condemned to death in prison because there is always hope for a child,” said Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which represents Ms. Jones and several other juvenile lifers.

The 2005 death penalty ruling applied to 72 death-row inmates, almost precisely the same number as the 73 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed at 13 or 14.

The Supreme Court did not abolish the juvenile death penalty in a single stroke. The 2005 decision followed one in 1988 that held the death penalty unconstitutional for those who had committed crimes under 16.

The new lawsuits, filed in Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin, seek to follow a similar progression.

“We’re not demanding that all these kids be released tomorrow,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I’m not even prepared to say that all of them will get to the point where they should be released. We’re asking for some review.”

In defending American policy in this area in 2006, the State Department told the United Nations that sentencing is usually a matter of state law. “As a general matter,” the department added, juvenile offenders serving life-without-parole terms “were hardened criminals who had committed gravely serious crimes.”

Human rights groups have disputed that. According to a 2005 report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, 59 percent of the more than 2,200 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes they committed at 17 or younger had never been convicted of a previous crime. And 26 percent were in for felony murder, meaning they participated in a crime that led to a murder but did not themselves kill anyone.

The new report focuses on the youngest offenders, locating 73 juvenile lifers in 19 states who were 13 and 14 when they committed their crimes. Pennsylvania has the most, with 19, and Florida is next, with 15. In those states and Illinois, Nebraska, North Carolina and Washington, 13-year-olds have been sentenced to die in prison.

In most of the cases, the sentences were mandatory, an automatic consequence of a murder conviction after being tried as an adult.

A federal judge here will soon rule on Ms. Jones’s challenge to her sentence. Ms. Poston, who prosecuted her, said Ms. Jones was beyond redemption.

“Between the ages of 2 and 3, you develop a conscience,” Ms. Poston said. “She never got the voice that says, ‘This is bad, Ashley.’ ”

“It was a blood bath in there,” Ms. Poston said of the night of the murders here, in 1999. “Ashley Jones is not the poster child for the argument that life without parole is too long.”

In a telephone interview from the Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala., Ms. Jones said she did not recognize the girl who committed her crimes. According to court filings, her mother was a drug addict and her stepfather had sexually molested her. “Everybody I loved, everybody I trusted, I was betrayed by,” Ms. Jones said.

“I’m very remorseful about what happened,” she said. “I should be punished. I don’t feel like I should spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Mrs. Nalls, her grandmother, had been married for 53 years when she and her husband, Deroy Nalls, agreed to take Ashley in. She was “a problem child,” and Mr. Nalls was a tough man who took a dislike to Ashley’s boyfriend, Geramie Hart. Mr. Hart, who was 16 at the time of the murders, is also serving a life term. Mrs. Nalls said he deserved a shot at parole someday as well.

    Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance, NYT, 17.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/us/17teenage.html

In Connecticut, a Paroled Serial Rapist Is Met With a Wave of Fear and Anger

October 13, 2007
The New York Times
By THOMAS KAPLAN

SOUTHBURY, Conn., Oct. 12 — Sitting in a family room here filled with her daughters’ toys, Edy McClure glanced at the evening news on Monday night. She heard the name of her town — a normally quiet suburb that is known for its good schools. Then she heard her street — Fox Run Drive, where basketball hoops and bicycles dot the driveways and broad lawns.

A serial rapist, in prison for 24 years, would be moving into the neighborhood after his release on Friday. Mrs. McClure thought of her daughters, ages 4 and 8. “I just freaked out,” she said.

So did many of her neighbors. But despite their concerns, and the efforts of the governor and the attorney general of Connecticut to keep him confined, the convicted rapist, David Pollitt, 54, moved here on Friday amid a sea of television cameras and a crowd of disgruntled neighbors, several of them in tears.

It was only on Monday that most of them learned that Mr. Pollitt, who had been imprisoned for the rapes of at least five women in five towns in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was to move in with his sister, Janice Rosengren, and her family after other relatives spurned him. Neighbors said they immediately began asking one another: Can this be stopped?

Some called Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who asked the attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, to try to temporarily delay Mr. Pollitt’s release. But Judge Susan B. Handy of Superior Court dismissed the request Thursday, saying that Mr. Pollitt had completed his sentence and was “entitled to be released.”

Still, residents here said his time served did nothing to ease their anxiety. On Friday afternoon, about two dozen of them gathered outside Ms. Rosengren’s home, holding signs and pleading their case to reporters as they awaited Mr. Pollitt’s arrival. Some suggested lawmakers examine whether Connecticut should adopt a civil commitment law, like those in nearly 20 other states, including New York and New Jersey, which allows judges to confine sex offenders for longer than their sentence provides.

Mary Ann Dewan, who has lived on Fox Run Drive for 30 years, cares for her 13-year-old granddaughter and 9-year-old grandson here every day. They ride their bikes and play basketball in the neighborhood’s cul-de-sac, she said — right in front of where Mr. Pollitt will live.

“It’s kind of scary,” Ms. Dewan said. “It’s making me think I should change the locks on my door, get an alarm system. I don’t know what to do.”

She was not alone. On the eve of Mr. Pollitt’s release, an estimated 300 residents crowded a local high school to pepper the authorities with questions: Should they buy Mace? Or a Taser? Or what about walking with a friend when going to get the mail, as one neighbor said she had been told to do?

But Mr. Pollitt is not the first sex offender to take up residence in this town of 19,000; there are five others living here, according to a state database, and more than 250 in Waterbury, a city of 107,000 about 10 miles to the northeast. And so the police urged residents not to panic.

Instead, they suggested that people lock their doors, buy an alarm system and look out for their neighbors.

“We’re working with them as best as possible to ensure everyone’s safety in this matter,” said Sgt. Kenneth Kramer, the state trooper assigned here.

But for Ms. Rosengren, who lives here with her husband and their two daughters, some neighbors have been overzealous in their concerns. Her lawyer, Jerry E. Attanasio, said in a telephone interview that Ms. Rosengren had received threats and hate mail in recent days. “They knew that this would be a tremendous undertaking,” Mr. Attanasio said, “but they were not prepared for this kind of backlash.”

Mr. Pollitt, who will be on probation for five years, has been fitted with a monitoring device and is under house arrest indefinitely, according to the Connecticut Judicial Branch. If he violates any of the more than two dozen conditions of his probation, he could face 15 more years in prison.

The Rosengren family released a statement on Friday, promising to ensure that Mr. Pollitt does not violate his probation or pose any risk to neighbors.

“Please know that if we felt we could not handle this responsibility, or if we were not comfortable with the probationary conditions, David would not be living with us,” the statement said. “We look forward to returning to our normal routines.”

But on Friday afternoon, nothing was routine in this quiet town. In an unlikely spectacle, a caravan of vehicles pulled into the driveway of the Rosengren house at 2:46 p.m. as neighbors and a pack of photographers and television cameramen angled to catch any sight of Mr. Pollitt as his vehicle slipped into the house’s garage. Several probation officers parked in the driveway and entered the house through the front door.

“Obviously, the alarm system is going to be set and triple-checked,” Mrs. McClure said.

In the house directly across the street from Mr. Pollitt’s new residence, Anthony Recupero, 49, said that although he and his wife were not pleased to have a sex offender moving in, he understood Ms. Rosengren’s position.

“It is her brother,” Mr. Recupero said. “However, are we going to have to live with some fear? Yes.”

    In Connecticut, a Paroled Serial Rapist Is Met With a Wave of Fear and Anger, NYT, 13.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/nyregion/13rape.html

8 Acquitted in Death of Boy, 14, in Florida

October 13, 2007
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, Oct. 12 — A jury on Friday acquitted seven guards and a nurse who had been charged with aggravated manslaughter in the death of a 14-year-old boy at a boot camp in the Florida Panhandle.

The death of the boy, Martin Lee Anderson, prompted outrage in the state and led to an overhaul of its juvenile justice system. The guards had kicked and hit the boy after he stopped running during a drill, a confrontation that was caught on videotape.

The jury, in Panama City, Fla., took less than two hours to reach its verdict. The United States Justice Department announced that its civil rights division would review all the evidence in the case and “take appropriate action” if it perceived a violation of federal criminal civil rights law.

The local medical examiner attributed the boy’s death in January 2006 to complications of sickle cell trait, an undiagnosed blood disorder. That infuriated the boy’s parents, lawmakers and civil rights leaders, who pointed out that Martin had been repeatedly kicked, hit and forced to inhale ammonia after he said he was unable to finish running laps on his first day at the camp.

A second autopsy, ordered by a special prosecutor appointed by Jeb Bush, who was then the governor, found that the boy had died of suffocation. It determined that by blocking Martin’s mouth and forcing him to inhale ammonia fumes — an effort, the guards said, to revive him — they had caused his vocal cords to spasm and block his airway.

The video showed the nurse charged in the case sitting and watching the confrontation without intervening.

“You kill a dog, you go to jail,” said Benjamin Crump, the parents’ lawyer, according to The Associated Press. “You kill a little black boy, and nothing happens.”

Martin’s mother, Gina Jones, stormed out of the courtroom after the verdict.

One of the defendants, Henry Dickens, who is black, told reporters that the case was not about race.

The defendants were black, white and Asian. All the jurors were white.

The case was partly to blame for the sudden resignation last year of Guy Tunnell, head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who created the camp in Panama City when he was the sheriff in Bay County. Mr. Tunnell resigned after the discovery that he had sent e-mail messages to the county’s new sheriff discussing the continuing investigation into the death.

After the discovery, Mark Ober, the special prosecutor appointed by Mr. Bush, stripped Mr. Tunnell’s agency of any role in the investigation. The camp was closed shortly after Martin’s death.

Last year, Mr. Bush, once a strong supporter of juvenile boot camps, signed a law named for Martin that closed Florida’s four remaining camps and sharply restricted the use of force at their replacements. Those centers, called Sheriff’s Training and Respect academies, are supposed to emphasize education, vocational training and counseling.

The Legislature also paid Martin’s parents $5 million to settle civil claims. The boy had been sent to the camp after violating probation for stealing his grandmother’s car.

The Associated Press reported that a crowd outside the courthouse responded emotionally to the verdict, with some shouting “murderer” at one of the former guards as he voiced his relief.

Mr. Ober said in a statement that he was “extremely disappointed” with the verdict, but that he respected the jury’s decision.

More than 100 students from Florida A&M University marched in protest toward the State Capitol after the verdict and blocked traffic, but they dispersed by nightfall.

    8 Acquitted in Death of Boy, 14, in Florida, NYT, 13.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/us/13bootcamp.html

Tense Moments After Boot Camp Acquittal

October 13, 2007
Filed at 7:55 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- Tensions ran high after eight former boot camp workers were acquitted of manslaughter in the death of a 14-year-old inmate who was videotaped being punched and kicked.

The case sparked outrage and spelled the end of Florida's system of juvenile boot camps, but it took a jury just 90 minutes Friday to decide that the death of Martin Lee Anderson was not a crime.

Anger over the verdict was obvious outside the courtroom, where bystanders screamed ''murderer'' at former guard Henry Dickens as he described his relief at the verdict.

''I am truly, truly sorry this happened. Myself, I love kids,'' said Dickens, 60. He said Anderson ''wasn't beaten. Those techniques were taught to us and used for a purpose.''

Anderson died a day after being hit and kicked by Dickens and six other guards as a nurse watched, a 30-minute confrontation that drew protests in the state capital.

The defendants testified they followed the rules at a get-tough facility where young offenders often feigned illness to avoid exercise. Their attorneys said that Anderson died not from rough treatment, but from a previously undiagnosed blood disorder.

The boy's mother, Gina Jones, stormed out of the courtroom. ''I cannot see my son no more. Everybody see their family members. It's wrong,'' she said.

Anderson's family repeatedly sat through the painful video as it played during testimony. They had long sought a trial, claiming local officials tried to cover up the case. The conservative Florida Panhandle county is surrounded by military bases and residents are known for their respect for law and order.

''You kill a dog, you go to jail,'' said Gina Jones' lawyer, Benjamin Crump, outside court. ''You kill a little black boy and nothing happens.''

The guards, who are white, black and Asian, stood quietly as the judge read the verdicts. The all-white jury was escorted away from the courthouse and did not comment.

Special prosecutor Mark Ober said in a statement he was ''extremely disappointed.''

''In spite of these verdicts, Martin Lee Anderson did not die in vain,'' the statement read. ''This case brought needed attention and reform to our juvenile justice system.''

The defendants faced up to 30 years in prison had they been convicted of aggravated manslaughter of a child. The jury also decided against convicting them of lesser charges, including child neglect and culpable negligence.

Officials from the Department of Justice in Washington and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida announced they were reviewing the state's prosecution. Defense attorneys, however, said they considered a federal civil-rights case to be unlikely.

''The Department of Justice has yet another opportunity, unfortunately, to demonstrate to America's minority populations that law enforcement officials acting outside the laws of this nation will be held accountable, that the misdeeds of a few rogue officers won't be allowed to tarnish the good work of the vast majority and that any guilty officers' conduct will be strongly scrutinized and met with remedial action rather than a wink and a nod,'' said NAACP Interim President & CEO Dennis Courtland Hayes.

''With a 90-minute verdict after a three-week trial (in the state case), it would be the same result,'' said attorney Bob Sombathy, who represents ex-guard Patrick Garrett.

Aside from hitting Anderson, the guards dragged him around the military-style camp's exercise yard and forced him to inhale ammonia capsules in what they said was an attempt to revive him. The nurse stood by watching.

Defense attorneys argued that the guards properly handled what they thought was a juvenile offender faking illness to avoid exercising on his first day in the camp. He was brought there for violating probation for stealing his grandmother's car and trespassing at a school.

The defense said Anderson's death was unavoidable because he had undiagnosed sickle cell trait, a usually harmless blood disorder that can hinder blood cells' ability to carry oxygen during physical stress.

Prosecutors said the eight defendants neglected the boy's medical needs after he collapsed while running laps. They said the defendants suffocated Anderson by covering his mouth and forcing him to inhale ammonia.

Anderson died Jan. 6, 2006, when he was taken off life support, a day after the altercation. The case quickly grew and shook up the state's boot camp and law enforcement system amid the boy's family alleging a cover-up.

An initial autopsy by Dr. Charles Siebert, the medical examiner for Bay County, found Anderson died of natural causes from sickle cell trait. A second autopsy was ordered and another doctor concluded that the guards suffocated Anderson through their repeated use of ammonia capsules and by covering his mouth.

Anderson's death led to the resignation of Florida Department of Law Enforcement chief Guy Tunnell, who established the camp when he was Bay County sheriff.

Then-Gov. Jeb Bush had been a strong supporter of the juvenile boot camps, but after Anderson's death he backed the Legislature's move to shut down the system and put more money into a less militaristic program.

The Legislature agreed to pay Anderson's family $5 million earlier this year to settle civil claims.

    Tense Moments After Boot Camp Acquittal, NYT, 13.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Boot-Camp-Death.html

Brooklyn Man Is Convicted of Murder in Officer’s Shooting

October 12, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BRICK

A Brooklyn man was convicted of first-degree murder yesterday for fatally shooting a police officer during a wild car chase through Flatbush at the close of the Thanksgiving weekend in 2005.

The man, Allan Cameron, 29, left the courtroom in silence, as did his family and dozens of uniformed officers who had watched the trial for weeks. When they were gone, the family of the slain officer, Dillon Stewart, 35, remained in the courtroom, some of them sobbing.

In the hallway outside, his fellow officers stood at attention, their dress blues aligned to form a somber background for his widow, Leslyn Stewart, as she addressed a bank of television cameras.

“As a police officer, Dillon served to protect the lives and liberties of all citizens of New York,” Mrs. Stewart said, her eyes wet. Reading from prepared remarks, pages typed in anticipation of a verdict that came as little surprise, she added, “I am happy that the jury sent out the message of justice loud and clear.”

When he is sentenced next month, Mr. Cameron faces a maximum penalty of life in prison with no chance of parole.

From the beginning, the case had stirred outrage. In the early hours of Nov. 28, 2005, Officer Stewart was on patrol outside a nightclub in an unmarked car when he saw a red Infiniti run a stoplight.

He gave chase, pulled alongside the car and ordered the driver to stop.

The driver fired six shots, prosecutors have said, striking Officer Stewart once through the armpit, just above a panel of his bullet-resistant vest. The bullet lodged in his heart, and he died later that morning.

But even wounded, prosecutors have said, Officer Stewart kept up the pursuit. Joined by other officers, he followed the Infiniti to a parking garage. The police fired on the car as it escaped behind a closing door.

Locating a previous owner of the car, investigators obtained Mr. Cameron’s name, tracked his cellphone records, found him in the apartment of a girlfriend and arrested him. He was charged with first-degree murder and several other crimes.

As Mr. Cameron ran the stoplight that night, he was carrying more than 50 small bags of marijuana and a 9-millimeter handgun, the authorities have said. He was on probation for running from the police, wanted on charges that he had assaulted police officers in Philadelphia and suspected of robbing an off-duty officer in Brooklyn.

The case led the city to spend $12 million on new bullet-resistant vests that would provide more coverage of the neck and the sides of the torso. In Albany, lawmakers passed new laws increasing the penalties for weapons possession and crimes against police officers.

But the criminal case lacked a witness. When the trial began last month, Officer Stewart’s partner, Paul J. Lipka, testified that he had seen a lone occupant in the car but could not identify his face. The prosecutors, Mark J. Hale and Thomas C. Ridges, built their case on forensic evidence, calling about 30 witnesses and introducing about 100 pieces of evidence.

The defense lawyers, Edward Friedman and John Burke, argued that the case was built on a rushed investigation and staged evidence. They suggested Officer Stewart had been hit by police gunfire directed at the fleeing car.

After deliberating for half a day, the jurors reached their verdict. As uniformed officers packed the courtroom behind the families of Officer Stewart and Mr. Cameron, Justice Albert Tomei warned them not to make any disturbance. At points during the trial, his courtroom had been interrupted by applause from the police.

In a holding cell beside the courtroom, Mr. Cameron paced back and forth, gripping the white bars from time to time and wiping tears from his face. Anticipating a guilty verdict, he sent his lawyer to remove his ailing mother from the courtroom.

Then Mr. Cameron entered the courtroom, dressed in a dark suit, his hair braided and his eyes bloodshot. He scanned the gallery, watched the jury foreman for a moment, then turned away. After the verdict was announced he was escorted away, to return for sentencing on Nov. 8. Outside the courtroom, his lawyers promised to appeal.

“It’s a sad day for Allan Cameron and Allan Cameron’s family,” Mr. Burke said. “It’s been a series of sad days for Dillon Stewart’s family.”

In a statement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said of the slain officer, “His senseless murder was yet another tragic example of the devastation that illegal guns bring to our communities.” He added that his office would “continue to honor his memory by fighting to keep illegal guns off our streets.”

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said, “Although the guilty verdict does nothing to restore the life of Dillon Stewart, I hope it brings some measure of peace to his family, and that it serves as a warning to those who would target police officers that justice will be done.”

The president of the police officers’ union, Patrick J. Lynch, said: “Regrettably, Cameron does not face the fate that he imposed on Dillon Stewart, who was a fine police officer and a loving husband and father. It is time for our elected officials to find the political will to legislate a constitutionally appropriate death penalty for the murder of a police officer.”

But the police officers assembled outside the courtroom, wearing the golden pins of the 70th Precinct and the nearby 72nd, cheered the verdict, the prosecutors and Mrs. Stewart.

“What can I say?” said Dominic Scotto, 43, a detective in the 70th Precinct. “Justice was served.”

Elias E. Lopez contributed reporting

    Brooklyn Man Is Convicted of Murder in Officer’s Shooting, NYT, 12.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/nyregion/12officer.html

NYPD Officer's Husband Pleads Guilty

October 11, 2007
Filed at 11:51 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- A police officer's husband has admitted he shot another officer -- a crime the gunman's wife is accused of trying to conceal.

Jose Rivera, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted murder Wednesday and received a 16-year sentence. He could have faced up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted of a first-degree attempted murder.

The victim, Officer Andrew Suarez, said he was ''satisfied'' with the agreement.

Rivera's wife, Officer Jacqueline Melendez-Rivera, has been indicted on official misconduct and evidence-tampering charges in the Feb. 10 shooting. Melendez-Rivera has said she was unknowingly caught up in the crime.

Suarez, 25, was shot in the back while he and three other plainclothes officers were on an anti-crime watch in an unmarked car.

Police said Rivera, unaware that the SUV was carrying police officers, initially exchanged ''dirty looks'' with them from inside his white Acura. When the SUV pulled over, the Acura stopped alongside and Rivera said, ''You got a beef?'' and fired, police said.

Police said that soon after the shooting, they found Melendez-Rivera behind the wheel of a sport-utility vehicle involved in the crime. She told officers she was moving the SUV to a new parking space.

Her lawyer has said she was unaware of the shooting and cooperated with police once she learned of it.

Melendez-Rivera, 37, is free on $50,000 bond. She has been suspended from her job as a domestic violence officer.

    NYPD Officer's Husband Pleads Guilty, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Officer-Shot.html

Child Killer's Penalty to Be Reviewed

October 11, 2007
Filed at 11:38 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- New York's highest court on Thursday overturned part of a lower court's $15 million judgment against Joel Steinberg, a disbarred New York City lawyer who served 15 years in prison for killing his 6-year-old adopted daughter.

The state Court of Appeals ordered a new trial to address one element of the award to the girl's birth mother, Michele Launders. The 7-0 decision on Steinberg's appeal found that although evidence was presented at Steinberg's criminal trial that the girl, Lisa Steinberg, had suffered abuse prior to the night she was killed, the issue wasn't ''necessarily decided'' at that trial.

A midlevel appeals court in January affirmed a lower court's 2004 decision to award Launders $15 million for Lisa's death, including $5 million for the girl's pain and suffering, $5 million for pain and suffering ''as a battered child'' and $5 million in punitive damages.

Depending on the outcome, the $5 million award for pain and suffering ''as a battered child'' could be altered.

Steinberg was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in 1987 for hitting Lisa in the head with his hand, leading to her death. He was released from prison in 2004.

    Child Killer's Penalty to Be Reviewed, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Child-Killer.html

Mother Leaves Boot Camp Trial in Tears

October 10, 2007
Filed at 1:00 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- The mother of a teenage boy who died at a boot camp left a courtroom room in tears Wednesday after testimony describing how guards repeatedly kicked the 14-year-old and forced him to inhale ammonia.

''I cannot take it,'' Gina Jones sobbed before leaving the manslaughter trial for guards in the videotaped altercation.

A guard, Charles Enfinger, described the repeated hammer blows he delivered to Martin Lee Anderson's arm after the teen collapsed while running laps on the exercise yard at the Bay County boot camp. Enfinger testified as the videotape was played in court.

Gina Jones, Martin's mother, sobbed loudly and left the courtroom after a second guard, Joseph Walsh II, told jurors that he and others were trying to ''motivate'' the boy during the altercation. The guards repeatedly kicked and kneed him and forced him to inhale ammonia. Martin died a day later at a hospital.

The 30-minute video of seven guards hitting and kneeing Martin shocked many and helped prompt the state to close its juvenile boot camps. All seven guards and a nurse are charged with manslaughter in Martin's death on Jan. 6, 2006.

Walsh testified that he noticed Martin on the boy's first day at the camp because he used profanity.

''There is no profanity at the boot camp,'' Walsh said. ''They are instructed not to speak without permission to speak.''

Walsh said that began the chain of events, which ended when Martin was carried off by paramedics on a stretcher.

Prosecutors say the guards suffocated Martin by covering his mouth and forcing him to inhale ammonia fumes. Defense attorneys contend their clients followed policy and say Martin died because of sickle cell trait, a previously undiagnosed blood disorder that can limit cells from carrying oxygen during physical stress.

Walsh detailed how he used pressure points behind the boy's ear and made him inhale ammonia to get his attention. He also said he used hammer strikes on his arms to get him to unclench his fists.

When Martin's body went limp, Walsh said, he suspected the boy of feigning illness because that was something common among the youth in the camp.

Walsh said he threw the ammonia capsules he used on Martin over the camp fence because they had the teen's saliva on them and he didn't want to put them in his pocket.

The guards and nurse face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter.

    Mother Leaves Boot Camp Trial in Tears, NYT, 10.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Boot-Camp-Death.html

Devlin Pleads Guilty in Kidnapping Case

October 8, 2007
Filed at 11:39 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

UNION, Mo. (AP) -- A former pizza parlor manager was sentenced to life in prison Monday for the kidnapping of one of two boys he is accused of holding captive in his apartment.

Michael Devlin, 41, pleaded guilty to one charge of child kidnapping and one charge of armed-criminal action in the January abduction of 13-year-old William ''Ben'' Ownby.

It was the first in a series of hearings this week in four jurisdictions where Devlin faces more than 80 counts in the kidnappings and sexual abuse of Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck. He is expected to plead guilty to all of the charges against him, a prosecutor and a relative of the boys has said.

Devlin declined to speak about his plea in court.

Ben was 13 when he disappeared minutes after stepping off his school bus in rural Franklin County. Four days later, a tip led to Devlin's cramped apartment in Kirkwood, Mo., where both boys were found. Authorities said Hornbeck was held for more than four years after he was kidnapped in 2002.

While it is The Associated Press' policy not to identify suspected victims of sexual abuse in most cases, the story of Shawn and Ben has been widely publicized and their names are well-known.

Devlin was said to be ''at peace'' about pleading to the charges. One of his attorneys, Michael Kielty, said Devlin wants to spare his family and his longtime captive, Shawn, the anguish of a trial.

''He instructed me to give this message,'' the lawyer, Michael Kielty, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. ''I think he's at peace. He's looking forward to a disposition.''

------

Associated Press Writer Jim Salter contributed to this report.

    Devlin Pleads Guilty in Kidnapping Case, NYT, 8.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Boys-Found-Devlin.html

R.I. Grapples With Faulty Teen Jail Bill

October 6, 2007
Filed at 12:24 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- When 17-year-old Dennys George was arrested this summer, allegedly for carrying 10 grams of crack cocaine, he was taken handcuffed and shackled to the state prison's high-security wing -- not a juvenile facility.

George said he was strip-searched and spent the night in a cell with another teen. Though he didn't have contact with older inmates, he wouldn't shower because he was afraid of being near them.

''They told me, 'You're going to spend some time with the big boys,''' George said, recounting a talk with police. ''I was so stressed, I didn't even know what was going to happen to me.''

George is one of about 40 teenagers who have been jailed in the state prison under a new law that treats 17-year-olds as adults in the court system. Billed as a way to save money, youth advocates, judges and the attorney general sounded the alarm early that the proposal might actually be more expensive, and could hurt children.

Now, four months after the measure passed the Legislature, state officials admit their mistake: It's unlikely to cut costs, it has created confusion in the court system and it is imprisoning teenage offenders who might have been sent home with their parents instead.

State officials say it happened because the chain of people responsible for the proposal -- who drew it up, signed off on it, forwarded it to lawmakers and voted it into law -- never thoroughly researched it and ignored warnings. Now, they're pointing fingers, and grappling with how to fix it.

''Never underestimate the incompetence of government,'' said Steven Brown, executive director of the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, who wants 17-year-old offenders back in juvenile courts. ''I think there's a lot of blame to go around.''

Rhode Island is one of 14 states that try people under 18 in adult courts. Several of those are considering moving the age up.

Besides Rhode Island, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin try 17-year-olds as adults, according to the National Center for Juvenile Justice. Connecticut, New York and North Carolina try 16-year-olds in adult courts, although Connecticut has raised the age of juvenile court jurisdiction from 16 to 18 for most offenses starting in 2010.

Rhode Island's problems began last fall when Republican Gov. Don Carcieri's administration realized the state faced what became a $450 million deficit. The Department of Children, Youth and Families was asked to cut 11 percent from its budget, or $20 million.

DCYF Director Patricia Martinez suggested in a memo to Carcieri that the state could save $4 million by sending 17-year-olds to prison instead of the State Training School, where DCYF oversees young offenders. The average annual cost of keeping someone at the Training School is $98,000, compared to $40,000 in the state prison.

But DCYF Deputy Director Jorge Garcia said in an interview that his staff thought the proposal wouldn't pass so never consulted with prison officials.

If they had, they would have learned 17-year-olds are put in protective custody, away from older, hardened inmates. That costs about $104,000 per year -- a lot more than $40,000.

At best, Garcia said he had a quick conversation with Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall. Wall cannot remember that talk, his spokeswoman said.

Carcieri's office never consulted prison officials about the change, either, assuming DCYF had already checked, Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal said.

Lawmakers on the powerful House Finance Committee are responsible for reviewing Carcieri's budget. Rep. Carol Mumford, a Republican, said reviewing a $7 billion budget is an enormous undertaking.

''Picture five telephone books, that's how high it is,'' Mumford said, referring to the budget documents. ''We frankly do read the budget, but there are idiosyncrasies in there that we do miss.''

Her committee did receive repeated warnings from child advocates and prosecutors who argued that teenagers are better served by rehabilitation than incarceration.

A Family Court judge testified that Carcieri's staff had not consulted with the judiciary. Attorney General Patrick Lynch said he doubted the governor had even spoken with prison officials. Wall, the corrections director, never testified about the DCYF proposal. He later said the governor had not consulted him and he didn't realize the proposal might pass.

It did.

College-bound teenagers arrested under the new law risk losing federal financial aid if convicted of a drug crime. Those looking for work will have to disclose a criminal record. If the 17-year-olds had been in Family Court, their records would be hidden from public view.

Carcieri's staff admits the original proposal was flawed, but the governor wants to see how much the policy costs before tinkering further, Neal said.

Senate Majority Leader Teresa Paiva Weed, a Democrat, said she's urging lawmakers in the House to adopt a bill that would send 17-year-olds back to the juvenile courts. The Senate has already approved the measure.

Lawmakers could vote on it during a one-day special session tentatively scheduled for this month. But no date has been set, and lawmakers haven't promised they will take it up.

    R.I. Grapples With Faulty Teen Jail Bill, NYT, 6.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Imprisoned-Teens.html

Conviction in Death of Gay Man in Traffic

October 6, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BRICK

For his role in selecting a gay man as a robbery target and chasing him to his death in traffic, a Brooklyn man was convicted yesterday of manslaughter and attempted robbery as hate crimes, but acquitted of murder.

The convicted man, John Fox, 20, bowed his head for a moment after the verdict was read in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, then gave his father a solemn wink as he was led away. Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 24.

“He didn’t murder anybody,” said his father, also named John Fox, outside the courtroom. Offering regrets to the victim’s parents, the elder Mr. Fox added, “If I could arrange for their son to be alive and me to be dead, I’d do so.”

A separate jury deliberating the same charges against Mr. Fox’s co-defendant, Anthony Fortunato, 21, retired for the weekend yesterday without reaching a verdict.

With its verdict, the Fox jury embraced a novel application of the state’s hate crime law in a case that has stirred passions from the beginning. The victim, Michael J. Sandy, 29, of Williamsburg, was lured to a secluded lot in Sheepshead Bay on Oct. 8, 2006, through online messages at a Web site for gay men.

From there, he was led to a narrow beach by the Dead Horse Inlet, then attacked and chased into traffic on the Belt Parkway. He was struck by a sport utility vehicle and later died of his injuries. The driver has never been identified.

Prosecutors charged Mr. Fox, Mr. Fortunato and a third man, Ilya Shurov, 21, with murder as a hate crime, a distinction that can extend sentences. By the prosecution’s theory, the men had selected Mr. Sandy for robbery because they believed that a gay man would put up little resistance and would hesitate to report the crime.

Before the trial began, defense lawyers asked to dismiss the charges, arguing that the men had shown no hatred for homosexuals. The judge overseeing the case, Jill Konviser-Levine, rejected that argument.

A fourth young man, Gary Timmins, 17, pleaded guilty to attempted robbery as a hate crime and testified for the prosecution. Mr. Shurov, the only one accused of striking Mr. Sandy, will be tried separately.

A lawyer for Mr. Fortunato, who is being tried alongside Mr. Fox, has argued that Mr. Fortunato himself is gay and was unlikely to select gay men as targets. In a note to the judge, the jurors in the Fortunato case said tensions were rising.

By the account of prosecutors, Mr. Fox played a role in every aspect of the crime. He supplied the computer screen name used to exchange messages with Mr. Sandy.

He met Mr. Sandy alone, prosecutors said, guiding him to the place where the others lay in hiding. And he was one of the two men identified by witnesses as chasing Mr. Sandy onto the highway.

During the trial, which began on Sept. 17, a lawyer for Mr. Fox, John D. Patten, attacked the credibility of the police and Mr. Timmins. But he built much of his defense on the legal definition of robbery.

By Mr. Patten’s account, the defendants had intended to swindle Mr. Sandy for marijuana, not to rob him by force. The most serious charge in the indictment, felony murder as a hate crime, required the element of attempted robbery.

Squinting through low-hung glasses, speaking with a light brogue and quoting from the Book of Daniel, Mr. Patten argued that the case lacked integrity. Mr. Fox, a sophomore at SUNY Maritime College at the time of his arrest, was taken from his dormitory room in the middle of the night, Mr. Patten said, and interrogated by detectives who did not read him his rights until he began making incriminating statements.

He told jurors that Mr. Timmins had described a plan merely to steal from Mr. Sandy, drawing a contrast to the use of force.

“Ripping someone off doesn’t mean much,” Mr. Patten argued. “I get ripped off when I go to Yankee Stadium and pay $10 for a beer.”

Mr. Sandy’s death, he argued, was caused by Mr. Shurov and by the driver, “this coward who’s out there probably reading all the newspaper articles on this case, who hit Mr. Sandy and killed him and then took off.”

An assistant Brooklyn district attorney, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, argued that the plan fit the definition of robbery, citing transcripts of the online messages.

“You can almost hear the grand old time they’re having as they type away,” Ms. Nicolazzi said. She added, “They were going to surround Mr. Sandy, scare him and take his money.”

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, made no comment on the jury’s application of the hate crime law, but Christine C. Quinn, the first openly lesbian City Council speaker, said, “Today a Brooklyn jury sent a powerful message that hate crimes of any stripe have no place here in New York City.”

As for the victim’s parents, they said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

“Things like this shouldn’t happen,” said Mr. Sandy’s father, Ezekial Sandy. “Hopefully something greater will come out of it.”

Outside the courthouse yesterday, the jury foreman, Jason Linetsky, 29, said the hate crime charges were the source of some debate.

“We needed clarification of: how much do we bring of our own personal feelings?” Mr. Linetsky said.

On a more basic level, the jury’s verdict included apparent contradictions, endorsing the elements of causing a death in the course of a robbery but rejecting the felony murder charges. Asked about that, Mr. Linetsky posed his own question: “Were we about to send somebody to life when he wasn’t the direct cause of it?”

Without the element of a hate crime, manslaughter is a Class C nonviolent felony carrying a minimum penalty of 1 to 3 years and a maximum of 5 to 15. As a hate crime, the charge is a Class B violent felony carrying a sentence of 5 to 15 years, according to the district attorney’s office.

The defense lawyer, Mr. Patten, said he was puzzled but generally pleased by the verdict. Mr. Fox, he said, is “a decent young boy who got involved in something he ought not to have gotten involved in.”

    Conviction in Death of Gay Man in Traffic, NYT, 6.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/nyregion/06plumb.html

Texas Ruling Signals Halt to Executions Indefinitely

October 3, 2007
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Oct. 2 — Signaling an indefinite halt to executions in Texas, the state’s highest criminal appeals court late Tuesday stayed the lethal injection of a 28-year-old Honduran man who was scheduled to be put to death Wednesday.

The reprieve by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was granted a week after the United States Supreme Court agreed to consider whether a form of lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment barred under the Eighth Amendment. On Thursday, the Supreme Court stepped in to halt a planned execution in Texas at the last minute, and though many legal experts interpreted that as a signal for all states to wait for a final ruling on lethal injection before any further executions, Texas officials said they planned to move ahead with more.

As a result, Tuesday’s ruling by the Texas court was seen as a sign that judges in the nation’s leading death penalty state were taking guidance from the Supreme Court and putting off imminent executions.

The Texas court order gave state authorities up to 30 days to explain in legal papers why the execution of the inmate, Heliberto Chi, should proceed. With responses then certain from defense lawyers, the effect of the order was to put off the execution for months, lawyers said.

Mr. Chi was convicted of killing the manager of a men’s store in Arlington in 2001.

Other executions, including four more scheduled in the next five months, were also likely to be stayed, said David R. Dow of the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit law clinic that worked on Mr. Chi’s appeal.

“Until the Court of Criminal Appeals addresses the questions raised in this case there will be no more executions in Texas,” predicted Mr. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston.

Acting less than a week after it rejected another inmate’s appeal 5 to 4, the appeals court justices provided no breakdown of the vote and did not give any reasoning for their decision. But they directed the state’s director of criminal justice, Nathaniel Quarterman, not to execute Mr. Chi and gave Mr. Quarterman and Tim Curry, the district attorney of Tarrant County, where the crime had been committed, up to 30 days to respond to claims by Mr. Chi’s lawyers that the formulation and administration of chemicals used for lethal injections did not quickly and painlessly kill but paralyzed the condemned inmates while they painfully suffocated.

Earlier Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 4 to 3 against recommending a stay for Mr. Chi. A request for a 30-day reprieve was also pending with Gov. Rick Perry.

Had the appeals court not halted the execution, Mr. Chi’s lawyers would have taken the case to the United States Supreme Court, which last Thursday stayed the execution for another Texas inmate, Carlton Turner Jr.

Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., and a law professor at New York University, said the Supreme Court’s ruling was a sign that while it was reviewing the legality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case, “it was at least unseemly for states to be carrying out executions.”

Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School, called the latest stay in Texas significant. “I do think Texas is reaching a turning point,” Ms. Denno said. “It’s not unusual throughout the country, but it is unusual in Texas. And not uncommonly when people are talking about the death penalty, there’s Texas and everywhere else, because Texas seems to be in its own death penalty world.”

But Diane Clements, president of Justice For All, a victims’ advocacy group in Texas, said the Supreme Court and the Texas appeals court gave no reasons for their rulings, “so we’re left here with no direction.”

The delays spelled more suffering for victims’ families, Ms. Clements said. “I’m sure family of that stayed-execution victim is on a roller coaster ride,” she said. “If there’s anything certain about the death penalty for families, it’s that it is very uncertain.”

    Texas Ruling Signals Halt to Executions Indefinitely, NYT, 3.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/us/03texas.html?hp

Boy Charged in Fatal Fire in Court

October 1, 2007
Filed at 11:21 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

GREENVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- A judge on Monday ordered that a 10-year-old boy accused of deliberately setting a fire that killed five people -- including his mother and sister -- be released from a juvenile detention center to the custody of his maternal grandmother.

''He's also a victim,'' Darke County Juvenile Judge Michael McClurg said to a packed hearing room, referring to the deaths of family members.

The boy had been held at a juvenile detention center in nearby Troy. Coming out of the hearing room, he smiled and waved at relatives who called out his name.

He is charged with five delinquency counts of murder and one delinquency count of aggravated arson in the Sept. 16 duplex apartment fire that killed his mother, his 8-year-old sister and three other children.

The boy's attorney said the boy denies the charges.

Although the boy's name has been widely reported, the judge on Monday said news organizations were barred from reporting the name or publishing images of the boy because the case is a juvenile proceeding. The judge said he intended to file an order later Monday.

The Associated Press filed a challenge with the court, arguing that the rule against use of the defendant's name is an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. Both the U.S. Supreme Court and Ohio Supreme Court have ruled numerous times that what the judge proposes to do is forbidden, said Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP.

''The law is very clear,'' Tomlin said. ''We hope the court is persuaded after examining the cases we've shown him that he should modify the rules he laid down this morning.''

Police say the boy confessed to setting the fire but did not mean for anyone to die. Authorities have not said how the fire was started in this western Ohio city of some 13,000 people.

His attorney has said the boy was pressured during questioning by police and that he will seek to have the confession barred from evidence.

Prosecutor Phil Hoover said the boy had said he ''no longer wanted to be in this world, and he wanted to die,'' although it was not clear whether the boy was referring to before or after the fire. But a social worker and a probation officer said they didn't consider him a suicide risk, a threat to others or a flight risk.

About 30 people demonstrated in support of the boy's release outside the Darke County Government Center, where the hearing was held.

Killed were Chanan Palmer, 30, and his sister Kaysha Minnich. The other victims were Kayla Winans, 6, Je'Shawn Davis, 5, and Jasmine Davis, 3. Their mother, Christy Winans, 31, escaped the fire.

The boy was allowed to briefly attend visitation for his mother and sister before their funerals last week, accompanied by several law enforcement officers.

    Boy Charged in Fatal Fire in Court, NYT, 1.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fatal-Fire.html

Exoneration Using DNA Brings Change in Legal System

October 1, 2007
The New York Times
By SOLOMON MOORE

State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence.

All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence and informants are used.

At least six states have created commissions to expedite cases of those wrongfully convicted or to consider changes to criminal justice procedures. One of them, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, will hold a hearing this month on remedies for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

Laws in several states, including Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina, have bipartisan backing, with many Democrats supportive on civil rights grounds and Republicans generally hoping that tighter procedures will lead to fewer challenges of convictions.

“Technology has made a big difference,” said Margaret Berger, a DNA legal expert who is on a National Academy of Sciences panel that is looking into the changing needs of forensic scientists. “We see that there are new techniques for ascertaining the truth.”

Maryland, North Carolina, Vermont and West Virginia passed legislation this year to create tougher standards for the identification of suspects by witnesses, one of the most trouble-ridden procedures.

Nationwide, misidentification by witnesses led to wrongful convictions in 75 percent of the 207 instances in which prisoners have been exonerated over the last decade, according to the Innocence Project, a group in New York that investigates wrongful convictions.

Legislatures considered 25 witness identification bills in 17 states this year, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers reported. Five states approved bills, while five states defeated them. Bills are pending in seven states.

“It’s become clear that eyewitnesses are fallible,” said Lt. Kenneth A. Patenaude, a police commander in Northampton, Mass., who is an expert on witness identification techniques.

Two states, Vermont and Maryland, passed laws this year to improve crime lab oversight to eliminate errors and omissions. Maryland recently passed a law that will hold its crime labs to the same standards as clinical labs, a much more rigorous requirement. Other legislative changes to crime lab oversight are pending in 21 states, including New York.

More than 500 local and state jurisdictions, including Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia have adopted polices that require the recording of interrogations to help prevent false confessions, according to the Innocence Project.

The California Legislature also passed a bill this year that requires informant testimony to be corroborated before it can be heard by a jury. Critics say such testimony can be unreliable, especially when it is offered by convicts or suspects in return for leniency. The bill awaits approval by the governor.

Advocates of efforts to use DNA to exonerate those wrongfully convicted say the changes in the state laws are welcome and long overdue.

“The legislative reform movement as a result of these DNA exonerations is probably the single greatest criminal justice reform effort in the last 40 years,” said Peter J. Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project.

But some law enforcement officials oppose some of the changes, saying they create legal minefields for the police and prosecutors. Any deviation from the new standards, no matter how minor, could be taken up by defense lawyers in an appeal, the critics say.

The California State Sheriffs’ Association is fighting two bills there that would mandate electronic recording of interrogations and corroboration of informant testimony. The bills have been passed by the Legislature and are awaiting final approval by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

“Simply put, these two bills create loopholes for defendants to get an edge in court on technicalities,” according to a letter from the sheriffs’ organization to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. The association also opposed a state bill that would create guidelines for suspect lineups.

Even some proponents of the new standards balk at making them state law, insisting they are better dealt with by local law enforcement agencies.

“I’m not fond of legislation,” said Lieutenant Patenaude, the Massachusetts police commander. “I’ve been asked to review bills in several states, and I haven’t seen one that mirrors the best practices that we’ve put out here. I’d like to see police agencies mold the procedures instead of legislatures or courts.”

Studies of wrongful convictions suggest that there are thousands more innocent people in jails and prisons. The Innocence Project, the nation’s most prominent organization devoted to proving wrongful convictions, is pursuing 250 cases and at any given time is reviewing 6,000 to 10,000 additional cases for legal action. Approximately 1 percent of those cases will be accepted, and half of those accepted cases are closed because evidence has been lost or destroyed.

Other smaller efforts to overturn wrongful convictions also receive thousands of letters from inmates.

In a 2005 study, a University of Michigan Law School professor, Samuel R. Gross, estimated that 340 prisoners sentenced from 1989 to 2003 had been exonerated. Of those, 205 were convicted of murder and 121 of rape. Half of the wrongful murder convictions and 88 percent of the wrongful rape convictions included false eyewitness identification, the study found.

DNA evidence was used to exonerate 144 of those inmates.

In a 2007 study, Professor Gross analyzed 3,792 death sentences imposed from 1973 to 1989 and found that 86 death row inmates, or 2.3 percent, had been exonerated through 2004

Professor Gross said the total number of innocent prisoners was likely to be far higher. In his view, well-documented wrongful convictions in capital cases provided a window on systemic problems, with even larger numbers of convictions for less serious and less publicized convictions.

“Of the 340 exonerations I looked at” in the 2005 study, Professor Gross said, “96 percent are for rape and murder.” He added: “Does that mean nobody was wrongfully convicted for drug possession, or drunk driving or burglary? Chances are there are many, many more false convictions for lesser crimes.” The most recent prisoner to be exonerated by DNA evidence was Dwayne Allen Dail, who served 18 years in North Carolina for a false conviction of child rape. Prosecutors had used the victim’s identification of Mr. Dail and hair found at the crime scene to convict him. Years later, after repeated inquires from defense lawyers, the police found a box of additional evidence in the case that contained the victim’s semen-stained nightgown. DNA analysis ruled out Mr. Dail and implicated another man. Mr. Dail was released from prison in August.

The proposed laws on witness identification are intended to reduce cases like Mr. Dail’s by requiring things like sequential photo lineups of suspects, in which police officers show witnesses photographs of one suspect at a time. Studies have shown that witnesses tend to compare photos when they are shown them simultaneously, a tendency that can lead to errors.

The legislation would also create “double blind” systems so that the police officers administering the photo lineups are unaware of the suspects’ identities in order to avoid influencing witnesses.

The North Carolina legislature adopted both lineup procedures this year.

Crimes labs are also getting additional scrutiny in some states.

William E. Marbaker, president of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, an independent accreditation body, said the group had accredited more than 300 crime labs. But some law enforcement agencies are finding that even more oversight is needed.

A two-year review of the Houston Police Department’s crime lab called into question more than 600 cases. The review was initiated after a court found in 2005 that faulty forensic evidence led to the conviction of George Rodriguez in 1987 for kidnapping and assaulting a child. Mr. Rodriguez served 17 years of a 60-year sentence before his release two years ago.

Houston crime lab officials erroneously concluded that hair found at the crime scene belonged to Mr. Rodriguez. The crime lab also failed to rule out Mr. Rodriguez as a suspect after finding that semen collected from the scene matched that of another man.

Eight states — Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming — do not have laws that give inmates access to DNA evidence.

Advocacy groups, including the Innocence Project, said they intend to lobby for the passage of access laws in those states during the next legislative session.

    Exoneration Using DNA Brings Change in Legal System, NYT, 1.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/us/01exonerate.html?hp

Procreation Ban on Homeless Pair Tossed

September 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:44 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A family court judge overstepped her authority by ordering a drug-addicted homeless couple to have no more children, a state appeals court ruled Friday in overturning the ban.

Judge Marilyn O'Connor banned Stephanie Pendleton and Rodney Evers in 2004 from having more children until they could get back the four children they lost to foster care, three of whom tested positive for cocaine at birth.

Pendleton, now 38, challenged the ruling.

''We conclude that the court had no authority to prohibit (Pendleton) from procreating,'' a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court wrote.

O'Connor had directed Pendleton and Evers to seek family planning services, parenting counseling and treatment for drug addiction.

''All babies deserve more than to be born to parents who have proven they cannot possibly raise or parent a child,'' O'Connor wrote. ''This neglected existence is an immense burden to place on a child and on society.''

That ruling drew fierce criticism from civil libertarians, particularly the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the appeal arguing that the ruling effectively required Pendleton to abstain from sex, use birth control or be sterilized.

The appeals judges denied O'Connor's contention that her right to declare a ''no pregnancy'' order is implied in a section of the law that allows a judge to impose medical treatment.

The appeals decision doesn't affect O'Connor's finding that the children were neglected, nor a ruling that their parents should be stripped of their parental rights. All four of Pendleton's children are in new homes.

    Procreation Ban on Homeless Pair Tossed, NYT, 28.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Procreation-Ban.html

Jena 6 Teen Released on $45, 000 Bail

September 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:36 a.m. ET
The New York Times

JENA, La. (AP) -- A black teenager whose prosecution in the beating of a white classmate prompted a massive civil rights protest here walked out of a courthouse Thursday after a judge ordered him freed.

Mychal Bell's release on $45,000 bail came hours after a prosecutor confirmed he would no longer seek an adult trial for the 17-year-old. Bell, one of the teenagers known as the Jena Six, still faces trial as a juvenile in the December beating in this small central Louisiana town.

''We still have mountains to climb, but at least this is closer to an even playing field,'' said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize last week's protest.

''He goes home because a lot of people left their home and stood up for him,'' Sharpton said as Bell stood smiling next to him.

''There's only one person who could have brought me through this and that's the good Lord,'' Bell told reporters later in front of his father's house.

District Attorney Reed Walters' decision to abandon adult charges means that Bell, who had faced a maximum of 15 years in prison on his aggravated second-degree battery conviction last month, instead could be held only until he turns 21 if he is found guilty in juvenile court.

The conviction in adult court was thrown out this month by the state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, which said Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that particular charge.

Walters had said he would appeal that decision. On Thursday, he said he still believes there was legal merit to trying Bell as an adult but decided it was in the best interest of the victim, Justin Barker, and his family to let the juvenile court handle the case.

''They are on board with what I decided,'' Walters said at a news conference.

Bell faces juvenile court charges of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit that crime.

He is among six black Jena High School students arrested in December after a beating that left Barker unconscious and bloody, though the victim was able to attend a school function later that day. Four of the defendants were 17 at the time, which made them adults under Louisiana law.

Those four and Bell, who was 16, all were initially charged with attempted murder. Walters has said he sought to have Bell tried as an adult because he already had a criminal record, and because he believed Bell instigated the attack.

The charges have been dropped to aggravated second-degree battery in four of the cases. One defendant has yet to be arraigned. The sixth defendant's case is sealed in juvenile court.

Bell's lawyer, Carol Powell Lexing, said his next hearing is set for Tuesday.

Critics accuse Walters, who is white, of prosecuting blacks more harshly than whites. They note that he filed no charges against three white teens suspended from the high school over allegations they hung nooses in a tree on campus not long before fights between blacks and whites, including the attack on Barker.

An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 protesters marched in Jena last week in a scene that evoked the early years of the civil rights movement.

Walters said the demonstration had no influence on his decision not to press the adult charges, and ended his news conference by saying that only God kept the protest peaceful.

''The only way -- let me stress that -- the only way that I believe that me or this community has been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community,'' Walters said.

''I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened. You can quote me on that.''

The Rev. Donald Sibley, a black Jena pastor, called it a ''shame'' that Walters credited divine intervention for the protesters acting responsibly.

''What I'm saying is, the Lord Jesus Christ put his influence on those people, and they responded accordingly,'' Walters responded.

After the news conference, Sibley told CNN that Walters had insulted the protesters by making a false separation between ''his Christ and our Christ.''

''For him to use it in the sense that because his Christ, his Jesus, because he prayed, because of his police, that everything was peaceful and was decent and in order -- that's not the truth,'' Sibley said.

Walters has said repeatedly that Barker's suffering has been lost in the furor over the case, and that what happened to the teen was much more severe than a schoolyard fight.

Walters also has defended his decision not to seek charges in the hanging of the nooses, which he said was ''abhorrent and stupid'' but not a crime.

    Jena 6 Teen Released on $45, 000 Bail, NYT, 28.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Jena-Six.html

A Prosecution Tests the Definition of Obscenity

September 28, 2007
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

PITTSBURGH — Sometime early next year, Karen Fletcher, a 56-year-old recluse living on disability payments, will go on trial in federal court here on obscenity charges for writings distributed on the Internet to about two dozen subscribers.

In an era when pornography has exploded on the Web almost beyond measure, Ms. Fletcher is one of only a handful of people to have been singled out for prosecution on obscenity charges by the Bush administration. She faces six felony counts for operating a Web site called Red Rose, which featured detailed fictional accounts of the molesting, torture and sometimes gruesome murders of children under the age of 10, mostly girls.

How Ms. Fletcher came to be selected for federal prosecution among the countless pornography purveyors is a vivid illustration of the fractured and uncertain state of the enforcement of obscenity law in the nation.

Most prosecutors are generally reluctant to bring obscenity cases, regarding them both as difficult and a diversion of resources better spent on other crimes. Moreover, the explosion of Internet pornography from sources around the world has convinced many law enforcement officials that it is all but impossible to have a significant impact on the issue.

The Fletcher case has been brought by Mary Beth Buchanan, the United States attorney for Western Pennsylvania, who is regarded by many people in the pornography industry and by outside analysts as the government’s most aggressive opponent of the spread of pornography in the nation.

Ms. Buchanan, the 44-year-old daughter of a steelworker who went through law school as a single mother, is disdainful of prosecutors who have avoided taking on obscenity cases. Unlike her counterparts, she said in a recent interview, “I’m not afraid of the challenges, legal or otherwise, here.”

What has attracted the attention of First Amendment scholars and lawyers is that Red Rose — which Ms. Fletcher says is an effort to help her deal with her own pain from child sexual abuse — was composed entirely of text without any images.

Although a narrowly divided Supreme Court said in 1973 that images were not necessary to label a work obscene, there has not been a successful obscenity prosecution in the country that did not involve drawings or photographs since then.

Courts have overturned or blocked convictions connected to other nonillustrated books, including the well-known “Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure,” on the basis that sexual images have a fundamentally different impact than words alone.

Prof. Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, a leading constitutional scholar, said that although the court had not ruled out the possibility that text alone might be obscene, “the idea that the written word alone can be prosecuted pushes to the limit the underlying rationale of the obscenity law.” But Professor Tribe noted that even though the Fletcher case did not involve images, courts might view “patently offensive descriptions of sexual acts with children” as prosecutable under obscenity laws.

About the same time the Fletcher case goes to trial, Ms. Buchanan will be prosecuting a second obscenity trial in the same courthouse involving a large-scale producer of pornographic films called Extreme Associates, based in California. The company’s films depicted women being gang-raped and defecated on.

In addition to those cases, Ms. Buchanan said in the interview that she had several more in the pipeline.

Todd Lochner, an assistant professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., who has written about prosecutorial decision-making in obscenity cases, said that Ms. Buchanan had established herself as the nation’s foremost obscenity prosecutor. “I can’t think of anybody who is as aggressive as she is,” Professor Lochner said.

Ms. Buchanan said she selected cases that she hoped would have deterrent effects on other pornographers.

“We want producers to know that these things are not tolerated,” she said. Ms. Buchanan said that the rarity of obscenity prosecutions during the eight years of the Clinton administration meant that the pornography industry had come to believe that law enforcement had tacitly “agreed to an anything-goes approach.”

Professor Lochner said he doubted Ms. Buchanan’s efforts would have much of a deterrent effect because they were so few that pornography producers had come to regard being prosecuted by her or anyone else as “being struck by lightning.”

While pornography by itself is not illegal, it can be prosecuted as obscenity if it fits the definition laid out by the Supreme Court more than 30 years ago. Under that ruling, Miller v. California, a work may be deemed obscene if, taken as a whole, it lacks artistic, literary or scientific merit, depicts certain conduct in a patently offensive manner, and violates contemporary community standards.

Despite stirring anti-pornography speeches by both heads of the Justice Department during the Bush administration — John Ashcroft and, more recently, Alberto R. Gonzales — there have been fewer than two dozen federal obscenity prosecutions that did not also involve charges of child pornography. The making and possession of child pornography, a separate category, has, however, been prosecuted widely. (Ms. Fletcher is not being prosecuted for any violations of the child pornography laws.)

Michael B. Mukasey, the former federal judge nominated to be the new attorney general, has no history of taking a position on the issue of obscenity, said lawyers from both liberal and conservative groups who have researched his record. Ms. Buchanan said the Fletcher Web site and the Extreme Associates videos were “way beyond patently offensive.”

Ms. Fletcher’s lawyers argued that courts should finally declare that text-only works are not obscene. But Judge Joy F. Conti of Federal District Court here ruled on Aug. 30 that a 2005 appellate court victory for Ms. Buchanan in the Extreme Associates case ruled out that possibility. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that trial judges are still obligated to follow long-established obscenity definitions until and unless the Supreme Court explicitly rejects it.

The Fletcher trial is likely to focus on the defense’s main argument, that Ms. Fletcher’s stories, however lurid, have some literary and scientific merit. Lawrence G. Walters, a Florida lawyer who is part of the defense team for Ms. Fletcher, argued in a court pleading that the stories had scientific value because they demonstrated the thinking of child predators.

In an affidavit, Ms. Fletcher described herself as a victim of child sexual abuse and said that writing her stories helped alleviate her torment.

Ms. Fletcher, who lives in Donora, Pa., in a ramshackle house, said she ran away from home at 14. She said she wanted her Web site to be a “safe place for cathartic writing, for people to express themselves and use their own imagery, not to have pictures to potentially excite and be suggestive to readers.”

The indictment, which has the potential for a long prison term, charges Ms. Fletcher with commercial involvement with obscenity because she charged people $10 to join her group. Jerome Mooney, another of her lawyers, argued in court that the fee barely covered her expenses and was imposed only because she believed using a credit card requirement would prevent minors from signing into the site. In the end, only 29 people subscribed, at least one of whom is likely to have been a police informant.

In their brief, the defense lawyers argued that the Fletcher stories, however lurid, were also comparable to many scenes found in literature and television. They cited the 1962 novel “A Clockwork Orange,” by Anthony Burgess, and episodes of the cartoon show “South Park.” They also cited a scene in a 1996 novel by I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, in which a 10-year-old girl is placed in a cage with a bear who forces himself upon her sexually to habituate her to sexual submission.

The lawyers argued that Ms. Fletcher’s stories were no more lurid than the novel by Mr. Libby.

    A Prosecution Tests the Definition of Obscenity, NYT, 28.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/us/28obscene.html

Woman Sentenced in Bathtub Burning

September 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:31 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) -- A woman was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison in the death of a mentally disabled man who prosecutors say was forced to wear a T-shirt soaked in lighter fluid and was then set on fire in a bathtub.

Melissa Adams, 25, of Butler, pleaded guilty this month to third-degree murder in the death of 30-year-old Jason Michael Ritzert, whose body was found burned beyond recognition in a trash bin in 2005.

Prosecutors had charged Adams with first-degree murder and were seeking the death penalty before the plea deal.

Two men previously pleaded guilty in the case. Timothy James Caldwell, 30, is serving a life term in prison after pleading guilty in March to first-degree murder, and Russell Hilliard, 36, pleaded guilty in May to third-degree murder and faces sentencing Oct. 23.

Ritzert was forced to wear the lighter fluid-soaked T-shirt and was set on fire as he lay in a bathtub, police said. After Ritzert lost consciousness, Caldwell kicked him and put his foot on Ritzert's chest and neck for five to 10 minutes, police said. The defendants then took Ritzert's body to a trash bin, where they set it on fire, police said.

Adams on Wednesday asked Ritzert's family to forgive her.

Authorities said Caldwell and Adams tortured and killed Ritzert, who lived with them, because they thought he was stealing money, and Hilliard was accused of burning and torturing the man.

    Woman Sentenced in Bathtub Burning, NYT, 27.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Torture-Death.html

Blanco: No Challenge of 'Jena 6' Ruling

September 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:45 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- The prosecutor in the ''Jena 6'' cases has decided not to challenge a ruling that sent 17-year-old Mychal Bell's case to juvenile court.

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters had earlier said he would appeal the state appeals court's decision to set aside Bell's second-degree battery conviction on the grounds that Bell should not have been tried as an adult.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced Wednesday that she had spoken with Walters and asked him to reconsider pushing to keep the case in the adult system. She said Walters contacted her Wednesday to say he had decided not to appeal the ruling.

''I want to thank him for this decision he has made,'' Blanco said.

Bell, who remains behind bars, was one of six Jena High School teens arrested after a December attack on a white student, Justin Barker. Five of the six teens initially were charged with attempted second-degree murder, though charges for four of them, including Bell, were later reduced. One teen has yet to be arraigned, another was handled as a juvenile and records are sealed.

Blanco made the announcement at a news conference with activists Martin Luther King III and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton said he hopes a bond will be set low enough to allow for Bell's release, and he thanked Blanco for getting involved.

''I want to congratulate her for showing leadership,'' Sharpton said. ''And I want to congratulate the district attorney for good judgment.''

Blanco said Walters gave her permission to announce his decision and said he planned to discuss his decision publicly Thursday.

The case brought more than 20,000 protesters to the central Louisiana town of Jena last week in a marched that harkened back to the demonstrations of the 1960s.

Critics accuse local officials of prosecuting blacks more harshly than whites. They note that no charges were filed against three white teens suspended from the high school for allegedly hanging nooses in a tree on campus -- an incident that was followed by fights between blacks and whites, including the attack on Barker.

Walters condemned the noose incident, calling it ''abhorrent and stupid'' in a New York Times op-ed piece this week, but he said the act broke no Louisiana law.

In the article, Walters defended the aggravated second-degree battery counts most of those charged in the attack on Barker now face. He said Barker was ''blindsided,'' knocked unconscious and kicked by at least six people, and would have faced ''severe injury or death'' had another student not intervened.

    Blanco: No Challenge of 'Jena 6' Ruling, NYT, 27.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Jena-Six.html

Mistrial Declared in Spector Murder Case

September 27, 2007
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 26 — The murder trial of the music producer Phil Spector ended on Wednesday in a mistrial after the jury, leaning heavily to convict him, could not reach a unanimous verdict.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said it planned to retry the case.

Mr. Spector, 67, charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Lana Clarkson in his home in 2003, stared blankly forward as Judge Larry Paul Fidler of Superior Court ended the proceedings after the jury foreman had reported a 10-2 deadlock.

The impasse occurred after an earlier deadlock of 7-5 that jurors later said also tilted toward conviction. That impasse led the judge to take the unusual step of sending the jurors back to deliberate with new instructions, angering the defense.

Three jurors, speaking to reporters afterward, said the two holdouts gave credence to a defense assertion that the death of Ms. Clarkson, 40, a struggling actress, might have been a suicide rather than a murder.

The three jurors said the jury had also been troubled by the lack of large amounts of blood on Mr. Spector and the poor English of a witness, Mr. Spector’s driver, who said he had heard Mr. Spector say, “I think I killed somebody.”

Judge Fidler retained orders for silence, preventing lawyers and others in the case from speaking publicly. He set a hearing for Oct. 3.

Mr. Spector, the mastermind behind hits like “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Be My Baby,” escorted by his wife, lawyers and bodyguards, left through an adjacent courtroom without saying a word, free on bail.

He joins Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson and Robert Blake among celebrities whom Southern California prosecutors have failed to convict in high-profile criminal cases.

Alan Jackson, a lead prosecutor in the case, sat glumly in a courthouse hallway as a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office reiterated the judge’s order barring him from speaking.

“We’re disappointed the jury was unable to reach a verdict in this case, and we will immediately begin preparations for a retrial,” the spokeswoman, Sandi Gibbons, said later at a news conference. She declined to comment further.

Mr. Spector was accused of killing Ms. Clarkson, whom he had met at a nightclub hours before she was found dead from a gunshot wound to her mouth in the foyer of Mr. Spector’s house in a Los Angeles suburb.

Prosecutors said Mr. Spector shot Ms. Clarkson in an alcohol-fueled rage after she had resisted his advances. They presented testimony from five other women who described similar threats by Mr. Spector.

The prosectors failed to present forensic evidence that placed the gun in Mr. Spector’s hand and relied instead on a spray of blood on his clothes.

The defense, portraying Ms. Clarkson as despondent over her career and finances, presented experts and scientific evidence to buttress their assertion that she had shot herself, intentionally or not. They said the pattern of blood indicated that Mr. Spector was too far away to have pulled the trigger.

One juror who declined to give his name said he voted to convict, because given “the totality of the evidence, what was the most plausible reason she could have died.”

Another juror suggested that a psychological profile of Ms. Clarkson by prosecutors might have indicated whether she had been suicidal.

The jury foreman said some jurors were troubled with the statement from Mr. Spector’s driver, Adriano De Souza, a Brazilian immigrant, who admitted having problems with English.

The case was remarkable for the virtual second chance the judge gave prosecutors after the jury reported a deadlock on Sept. 10, having deliberated for seven days.

Judge Fidler removed an instruction that they considered confusing, ruling that it misstated the law on second-degree murder, and read them new instructions that, to the fury of the defense, included a few situations in which Mr. Spector could have killed Ms. Clarkson.

Jean Rosenbluth, a former federal prosecutor and University of Southern California law professor who monitored the case, said there was little more prosecutors could have done.

Professor Rosenbluth said she doubted that jurors were impressed by Mr. Spector’s celebrity, as he was a behind-the-scenes figure and his fame had faded from the 1960s and early ’70s.

She suggested that the defense had succeeded in creating doubt about the prosecution case with expert witnesses and said prosecutors had erred in not pushing hard for the jury to consider a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.

“A lot people may say this is just like the other cases, but he was not acquitted,” Professor Rosenbluth said. “He was almost convicted. I think this says much more about money than celebrity and the resources money can buy when you are on trial.”

It was the first televised Los Angeles celebrity trial since the Simpson case in 1995, but it did not attract the following or frenzied coverage of that or other cases.

Mr. Spector has not been behind a hit in decades. He is best known in music circles for his Wall of Sound technique, marrying lush orchestral arrangements to guitars and other staples of pop music. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he collaborated with top rock stars, including the Beatles.

    Mistrial Declared in Spector Murder Case, NYT, 27.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/us/27spector.html?hp

Wife of Murdered Reservist Gets Life

September 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:21 a.m. ET
The New York Times

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- The wife of a Navy reservist was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to murder in the death of her husband, who was shot by her then-teenage lover and his friend.

Monique Berkley, 27, entered the plea in Wake County Superior Court in an agreement with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty.

Her husband, Paul Berkley, was shot in the head at a park in December 2005, days after returning home for Christmas after nearly a year in the Middle East.

Last month, Andrew Canty, 20, pleaded guilty to murdering Paul Berkley. The friend, Latwon Johnson, 20, cooperated early with prosecutors and faces a first-degree murder charge.

Monique Berkley was accused of luring her husband to the park so Canty and Johnson could shoot him and the three would then share a payout from a $400,000 life insurance policy. She met the two through her husband's teenage children; Canty was a friend of her stepson and Johnson was her stepdaughter's former boyfriend.

Prosecutors said Canty, who was 18 at the time of the shooting, moved in with Monique Berkley after her husband left so they could carry on an affair.

    Wife of Murdered Reservist Gets Life, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Reservist-Killed.html

Sect Leader Is Convicted as an Accomplice to Rape

September 26, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN DOUGHERTY and KIRK JOHNSON

ST. GEORGE, Utah, Sept. 25 — The polygamist Warren S. Jeffs, hailed by his followers as a prophet but denounced by critics as a tyrannical cult leader, was convicted here on Tuesday of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old church member.

Mr. Jeffs, 51, faces up to life in prison.

The verdict, by an eight-member state jury here in Washington County, was a vindication of the prosecution’s argument — which some experts had thought might be hard to accept — that orchestrating a marriage of a young girl under duress made Mr. Jeffs culpable even though he was not present when the rape occurred.

The girl at the center of the case, who is now 21, testified that she was pressed by Mr. Jeffs in early 2001 into a “celestial marriage” she did not want, to a cousin she did not like. The girl’s cousin has not been charged.

Prosecutors said Mr. Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon sect with an estimated 10,000 members, knew that the marriage would lead to nonconsensual sex.

The jurors, who began their deliberations on Friday after a week of testimony, announced in a note on Monday that they were deadlocked on one of two charges. The judge, James L. Shumate, pressed them to continue, and then early on Tuesday, for reasons the court did not explain, an alternate juror was substituted for one of the original panel members. A unanimous verdict came a few hours later.

When the verdict was read, about 2:30 p.m., Mr. Jeffs showed no emotion, and his followers who had filled the back rows of the courtroom remained silent.

In the deeply isolated polygamist communities of Hildale, Utah, and adjacent Colorado City, Ariz., about an hour southeast of St. George, residents said the verdict would probably just harden the lines of resistance.

“That just makes him all the more the prophet,” said Isaac Wyler of Colorado City. Mr. Wyler said Mr. Jeffs ordered him to leave the church in 2004 but gave no reason.

Benjamin Bistline, who left the church voluntarily, said he thought the verdict would shift the balance of church activities — especially marriages — away from the historic base here in southern Utah to more recently established compounds that the leadership tightly controls in Texas, South Dakota and elsewhere.

“They believe that polygamy is God’s word, and they will still do under-age marriages,” said Mr. Bistline, who has written a history of the sect.

Mr. Jeffs, whose sentencing was scheduled for Nov. 20, still faces state charges in Arizona related to performing under-age or incestuous marriages, and a federal indictment for flight to avoid prosecution. He was arrested in August 2006 near Las Vegas after four months on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted List.

Mr. Jeffs’s trial was not about polygamy or religion — at least on the surface. But the decades of bitter relations between the state of Utah, dominated by mainstream Mormons from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Mr. Jeffs’s renegade sect was never far away.

The mainstream church renounced plural marriage in 1890. In response, some fundamentalist Mormons formed a sect, declaring that the teachings of Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, had been forsaken. Mr. Jeffs’s lawyer told the jury the trial was really about that old conflict, and about the freedom of religion — a deeply resonant theme here.

The prosecutor, Brock Belnap, said religion was not only irrelevant, but also a deliberate distraction that he said the defense was trying to inject to cloud jurors’ judgment. He said after the verdict that he expected an appeal.

One of Mr. Jeffs’s lawyers, Walter F. Bugden, said they would appeal.

The girl in the case, who was identified by the court as Jane Doe, said in a statement read outside the courthouse that the case was not about vengeance.

“The trial has not been about religion nor a vendetta,” she said. “It is simply about child abuse and preventing further abuse.”

The eight jurors, who agreed to be interviewed by reporters inside the courtroom, said Mr. Belnap’s closing statement was crucial in giving them a roadmap of the law.

“It was the closing statement that did it,” said Rachel Karimi, the alternate juror who joined the panel Tuesday morning. Ms. Karimi, 28, and the other jurors, declined to discuss the dismissed juror except to say she had also favored conviction.

Some jurors said they were convinced that Mr. Jeffs had overwhelming power over the lives in his community — a conclusion crucial to reaching the verdict. One juror, Lynn Maxwell, 40, said, “He was not there to help her when things went wrong, and she was raped.”

The jurors said they also dismissed the defense argument that the focus on Mr. Jeffs was unfair because others in the church could have done something to help. The girl’s mother and her sister to whom she went for help would have faced repercussions, the jurors said.

“He was the only one who had the power,” said another juror, Diedre Shaw, 32.

    Sect Leader Is Convicted as an Accomplice to Rape, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/us/26jeffs.html

Jury Selection Begins in Boot Camp Death

September 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:25 p.m. ET
The New York Times

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- Chanting demonstrators carried photographs of a dead teenager as jury selection began Monday for the manslaughter trial of seven boot camp guards and a nurse who are charged in the boy's death.

Martin Lee Anderson was 14 when he died in January 2006 at the now-closed Bay County Juvenile Boot Camp.

He had been sent there for a probation violation and became lethargic during a physical fitness test shortly after arriving. An exercise yard videotape shows seven guards repeatedly hitting the boy with their fists and knees. The camp nurse is accused of watching but doing nothing during most of the 30-minute encounter.

More than 1,400 Bay County residents were summoned for jury selection, being held in a makeshift courtroom in a civic center to accommodate the crowd. That is one of every 90 adults in the Florida Panhandle county.

The large number is needed because the case has gotten so much media attention locally. If an impartial panel can't be found, the trial will be moved to another Florida county.

More than 400 people were expected to be screened Monday, and Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet told attorneys he expected the process to continue past 8 p.m. ''We will have to work to get through this panel,'' he said.

About 20 demonstrators stood outside the civic center and carried large posters showing Anderson and bearing slogans such as ''Justice 4 Martin.''

Their chants of ''What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now'' could be heard in the second-floor courtroom.

The original autopsy on Anderson, conducted by the Bay County medical examiner, attributed his death to natural complications of sickle cell trait, a genetic blood disorder.

After an outcry from Anderson's family and the public, his body was exhumed and a second autopsy by another doctor found he had suffocated.

The defense will lean heavily on the first autopsy, saying it shows the guards' and nurse's actions were not to blame.

Then-Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober to prosecute the case, citing a potential conflict of interest for local prosecutors. His team will say that the second autopsy combined with the video shows that Anderson was killed.

The Florida Legislature dismantled the state's military-style youth boot camps after Anderson's death. The case also led to the resignation of the chief of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

    Jury Selection Begins in Boot Camp Death, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Boot-Camp-Death.html

Spector Jury Is Locked in 7 - 5 Impasse

September 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:38 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The judge in Phil Spector's murder trial said he is considering giving jurors the option of finding the record producer guilty of a lesser charge than second degree murder after the panelists reported a 7-5 impasse following seven days of deliberations.

Spector's defense team was expected Wednesday to vigorously oppose Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler's expected proposal to help jurors break their deadlock, while legal scholars said a conviction on lesser charges could be vulnerable to appeal.

Fidler had previously rejected the option of letting jurors find Spector guilty of involuntary manslaughter rather than the second degree murder charge that has dominated the trial.

Spector, 67, a music legend, is charged with murdering actress Lana Clarkson in his Alhambra mansion on Feb. 3, 2003, a few hours after she met him at her job as a nightclub hostess and went home with him.

The defense maintains Clarkson, 40, was depressed and shot herself in the mouth either on purpose or by accident.

The jury foreman, a 32-year-old civil engineer, told the judge that he saw little hope of resolving the impasse and indicated jurors were in disagreement about facts in the case, not about the law.

''I believe it comes down to the individual jurors' conclusions that are drawn from the facts,'' said the foreman. ''At this time I don't believe that anything else will change the positions of the jurors, based on the facts that are in evidence.''

He said the panel had taken four votes before reporting the deadlock.

However, three jurors suggested that rereading jury instructions on the question of reasonable doubt might help. One juror asked for an explanation of ''the difference between reasonable doubt and doubt.''

The judge, clearly troubled by the prospect of a hung jury after five months of trial, told jurors he might give them some new instructions, or even have attorneys reargue part of the case.

Legal experts said Fidler would be risking appellate disapproval if a conviction was obtained after adding involuntary manslaughter as an option.

''He's certainly taking a gamble that the defense won't be able to make a plausible argument on appeal,'' said Jody Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California.

The judge's apparent willingness to let jurors consider the lesser charge marks a departure from his comments before final arguments on Aug. 26, when he told attorneys he had researched the law and felt there was no legal reason to instruct jurors on so-called ''lesser included offenses'' of involuntary or voluntary manslaughter.

He told lawyers not to mention such an option in closing arguments.

''I would never allow that,'' Fidler said at the time. ''The only verdict form they will get is second-degree murder.''

On Tuesday, he said he had been researching the law while jurors were deliberating and had come upon a case that contradicted that view.

But Loyola University Law School professor Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor, said the case cited by Fidler as precedent did not involve a situation where jurors had already deliberated and reported an impasse.

If a conviction was obtained after they were instructed to consider a lesser charge, ''this would be the biggest issue on appeal,'' she said. ''If the judge gives the instruction now, it looks like he's pressing the jurors for a compromise verdict.''

    Spector Jury Is Locked in 7 - 5 Impasse, NYT, 19.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Phil-Spector.html

Scared Silent

In Prosecution of Gang, a Chilling Adversary: The Code of the Streets

September 19, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

TRENTON, Sept. 18 — In the days after Jeri Lynn Dotson, a member of the Latin Kings, was killed in front of her 2-year-old daughter, her death stood as a particularly heartless example of the dangers of being seen as a potential crime witness.

Ms. Dotson, 23, saw fellow gang members kidnap a man who was later choked and left for dead in a garbage bin on Aug. 30, 2004. The next day, she was shot twice in the head and left on the floor of her Trenton home with a cigarette lighter and pieces of candy on her body.

Her killing set off a new round of witness intimidation, and presented a stark challenge for the authorities: how to make a case against the gang members suspected of killing her. The police and prosecutors have lined up four Latin Kings members to testify, pledging to protect them against threats, offering them plea bargains and reduced sentences in return for their testimony and their promise not to back down.

But the case has not gone smoothly. One witness was attacked while in protective custody and scalded in the face with hot oil. And a Latin Kings leader charged in Ms. Dotson’s killing said in a jailhouse interview this month that the gang members now cooperating with prosecutors were unlikely to make it to the witness stand, or to survive if they testified.

“Snitches wear stitches,” the leader, Jose Negrete, 25, said with a smile.

In recent years, the authorities in New Jersey have struggled to successfully prosecute cases involving all sorts of homicides, as the state’s murder rate has climbed and the problem of witness intimidation has spread. But for prosecutors, who do not get to pick their cases, it is hard to rival the hardships of making a case like the one intended to avenge Ms. Dotson.

Still, they are bound by duty. Even if Ms. Dotson, who was a “queen” in the gang, was not the most sympathetic victim, imprisoning her killers may spare more lives in the future. And so this week, prosecutors are in court here selecting jurors and keeping their fingers crossed, determined to prevent the threats to witnesses from derailing their case against the first of the men to be tried in Ms. Dotson’s killing.

To appreciate the complexities of their task, consider the efforts to persuade Roberto Rodriguez, former head of Trenton’s Latin Kings, to testify against the accused killers of Ms. Dotson — men who are members of a gang he has belonged to for more than a decade.

A native of Chicago, the birthplace of the Latin Kings, Mr. Rodriguez, 32, is known as Bam-Bam. He joined the gang as a teenager and his activities there earned him a criminal record for drug sales and a reputation as a low-key but loyal soldier. By early 2003, according to police records, he had moved to Trenton, and he later served briefly as the interim Inca, or leader, of the gang’s eight members in the area.

Mr. Negrete was elected to replace Mr. Rodriguez as the gang’s local leader on July 4, 2004. The gang’s membership quickly grew, and a violent rivalry with another gang, the Ñetas, soon developed.

By the end of August, the feud had escalated, and Alex Ruiz, a member of the Ñetas, was kidnapped, strangled and left for dead. Mr. Ruiz lived. But a day after his kidnapping, Ms. Dotson was killed. Detective Frank Clayton, then the gang specialist for the Trenton police, suspected that she had been killed because other members of the Latin Kings doubted her loyalty — she had dated a Ñeta leader — and feared she might testify about what she had seen.

Detective Clayton, Detective Sgt. Albert DiNatale and prosecutors eventually pieced together what they believed was the violent sequence of events: Mr. Negrete had ordered the kidnapping and attack on Mr. Ruiz, and it was Mr. Rodriguez who had carried out the attack. The investigators, turning gang members against one another, then concluded that Mr. Negrete had also ordered Ms. Dotson’s killing.

Prosecutors wanted to strengthen their case against Mr. Negrete and others by persuading Mr. Rodriguez to turn on them. Mr. Rodriguez, who faced a lengthy prison sentence if convicted in Mr. Ruiz’s kidnapping, agreed to testify against Mr. Negrete in exchange for a reduced sentence of 12 years.

In 2005, prosecutors placed Mr. Rodriguez in a special wing of the Mercer County Jail. A few weeks later, he was summoned to the door of his cell, where a small slot opens to allow food trays to slide in and out. As he put his face near the opening, Mr. Rodriguez was showered with a scalding mixture of water and baby oil that had been heated in a microwave. He suffered burns so severe that he was hospitalized.

The inmate who admitted to the attack, according to an incident report, spelled out his simple motive.

“I heard he was a snitch,” the inmate told investigators.

Mr. Rodriguez has been returned to protective custody at the jail, and his family, including his child, has moved from the area. He is scheduled to appear in court this week in the prosecution of Angel Hernandez, 21, the man charged with being Mr. Negrete’s triggerman in the killing of Ms. Dotson. It remains to be seen whether the threats and violence will sway Mr. Rodriguez’s testimony.

Mr. Negrete, in an interview at the jail, did not stifle a smile when asked about the attack on Mr. Rodriguez. Mr. Negrete said he was not involved. He indicated that there would be no need to order retribution against a gang member who cooperates with the police, because it is such a severe violation of the street code that retaliation is almost inevitable.

Whatever Mr. Rodriguez does on the witness stand, prosecutors say they are confident that they have enough other evidence against Mr. Hernandez, including his own confession and the testimony of three other gang members who have accused him of shooting Ms. Dotson.

James Sacks-Wilner, Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, insists that his client did not kill Ms. Dotson. He contends that Mr. Hernandez confessed to the crime only because Mr. Negrete had ordered him to, and said he would kill Mr. Hernandez’s family if he did not.

Mr. Negrete, in the interview, said he believed Mr. Rodriguez and the three other Latin Kings who have agreed to cooperate would ultimately realize that the risks of testifying far outweigh any benefit.

“What’s Bam-Bam going to do, take his plea deal, do his 12 years in protective custody?” he said. “Then what? What’s he going to do when he gets out? Where’s he going to go where no one will be able to find him?”

    In Prosecution of Gang, a Chilling Adversary: The Code of the Streets, NYT, 19.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/nyregion/19gangs.html

New Murder Charge in ’66 Shooting

September 19, 2007
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 13 — William J. Barnes shot and partly paralyzed a Philadelphia police officer in 1966, and he served 20 years for it and related offenses.

But last month, 41 years after the shooting, the district attorney filed new charges of murder after the officer, Walter T. Barclay Jr., died of an infection she says stems from the shooting. Mr. Barnes, now 71, was sent back to prison.

“The law is that when you set in motion a chain of events,” District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said, “a perpetrator of a crime is responsible for every single thing that flows from that chain of events, no matter how distant, as long as we can prove the chain is unbroken.”

She plans to prove that the bullet that lodged near Mr. Barclay’s spine in 1966 led to the urinary tract infection that led to his death last month.

The case has drawn national attention as most legal experts say they have never seen an attempt to stretch causation medically across four decades, and some say they worry about the precedent the case could set concerning double jeopardy.

Moreover, establishing an unbroken chain could be difficult in light of Mr. Barclay’s medical history.

After his initial paralysis, his condition improved significantly and he regained motion in his legs, walking with braces and riding short distances on a stationary bicycle. But he reinjured his spine repeatedly, in two car accidents and in a fall from his wheelchair, according to interviews with relatives and news reports from the era.

While paralyzed, Mr. Barclay also contracted hepatitis, according to his family, which medical experts say could have weakened his ability later to fight off infections. The district attorney’s office has also confirmed that although the coroner’s office ruled his death a homicide, no autopsy was done on Mr. Barclay, who was buried last month.

Mr. Barclay himself even spoke of the role his own actions played in worsening his medical condition.

“The guy started spraying bullets around, and I caught two of them in the back,” Mr. Barclay said in a 1978 interview about the night he was shot. “I got over that pretty much, but then I had a car accident and hurt my back again. Then I had another and hurt my back some more.”

Allen M. Hornblum, an urban studies professor at Temple University who researched Mr. Barclay’s history and invited Mr. Barnes to speak to his class about having turned his life around after a career in crime, said the new charges were “vindictive, pure and simple.”

“Barnes served his time, but the police and the city want him to pay extra because he shot one of their own,” he said, adding that even if the charge is dismissed, the case will probably take so long to get to that stage that Mr. Barnes, who has had two heart attacks in the last three years, will die waiting. Ms. Abraham has denied that the victim’s being a police officer played any role in her decision to file new charges.

Ms. Abraham also argues that double jeopardy, which means a person cannot be charged twice for the same crime, does not apply in this case because the original crime was aggravated assault and the current crime — now that Mr. Barclay is dead — is murder. Mr. Barnes’s court-appointed lawyer has not decided whether to challenge that view.

William Barclay, 59, the slain officer’s brother, feels the prosecution is justified. “Barnes deserves to be back in prison,” he said “He is 71, and that’s seven more years of life than my brother had.”

“This was murder delayed,” Mr. Barclay added, recounting his brother’s bouts of pneumonia, painful and constant bedsores and the full-body muscle spasms that threw him from bed. “The length of time since the shooting shouldn’t matter.”

Asked about the car accidents, Mr. Barclay, who has lived in California since the 1970s, said he was not aware of them.

Mr. Barnes is being held without bond, and he will not see a judge until his first court date in December, said his lawyer, Bobby Hoof.

In many states, the year-and-a-day rule, a 19th-century common law rule, prevents new charges from being filed if a victim dies more than 366 days after the initial injury. But Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly, said that as medical advancements have prolonged the lives of injured people, at least 20 states, including Pennsylvania, have eliminated the rule. Medical and forensic advancements, however, have also increased the burden of proof on prosecutors to clearly show how an injury led directly to a victim’s later death, he said.

Such convictions, however, are not unprecedented. In Michigan, a man was convicted of assault with intent to murder in 1983 after shooting another man. Four years later, after sustaining head injuries in a fight, the shooting victim suffered seizures and died. Prosecutors filed new murder charges against the gunman, and using an autopsy were able to prove that the victim’s death resulted from damage to his heart from the shooting, not the head injuries.

Jeffrey M. Lindy, a former federal prosecutor in Philadelphia, said he believed Ms. Abraham was pursuing the case against Mr. Barnes to please the police, but he predicted it would probably not make it to trial. “A judge will first have a hearing, and at that hearing a doctor is going to say, ‘Look, the causation is not there,’ ” he said.

Sitting in a four-by-five-foot room at Graterford prison, 31 miles north of Philadelphia, Mr. Barnes said, “I was trying to start over.”

Having spent 48 of his 71 years in prison on multiple offenses and parole violations, he was released in 2005 and had started meeting family who never knew he existed as he lived in a halfway house and worked as a janitor at a drugstore.

“Nothing shames me more than what happened that night,” he said about the shooting. “I had a good family, a good life and bad morals. I’ll have to answer to my maker for the suffering that man went through.”

“But I’m an old man now,” he said. “I paid my debt.”

Mr. Barnes earned that debt one cold November morning in 1966 as he tried to pry open the back door of a beauty parlor. Responding to a call about a prowler, Officer Barclay, 23 at the time, arrived to find Mr. Barnes, who says he was drunk. Mr. Barnes shot Officer Barclay twice, once in the left thigh and once in the shoulder, the second shot lodging an inch from Officer Barclay’s spine.

That bullet shattered his life, his family said. And yet he fought to recover. Within nine months, he was walking short distances with leg braces. He soon began driving a car with hand controls and moved into a ground-floor apartment to live on his own. He worked a desk job at police headquarters for a year or so.

Things took a turn for the worse, however. One morning while driving to work, Officer Barclay’s car skidded off an icy road. He reinjured his spine, and the Police Department put him on permanent disability, according to court documents and news reports from the time. In the mid-1970s, he became a clerk at the information booth at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.

But “age began to tell on him,” said Rosalyn Barclay Harrison, Mr. Barclay’s 68-year-old sister. There were also various injuries along the way. In 1975, he fell from his wheelchair, which left him without use of his left arm, according to a column written by Mr. Barclay’s close friend Larry McMullen, a Philadelphia newspaper writer. In 1976, he was in a second car accident for which he underwent rehabilitation at Rolling Hill Hospital in Montgomery County, according to newspaper accounts.

Ms. Harrison said her brother’s life was pure “agony.”

She confirmed that Mr. Barclay was in at least one serious car accident and that in later years he got hepatitis. But she endorsed the new charges against Mr. Barnes. “In my own mind, I don’t see this as double jeopardy,” she said.

“I have no qualms about Barnes being recharged for murder,” she added, with a pause, “because I do feel it that way.”

    New Murder Charge in ’66 Shooting, NYT, 19.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/us/19philadelphia.html

Conviction in Racially Tinged Louisiana Case Is Overturned

September 15, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD G. JONES

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 14 — A Louisiana appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction of an African-American high school student who was accused of the beating of a white classmate in case that has become a flashpoint for accusations of racial bias in the state’s judicial system.

The student, Mychal Bell, 17, was one of six black teenagers accused in the beating of a schoolmate in the northern Louisiana town of Jena last December. Mr. Bell was the first accused student to face trial, and his conviction on charges of conspiracy and aggravated battery drew accusations that prosecutors were biased.

His lawyers argued that Mr. Bell was not old enough to be tried as an adult and that the maximum penalty that he faced — 22 years in prison — was excessive. Facing increasing pressure from national civil rights groups, prosecutors in recent weeks have reduced the charges against some of the other defendants, who are yet to face trial.

On Sept. 4, Mr. Bell’s conviction on conspiracy charges was overturned by another judge.

A lawyer for Mr. Bell, Louis Scott, said in a telephone interview Friday night that his client felt a sense of relief at the decision but is still concerned by the prospect of another trial in Juvenile Court.

“I explained it to Mychal in football terms,” Mr. Scott said. “We started the game down by a touchdown and a field goal. On Sept. 4, we got the field goal. Today, we got the touchdown. Now, we get to start the game all over again.”

The teenagers, who have come to be known as the Jena Six, were originally charged with attempted murder in the beating of a classmate, Justin Barker, who was injured in a brawl that was sparked by racial taunts, including the dangling of hangman’s nooses from a tree.

    Conviction in Racially Tinged Louisiana Case Is Overturned, NYT, 15.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/us/15jena2.html

Prosecutor Who Opposed a Death Sentence Is Rebuked

September 15, 2007
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, Sept. 14 — A prosecutor in Alabama has been criticized by the state attorney general for arguing that a man who was on death row for a double murder should not be put to death because the gunman in the killings was spared from execution.

The attorney general, Troy King, included the criticism in a statement on Wednesday saying he had notified the prosecutor, Robert E. Owens, the Shelby County district attorney, that he would seek to reinstate the death penalty in the case of LaSamuel Gamble, 29. Mr. Gamble won an appeal last week that effectively commuted his death sentence to life in prison.

Mr. King said that his intent was to protect the interests of the victims in the case and that Mr. Owens had acted on the side of the criminal.

Critics of Mr. King said, however, that his actions were politically motivated; Mr. Owens supported Mr. King’s opponent in the 2004 election for attorney general.

“To suggest that because the district attorney testified truthfully about his charging process he took the side of the criminal is the worst kind of political grandstanding,” said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, which represents defendants.

Mr. Owens was the prosecutor in the case that led to death sentences for Mr. Gamble and his co-defendant, Marcus Presley, who were convicted of the murders of two people during the robbery of a pawn shop in 1996.

A security camera captured Mr. Presley, who was 16 at the time, shooting the victims, Janice Littleton and John Burleson.

The videotape showed Mr. Gamble, who was 18, picking up the shell casings and checking the victims’ vital signs.

Both men were sentenced to die, but in 2005, the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to impose capital punishment on defendants who were under 18 at the time of their crimes.

As a result, Mr. Presley’s sentence was commuted to life without parole.

Mr. Owens later testified at a hearing after the Supreme Court’s decision that because the law had changed it would be unjust to execute Mr. Gamble, particularly because he had not pulled the trigger.

“It’s difficult for me,” Mr. Owens said. “I’ve been a career prosecutor. I don’t like taking a position that’s not what my victim would like to take, but I couldn’t lay my head on my pillow at night if I stood by and let a person who didn’t kill somebody be executed when the person who did kill somebody was not.”

Judge J. Michael Joiner of Shelby County Circuit Court ruled on Sept. 5 that Mr. Gamble should be resentenced and that the death penalty was not an option.

Mr. King said he would appeal Judge Joiner’s order.

Critics noted that in 2004 Mr. King filed a supporting brief with the Supreme Court asserting that putting only one defendant, Mr. Gamble, to death for the pawn shop murders would be a “bizarre result” and that Mr. Presley should be executed, too.

    Prosecutor Who Opposed a Death Sentence Is Rebuked, NYT, 15.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/us/15penalty.html

Sect Leader's Rape - By - Proxy Trial Begins

September 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ST. GEORGE, Utah (AP) -- Warren Jeffs might not have laid a hand on the 14-year-old girl he's accused of coercing into marrying her cousin, but he's still responsible for her rape, prosecutors maintained ahead of opening statements Thursday in the polygamist sect leader's trial.

Jeffs, the head of the breakaway Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is charged with two counts of rape by accomplice in the girl's marriage to her 19-year-old cousin.

Thursday morning, a jury of seven women and five men was selected to hear the case and opening statements were scheduled for the afternoon.

Prosecutors allege that Jeffs used his influence to coerce the girl into a religious union in 2001, and that the teens' consummation of the marriage amounted to statutory rape.

The girl has testified that Jeffs told her she risked her salvation if she refused.

Jeffs, 51, was a fugitive for nearly two years and was on the FBI's Most Wanted list when he was arrested during a traffic stop outside Las Vegas.

If convicted in Utah of rape by accomplice, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. He also faces sexual misconduct charges in Arizona over marriages he allegedly arranges between an older men and teenage girls.

Jeffs has led the FLDS, a polygamist sect that split from the Mormon church decades ago, since 2002, and followers see him as a prophet who communicates with God and holds dominion over their salvation. Former church members say the one-time school principal reigns with an iron fist, demanding perfect obedience from followers.

There had been speculation about whether it would be possible to seat an impartial jury in Washington County because of intense media coverage and because Jeffs' insular FLDS church is based only about 50 miles east in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

In questioning one prospective juror Wednesday, State Fifth District Judge James Shumate said polygamists perceive themselves as involved in a civil rights struggle, similar to that of blacks who ''refused to sit in the back of the bus'' in the 1950s.

Polygamy advocates have long contended that the freedom to practice plural marriage as part of their religion is a civil rights matter. FLDS members believe polygamy brings exaltation in heaven.

The practice is banned in the Utah Constitution, though, and it is considered a felony offense. The Mormon church disavowed polygamy in 1890 and excommunicates members found to be still practicing plural marriage.

Jeffs is not charged with being a polygamist, and the marriage between the cousins was monogamous. Still, polygamy casts a long shadow over the case.

The judge on Wednesday said jurors should not allow polygamy to become a focus of concern. He said some people hold the practice ''as an intentional act of civil disobedience, just as in the civil-rights era when some members of our African-American community refused to sit in the back of the bus.''

Jeffs' attorneys also have used a civil rights comparison in asking potential jurors if they are bothered that the sect embraces an illegal practice.

In one of the interviews, a potential juror said she doesn't automatically believe Jeffs is likely to break other laws simply because the FLDS church practices polygamy.

''He may be breaking that law, but it doesn't mean he's going to break 10 others,'' she said.

    Sect Leader's Rape - By - Proxy Trial Begins, NYT, 13.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Polygamist-Leader.html

Child Beheading Conviction Overturned

September 12, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:00 p.m. ET
The New York Times

HOUSTON (AP) -- A man condemned for killing and beheading his common-law wife's three children had his conviction overturned Wednesday by a divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

In a 5-4 ruling, the state's highest criminal appeals court said John Allen Rubio's conviction and death sentence four years ago were improper because statements from his common-law wife, Angela Camacho, erroneously were allowed into evidence.

She refused to testify, so Rubio's lawyers could not challenge Camacho's statements by cross-examining her, the court said.

Three statements she made about the slayings -- two in writing and one on a videotape -- were offered into testimony by a police officer at Rubio's trial. The trial judge, over objections from Rubio's lawyers, allowed the testimony.

''Given Camacho's unique position as both accomplice to the crime and direct witness to (Rubio's) motivations, her specific, detailed testimony obviously had great significance,'' the court said.

The judges in the majority also noted Camacho herself was facing indictment for capital murder when she talked with police.

''Obviously, then, she could have been under some pressure to modify her story, given her own participation in the murders,'' the court said. ''That is precisely the type of issue (Rubio) was not able to address on cross-examination.''

The court said it was hard to see similarities between cross-examining Camacho or the officers who interrogated her, since the officers could only speculate as to her motives and influences to testify.

Camacho and Rubio were accused of strangling and decapitating 3-year-old Julissa Quezada, 1-year-old John Esthefan Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in March 2003.

The couple told police they thought the children were possessed.

According to evidence during Rubio's trial, he had inhaled so much spray paint that he had damaged his brain and might have been psychotic.

    Child Beheading Conviction Overturned, NYT, 12.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Texas-Executions-Appeals.html

Jury Consulted the Bible, but Death Sentence Stands

September 11, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

The federal appeals court in San Francisco yesterday upheld a death sentence from a jury that had consulted the Bible’s teachings on capital punishment.

In a second decision on the role of religion in the criminal justice system, the same court ruled Friday that requiring a former prisoner on parole to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous violated the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion.

In the capital case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit split 9 to 6 on the question of whether notes including Bible verses prepared by the jury’s foreman and used during sentencing deliberations required reversal of the death sentence imposed on Stevie L. Fields in 1979.

Mr. Fields, on parole after serving time for manslaughter, committed a series of rapes, kidnappings and robberies, and murdered Rosemary Cobbs, a student librarian at the University of Southern California.

After the jury convicted Mr. Fields and while it was deliberating his sentence, the foreman, Rodney White, conducted outside research, consulting several reference works and preparing a list of pros and cons on the death penalty that he shared with fellow jurors. On the pro side, he quoted passages from the Bible, including this one from Exodus: “He that smiteth a man, so that he dies, shall surely be put to death.”

Judge Pamela Ann Rymer, writing for the majority, said there was no need to decide whether there had been juror misconduct, “because even assuming there was, we are persuaded that White’s notes had no substantial and injurious effect or influence.”

In dissent, Judge Marsha S. Berzon said there was “no doubt that White engaged in unconstitutional misconduct by injecting his overnight biblical research into the deliberations.” Judge Ronald M. Gould, also dissenting, said the majority had endorsed “a theocratic jury room” in which jurors consider “the death penalty in light of Scripture.”

In Friday’s decision, a unanimous three-judge panel of the court ruled that a parole officer in Hawaii who ordered a methamphetamine addict on parole to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous could be sued by the addict’s estate for violating his constitutional rights.

The case was brought by Ricky K. Inouye, who was released on parole in 2000 after serving time for drug crimes. His parole officer, Mark Nanamori, ordered him to attend A.A. meetings. Mr. Inouye, a Buddhist, refused. Partly as a result, he was returned to prison.

That violated the First Amendment, the panel ruled. “While we in no way denigrate the fine work of A.A./N.A., attendance in their programs may not be coerced by the state,” wrote Judge Berzon, who was also one of the dissenting judges in yesterday’s decision.

Most other courts that have considered the question of whether prisoners and parolees may be compelled to attend A.A. meetings have come to the same conclusion, usually relying on the program’s invocation of a “higher power.”

A member of the staff of Alcoholics Anonymous’s general service office in New York said the organization took no position on the ruling. “We do say in our literature that we are not a religious program, that we’re not religious but spiritual,” the staff member said, declining to give his full name for publication.

Judge Berzon was joined in the decision by Judge David R. Thompson. Judge Richard C. Tallman issued a concurring opinion of his own.

    Jury Consulted the Bible, but Death Sentence Stands, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/us/11alcohol.html

Murder Case Against Spector Goes to Jury

September 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:56 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The murder case against record producer Phil Spector went to the jury Monday after Spector's wife sparred with the judge over a gag order and Spector himself publicly denied he had criticized the judge and jury pool.

Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler sent the jurors into deliberations after asking if any had heard or seen any news reports over the weekend that could affect their discussions. No one raised a hand.

The London newspaper The Mail on Sunday reported that Spector had said most of the prospective jurors thought he was either guilty or insane and Fidler ''doesn't like me.''

The newspaper said Spector made the remarks to a documentary filmmaker he spoke to over a five-month period. Spector denied it.

''I did not make those statements,'' he said as he arrived at the courthouse Monday. ''They are reprehensible and false. Whoever made them on my behalf should be put in jail. I'm sure the jury will do a good job.''

Spector, 67, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of actress Lana Clarkson, 40, who was shot through the mouth after going home with Spector from a nightclub on Feb. 3, 2003. He faces 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

Deliberations for the jury of nine men and three women began after five months of testimony.

Prosecutors sought to show during the trial that Spector had a history threatening women. The defense contended the actress killed herself.

Just before sending the case to the jury, Fidler slapped a gag order on Spector and his wife in a contentious hearing on media contacts. Fidler said Rachelle Spector sent e-mails to reporters over the weekend pointing out a TV interview she had given, despite the fact that Fidler had warned her against such activity.

''Ma'am, I'm going to do something I've never done before,'' Fidler said. ''You are here in the courtroom. You will not talk to the press ... until a verdict or other decision is arrived at in this case. If you do, you're in violation of my order and you know what I do to people who violate my orders.''

Rachelle Spector began to talk back from the gallery.

''Ma'am, you're in front of me,'' the angered judge interjected. ''You're in front of me! I'm making an order. You want to violate my order, go ahead and do so. I can assure you I will hold you in contempt of court for violating my order and I will treat it according.''

She then began to argue, and the judge jumped in and again warned of consequences.

''That's right, I am talking to you, and what you need to do is listen,'' he said.

Fidler also admonished Spector and Clarkson's family not to speak to the press, though he noted that Clarkson's family had not done so.

Spector gained fame decades ago for what became known as the ''Wall of Sound'' recording technique. Clarkson was best known as the star of the 1985 cult film ''Barbarian Queen.''

    Murder Case Against Spector Goes to Jury, NYT, 10.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Phil-Spector.html

NJ Supreme Court Sides With Vioxx

September 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:23 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- New Jersey's Supreme Court rejected a huge class-action lawsuit against drugmaker Merck & Co. over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx on Thursday, reversing two previous lower-court decisions.

The suit was brought by a union health plan on behalf of all insurance plans that paid for Vioxx prescriptions. A lawyer for the New Jersey union says the case could be worth more than $15 billion if Merck loses.

The Whitehouse Station-based company pulled Vioxx from the market three years ago after research showed it doubled risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Lawyer Chris Seeger has argued that if Merck had disclosed those risks earlier, prescription plans would have favored other painkillers.

A state judge and then an appeals court approved the class action, but Merck appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which ruled a nationwide class is not appropriate.

Merk shares rose 16 cents to $49.56 in early trading.

    NJ Supreme Court Sides With Vioxx, NYT, 6.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Vioxx-Class-Action.html

Despite DNA Test, Prosecutor Is Retrying Case

September 6, 2007
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

MACON, Miss., Aug. 31 — The scene in the tiny Noxubee County jail on a rainy afternoon has become almost commonplace. Kennedy Brewer, sentenced to death and locked up for 15 years for the rape and murder of a 3-year-old, was released on the strength of a DNA test showing that the semen in the rape kit was not his.

The bail bondswoman snapped a Polaroid.

Mr. Brewer’s sister, Martha, smiled and said, “I ain’t got to mow the lawn no more.”

Back home on Highway 388, two of Mr. Brewer’s nieces sketched out a T-shirt design to read “Welcome Home Kenny.”

But Mr. Brewer is not free and clear. He is only out on bail.

In a move that appears to be novel, prosecutors intend to retry him for the crime.

Virtually no effort has been made to find the man who raped the girl, Christine Jackson, and dumped her body in a creek in Noxubee County, one of the most rural in the state.

This is the first time prosecutors have sought a new capital murder trial after a conviction was overturned by DNA evidence, said Peter Neufeld, director of the Innocence Project, a legal aid group based in New York that has used DNA testing to exonerate the wrongly convicted since 1992. Usually such cases are simply dropped.

But prosecutors are not convinced of the innocence of Mr. Brewer, a black laborer who is mildly retarded. Forrest Allgood, the district attorney who first tried the case, said his theory then was that Mr. Brewer, who was the boyfriend of the victim’s mother, acted alone.

At the trial, Mr. Allgood argued that the couple’s bedroom was “the killing field,” although traces of human blood found there were so small that they could not be tested.

His view has changed.

“I perceive that Kennedy Brewer assisted someone else in the killing of the child,” Mr. Allgood said. “Whether he actually penetrated that child or not functionally doesn’t make any difference if he was aiding, assisting and encouraging in her death.”

Mr. Allgood declined to offer a new theory of what occurred the night Christine disappeared, saying only that Mr. Brewer was the baby sitter that evening and that there was no sign of forced entry at the house.

The defense lawyers, including Mr. Neufeld, say the girl could have been abducted by way of a broken window in the bedroom.

Mr. Brewer is being retried as Mississippi has been trying to reverse a reputation for judicial chicanery that dates from the civil rights era. In that time, vigilante violence often went unpunished, and the state conspired to shield Ku Klux Klan members from the law.

In recent years, high-profile cases from that period have been retried, resulting in convictions.

“The Brewer case illustrates that there are two Mississippi criminal justice systems,” Mr. Neufeld said. “There’s the old system that hasn’t changed at all and the new system that is trying to take the Bill of Rights seriously.”

Modern forensic tools do not appear to carry much weight in Noxubee County. Mr. Allgood said DNA reversals — there have been more than 200 nationwide — did not prove innocence.

Prosecutors often drop such cases only because witnesses are no longer available or evidence has been lost, Mr. Allgood said, but “John Q. Public thinks another innocent man got convicted who would have been killed.”

After the DNA results from the rape here came back in 2002, Mr. Brewer was moved from death row to the county jail, where he stayed for five years. Because Mr. Allgood was still seeking the death penalty, Mr. Brewer was not eligible for bail.

Mr. Allgood tested the DNA found on the girl against that of two men who visited Mr. Brewer at the house the night of Christine’s disappearance. The men were not a match.

He also ran a second test that excluded Mr. Brewer’s male relatives. But he did not run the profile against the state’s DNA database, saying in an interview that no such database exists.

That was a surprise to John M. Allen, the assistant director of the state crime laboratory, who said, “We’ve been up and running on our DNA database for years.”

Mr. Allgood also said he had notified the sheriff’s office of the DNA results. But the sheriff, Albert Walker, said he had not received any official notification and had not reopened the case.

“The case is already solved, far as the murder,” Sheriff Walker said.

Earnest Eichelberger, chief investigator for the sheriff’s office when Christine disappeared, said of Mr. Brewer, “I didn’t use DNA to get him convicted.” Mr. Eichelberger said he never constructed a narrative that would explain where Christine had been raped and killed, when her body had been dumped and whether or not anyone else could have been involved.

Mr. Eichelberger said that if he had his way, both Mr. Brewer and Christine’s mother, Gloria Jackson, who had been arrested several times for child abuse and neglect, would have been tried.

“She was an accessory simply because of her history, to me,” he said.

In March 2006, after a former lawyer for Mr. Brewer joined District Attorney Allgood’s staff, the prosecutor agreed to recuse himself in the case.

The new prosecutor, Ben Creekmore, the district attorney in Oxford, 100 miles northwest, decided not to seek the death penalty and agreed not to oppose bail. The new trial is now scheduled for next year.

On that Saturday night in May 1992, Mr. Brewer had stayed in the house with Christine and two other children. Ms. Jackson returned home at 12:30 a.m. Early that morning, she later testified, Mr. Brewer arose twice, once for a diaper for the baby and a second time to prepare a bottle.

In the morning, the two discovered that Christine, who had been asleep on a makeshift pallet of sofa cushions at the foot of the bed, was gone. That afternoon, as dozens of family members and friends searched, Mr. Brewer and Ms. Jackson were arrested.

After Ms. Jackson had been in jail for seven months, the charges against her were dropped.

The state’s star witness was Dr. Michael West, a dentist from Hattiesburg who had become a controversial expert in the identification of bite marks. Dr. West’s findings have been contradicted by DNA evidence in at least two other cases.

At the time of the trial, Dr. West had been suspended from the American Board of Forensic Odontology and had resigned from the American Academy of Forensic Science and the International Association of Identification, pending expulsion.

He testified that he had found 19 human bite marks on Christine’s body, all made just by upper teeth, and that at least five of them were made by Mr. Brewer.

A defense expert, Richard Souviron, testified that the wounds were not human bite marks.

“Have you ever bitten off a piece of meat with just your top teeth and not used your bottom teeth?” Dr. Souviron asked. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

In 2005, Mr. Allgood informed the defense that a jailhouse informer had come forward, saying Mr. Brewer had told him that he was forced at gunpoint to bite Christine.

Twenty months before Christine’s death, another 3-year-old, Courtney Smith, disappeared from her bedroom in the county and was found raped and murdered in a nearby pond. In that case, the mother’s boyfriend was sentenced to life in prison after being identified in court by a 5-year-old girl and testimony from Dr. West, who said that just the boyfriend’s upper teeth had left a mark on the girl’s wrist.

Mr. Eichelberger and Mr. Allgood say the cases are unrelated. Mr. Brewer’s defense lawyers are requesting permission to test the evidence in the Smith case for DNA.

    Despite DNA Test, Prosecutor Is Retrying Case, NYT, 6.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/us/06dna.html?hp

Adult Charges Sought for N.J. Suspects

September 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:09 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- Prosecutors want three teenage boys who are charged in the execution-style shooting deaths of three college students to be tried as adults.

Essex County prosecutors filed papers Friday to try a 16-year-old and two 15-year-olds as adults, said Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

The three are charged in the shooting deaths of three students at a school yard in Newark on Aug. 4. The names of the three underage suspects have been withheld by authorities because of their age.

The victims, Iofemi Hightower, 19, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18, were scheduled to attend Delaware State University this fall. A fourth victim, Natasha Aeriel, was also shot but survived and has helped investigators track down the suspects.

Three other men, all adults, have also been arrested.

Before the three juveniles can be tried as adults, hearings must be held to determine whether an adult trial is justified.

    Adult Charges Sought for N.J. Suspects, NYT, 1.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-Schoolyard-Killings.html

Judge Finds Duke Prosecutor in Contempt

September 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:04 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- The prosecutor who led the now-discredited rape case against three Duke University lacrosse players was held in criminal contempt of court Friday for lying to a judge when pursuing charges against the athletes.

Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III sentenced Mike Nifong to a day in jail. The former Durham County district attorney, who was already stripped of his law license and had resigned from office, had faced as many as 30 days.

''If what I impose with regard to Mr. Nifong would make things better or different for what's already happened, I don't know what it would be or how I could do it,'' Smith said.

Nifong showed no visible reaction when Smith handed down the sentence, and he left the courtroom with his wife, Cy Gurney.

Reading his decision from the bench minutes after the end of two days of testimony, Smith said Nifong ''willfully made false statements'' in September when he insisted he had given the defense all results from a critical DNA test.

Smith found that Nifong had provided the defense with a DNA testing report that he knew to be incomplete. The omitted data contained test results showing that DNA of multiple men, none of whom were lacrosse players, was on the accuser.

Smith said his decision was aimed at ''protecting and preserving the integrity of the court and its processes.'' He said truthfulness is especially important when it comes to the rights of the accused to a fair trial.

When Nifong reports to jail at 9 a.m. next Friday, it will bring an end to the criminal case that began when a woman told police she was raped at a March 2006 party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team.

The team was initially vilified as Nifong -- in his first political campaign for district attorney -- told voters he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for ''a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl.''

Nifong went on to win indictments against three players -- Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans. But as the case against them progressed, it became clear Nifong's evidence was pitifully weak.

A state bar disciplinary committee later concluded Nifong manipulated the case to boost his chances at the ballot box, and he continued to pursue it even when it became clear the defendants were innocent.

State prosecutors eventually dropped all charges against the three men and declared them innocent victims of Nifong's ''tragic rush to accuse.''

Nifong recused himself after the state bar charged him with ethics violations, and he was disbarred in June for more than two dozen violations of the state's rules of professional conduct. He resigned a month later as district attorney.

Taking the stand in his own defense, Nifong insisted Friday he didn't intentionally lie about whether he had turned over the DNA evidence. But he acknowledged the report he gave defense attorneys was incomplete.

''I now understand that some things that I thought were in the report were in fact not in the report,'' Nifong said. ''So the statements were not factually true to the extent that I said all the information had been provided.''

A defense attorney found the omitted data amid 2,000 pages of documents Nifong gave the defense months after the initial report. Nifong said that by the time he realized the information wasn't in that report, ''it had been corrected. The defendants already had it.''

''It was never my intention to mislead this or any other court,'' Nifong said. ''I certainly apologize to the court at this time for anything I might have said that was not correct.''

Earlier Friday, the director of a private lab who prepared the DNA testing report said the omissions were a misunderstanding.

Brian Meehan said Nifong asked him to test DNA samples from lacrosse players to see whether any matched genetic material found on the accuser.

Although male DNA was found, no sample matched a lacrosse player. Results from the other unidentified men was referenced as ''non-probative'' material in the report given to defense attorneys, Meehan said.

Charles Davis, the attorney appointed to prosecute the contempt charge, asked Meehan whether Nifong's statement to the court -- that the report encompassed everything he had discussed with Meehan -- was true or false.

''It would be false because we don't include discussions in our reports,'' Meehan answered.

On Thursday, Meehan said he was the one who decided how to prepare the report stating no lacrosse player had been linked to the accuser. When Meehan was asked whether Nifong had asked him to leave anything out, Meehan answered, ''No.''

Defense attorney Jim Glover declined to comment after the hearing.

Finnerty's father, Kevin, said, ''It's not a happy day for us, but we're thrilled the system works, that justice has happened, and we're moving on.''

Joseph Cheshire, an attorney for Evans, said he felt sorry for Nifong's family, but not Nifong.

''I think what he did was willful and intentional and damaged seriously this state and the lives of these boys and their families,'' he said. ''I don't feel sorry for Mike Nifong. Sorry if that sounds cruel, but I don't.''

    Judge Finds Duke Prosecutor in Contempt, NYT, 1.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Duke-Lacrosse-Nifong.html

Parolee Linked to Killing of 5 Women in Michigan Capital

September 1, 2007
The New York Times
By NICK BUNKLEY

DETROIT, Aug. 31 — A paroled sex offender was identified on Friday as the man whom the police suspect of attacking and killing five women in Lansing, including an activist whose daughter is on the City Council. A sixth woman survived the attacks.

The authorities in Lansing said they were looking into whether the suspect, Matthew E. Macon, 27, who was arrested on Tuesday night on an unrelated warrant, is responsible for attacks in 2003 and 2004 that coincided with two periods when Mr. Macon was on parole after being jailed for a larceny conviction from 2001.

At least some victims this summer, as well as in 2003, were sexually assaulted, the authorities said.

On Tuesday, the police released a sketch of the person wanted in the attacks, which began on July 26, a month after Mr. Macon was paroled for a third time on the larceny conviction.

On July 26, the authorities said, the activist, Ruth Hallman, 76, was beaten in her home. She died two days later.

The next three victims, all fatally beaten, were Deborah Cooke, 36; Debra Renfors, 46; and Karen Delgado-Yates, 41. All had histories of prostitution, according to the police and court records. Ms. Delgado-Yates’s body was found in a vacant house. Ms. Cooke’s body was found in Hunter Park.

Last Monday, Sandra Eichorn, 64, a General Motors retiree, was found dead in the rented house where she lived alone. Ms. Eichorn was also beaten, the police said.

On Tuesday, a 56-year-old whom the police would not identify was struck on the head near the back door of her home, but her dog chased away the assailant. The victim, who was hospitalized and released, gave the police information for the sketch of the suspect.

Mr. Macon was arraigned on charges related to a home invasion not associated with the five attacks, the authorities said, but to a violation of the sex offender registry law.

Calling him a serial killer, the police have asked prosecutors to charge Mr. Macon with the death of Ms. Eichorn and the attack on the woman who lived. The authorities are also seeking warrants charging him with the deaths of Ms. Cooke, Ms. Hallman, Ms. Renfors and Ms. Delgado-Yates.

The police said Mr. Macon beat and killed Barbara Tuttle, 45, in 2004 in the house where he is accused of killing Ms. Renfors.

He was returned to prison for violating terms of his earlier paroles, a spokesman for the Michigan Corrections Department, Russ Marlin, said.

“He’s been accused of some horrible, horrible crimes,” Mr. Marlin said. “For the board members who voted his case, this is going to be quite something for them to deal with.”

“Our nightmare is over,” Mayor Virgil Bernero said after Mr. Macon’s arrest.

All the attacks occurred within a few miles of one another and the State Capitol. Residents near the site of three attacks called the arrest a great relief.

“It’s over,” a resident, Duane Hernley, 69, said. “People had stopped using the park, and there were very few people on the street.”

    Parolee Linked to Killing of 5 Women in Michigan Capital, NYT, 1.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/us/01arrest.html

Governor Commutes Sentence in Texas

August 31, 2007
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Aug. 30 — Hours before his scheduled execution as a disputed accomplice in a 1996 murder, Kenneth Foster won a rare commutation to life in prison on Thursday after Gov. Rick Perry followed the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and granted a death row reprieve.

The case had raised international protests because Mr. Foster, 30, was not the gunman but the driver of a getaway car in a San Antonio robbery spree that ended in murder. He was convicted under a Texas law that makes co-conspirators liable in certain cases of homicide.

“It makes me feel wonderful,” said Mr. Foster’s father, Kenneth Foster Sr., who had been visiting his son at the death house in Huntsville with other family members when word of the board’s clemency recommendation came.

“He was very excited; he jumped for joy,” the elder Mr. Foster said.

Since taking office in 2000, Mr. Perry has granted death row commutations recommended by the pardons board only twice before, and has once overruled the panel’s recommendation, the governor’s office said.

Mr. Foster’s lawyer, Keith S. Hampton, who had run out of options except for a final — and sixth — appeal to the United States Supreme Court, said, “I’m very relieved, for Kenneth and all his supporters.” Mr. Hampton said Mr. Foster could conceivably be released from prison some day, perhaps after serving 30 more years. He has served 10.

The pardons board, appointed by the governor, met Wednesday and announced Thursday morning that it had voted 6 to 1 to recommend commutation. Shortly afterward, Mr. Perry, a Republican, accepted the recommendation.

“I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” the governor said in a statement.

Mr. Perry raised doubts about the law that allowed Mr. Foster and the triggerman to be tried together and urged the Legislature to re-examine the issue.

Three years ago the pardons board, with one vacancy, voted 5 to 1 to recommend commuting the death sentence of another convicted murderer, Kelsey Patterson, who had been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Mr. Perry turned down the recommendation, and Mr. Patterson was executed by lethal injection in May 2004.

The two earlier death row commutations by Mr. Perry at the pardons board’s request came this year and in 2004. In 2005, after the United States Supreme Court halted the execution of juveniles, he commuted the death sentences of 28 17-year-olds. But 163 other executions have gone forward under Mr. Perry.

Mr. Foster was arrested with three accomplices after a night’s armed robbery spree through San Antonio that ended with one of his companions gunning down a 25-year-old law student, Michael LaHood Jr. The jury convicted Mr. Foster and sentenced him to die, along with the gunman, Mauriceo Brown, finding that he should have anticipated that the group’s crimes could lead to murder.

Mr. Brown was executed last year. The two other accomplices are serving life terms.

Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of the Program to Abolish the Death Penalty of Amnesty International USA, hailed the reprieve.

“Given the obvious — that it would have been virtually impossible to predict the murder of Michael LaHood — Foster was sentenced to death under the broadest and most appalling interpretation of the law of parties,” Ms. Gunawardena-Vaughn said.

Norma LaHood, the murder victim’s mother, said she took the commutation as divine will.

“I’m filled with peace,” Mrs. LaHood said by telephone from San Antonio. “I will mourn my son till I die, but I’m not forced anymore to relive his death.”

    Governor Commutes Sentence in Texas, NYT, 31.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/us/31execute.html

7.15pm

Texas governor spares man from execution

Thursday August 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Haroon Siddique and agencies


A man in the US was today saved from the death penalty just hours before his scheduled execution.

The Texas governor, Rick Perry, accepted a parole board recommendation and commuted the sentence of Kenneth Foster, who had been due to die via lethal injection this evening.

Foster, 30, was the getaway driver in a 1996 murder but his sentence had been criticised as he had nothing to do with the shots being fired.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death under the Texas law of parties, which makes non-shooters equally accountable for a crime.

Another condemned man was executed under the same statute earlier this year.

"I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster's sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment," Mr Perry said in a statement.

In a highly unusual move, the Texas parole board had voted six to one, earlier today, to recommend that Mr Perry commuted the sentence, although the governor was under no obligation to take their advice.

Foster said he was aware his friends were committing crimes, as he drove them around in a rental car while they robbed at least four people.

"It was wrong," he said. "I don't want to downplay that. I was wrong for that. I was too much of a follower. I'm straight up about that."

Their robbery spree, while they were all high on alcohol and marijuana, turned deadly when one of Foster's passengers, Mauriceo Brown, shot and killed a victim.

Brown and Foster were tried together and convicted of capital murder. Foster was set to be executed tonight, 13 months after 31-year-old Brown.

Mr Perry said: "I am concerned about Texas law that allowed capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously and it is an issue I think the legislature should examine."

Foster's lawyers argued that statements from the other two friends, both now serving life sentences, provided new evidence that supported his claim that he did not know Brown was going to shoot.

Last week, Texas reached a milestone when a man who murdered a convenience store worker became the 400th person executed by the state since it resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Foster would have been the 24th prisoner put to death in Texas this year had he been executed.

    Texas governor spares man from execution, G, 30.8.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2159468,00.html

Perry Commutes Death Sentence

Aug. 30, 2007
Office of the Governor Rick Perry

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Eugene Foster of San Antonio to life imprisonment after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (TBPP) recommended such action.

On May 6, 1997, Foster was sentenced to death for his role in the 1996 capital murder of Michael LaHood. Foster sought to have his death sentence commuted to a life sentence arguing that he did not shoot the victim, but merely drove the car in which that the actual killer was riding. In addition, Foster was tried along side the actual killer, Maurecio Brown, and the jury that convicted Foster also considered punishment for both him and his co-defendant in the same proceeding.

“After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendations from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” Gov. Perry said. “I am concerned about Texas law that allows capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously, and it is an issue I think the legislature should examine.”

The TBPP voted 6-1 to recommend commutation, and the governor signed the commutation papers Thursday morning.

The governor’s action means Foster’s sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment as soon as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice can process this change.

    Perry Commutes Death Sentence, Office of the Governor Rick Perry, 30.8.2007, http://www.governor.state.tx.us/divisions/press/pressreleases/PressRelease.2007-08-30.0856

Not the Killer, but Still Facing a Date With the Executioner

August 30, 2007
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Aug. 29 — Kenneth Foster has a date on Thursday with the executioner’s needle. Not for killing anyone himself, but for what he was doing — and might have been thinking — the night in 1996 when he was 19 and a sidekick gunned down a San Antonio law student.

Ensnared in a Texas law that makes accomplices subject to the death penalty, Mr. Foster, 30, is to become the third death row inmate this week, and the 403rd since capital punishment resumed in Texas in 1982, to give his life for a life taken.

But unlike most others condemned to death in this state, Mr. Foster, a former gang member and aspiring musician and now a prison poet from San Antonio, is not a murderer in the usual sense. He was convicted and sentenced to die for abetting a killing — 80 feet away — that he might, or might not, have had reason to anticipate.

The gunman is dead, executed last year. Two accomplices are serving life terms.

Now, failing a last-minute reprieve, Mr. Foster, the group’s driver in a robbery spree — who argues that he never was party to the murder — is facing lethal injection. His guilt, affirmed so far in every appeal, including five turned away by the United States Supreme Court, hinges in large part on difficult questions of awareness and intention.

Other states also hold co-conspirators responsible for one another’s criminal acts in a so-called law of parties. But few of those states have a death penalty. And no other state executes anybody on the scale of Texas.

With polls showing capital punishment still enjoying majority support in Texas and around the country, but by dwindling margins, the Foster case has spurred vigils and protests from abroad to the death house in Huntsville, as well as a backlash by victims’ rights advocates who still mourn the law student, Michael LaHood Jr., slain at 25.

It has also blurred concepts of guilt and innocence. If Mr. Foster is not legally guilty of murder, as his lawyer, Keith S. Hampton, and supporters contend, many find it hard to pronounce him blameless.

“I’d hate to use the word ‘innocent,’ ” said his father, Kenneth Foster Sr., a former heroin addict who told a church audience in Houston on Saturday that he used to take his baby son with him on drug runs and petty crimes. He said his son “should be punished to some degree, but not put to death.”

At the heart of the case is Texas’ law of parties, under which those conspiring to commit one felony, like a robbery, can all be held responsible for an ensuing crime, like murder, if it “should have been anticipated.”

In 1982, in Edmund v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court found that the Constitution barred the death penalty for co-conspirators who did not themselves kill.

But five years later in Tison v. Arizona, the justices carved out an exception, ruling that the Eighth Amendment did not forbid the execution of a defendant “whose participation in a felony that results in murder is major and whose mental state is one of reckless indifference.”

According to evidence in the case, on the afternoon of Aug. 14, 1996, Mr. Foster had borrowed his grandfather’s rented white Cavalier and was driving three companions — Julius Steen, Dewayne Dillard and Mauriceo Brown — on a robbery spree through San Antonio. Mr. Steen and Mr. Brown, with Mr. Dillard’s gun, held up four people.

After midnight, they trailed two cars to a street where Mr. LaHood had just driven home, followed by a companion, Mary Patrick. Ms. Patrick and Mr. Steen exchanged some remarks. Mr. Brown took the gun, chased Mr. LaHood and shot him dead. Ms. Patrick later characterized it as a robbery.

Mr. Foster and his companions fled but were soon stopped by the police. Mr. Foster denied participating in the earlier robberies or the shooting, claiming the group had been out looking for clients for his music business.

He was tried with Mr. Brown, who was also convicted and was executed in July 2006. Mr. Steen agreed to testify for the prosecution in exchange for a life sentence. Mr. Dillard is serving life for a separate murder committed with Mr. Steen.

Mr. Steen testified he did not believe that Mr. Foster had known that Mr. LaHood would be robbed, although Mr. Steen said, “I would say I kind of thought it.”

Later Mr. Dillard testified in Mr. Foster’s appeals, claiming that before they reached the LaHood house, Mr. Foster sought to end the night’s spree so he could return the car to his grandfather. Therefore, Mr. Foster’s lawyer, Mr. Hampton, argued, his client lacked the mindset to be legally culpable for the killing.

Mr. Hampton also contended that Mr. Steen and Mr. Dillard had been improperly withheld as crucial witnesses for the defense, and that mitigating testimony about Mr. Foster’s upbringing had not been presented.

“I was in jail at the time he got arrested,” said Kenneth Foster Sr., adding that a strategy of portraying his son as churchgoing and well-raised had backfired.

“One of the jurors said he should have known better,” the elder Mr. Foster said. “They never called me. If the mitigating evidence had been put on, he never would be on death row.”

    Not the Killer, but Still Facing a Date With the Executioner, NYT, 30.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/us/30execute.html

Man Accused of Robbing Graves Pleads

August 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:29 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) -- A man accused of breaking into caskets and mausoleums to rob the dead of jewelry and gold teeth at a Waterbury cemetery has pleaded guilty to numerous charges.

Joseph J. Vecchiarelli, 26, of New York pleaded guilty Tuesday to interference with a cemetery or burial ground, possession and sale of narcotics and other charges.

State's Attorney John Connelly said Vecchiarelli ''molested the bodies looking for jewelry'' and threw five bodies, including that of an infant, onto a mausoleum floor.

''He found a ring on one body and took that ring. He pulled bodies apart and looked through the skulls for gold teeth, and he put them in his pocket,'' the prosecutor said.

The cemetery's caretaker alerted Waterbury police in April that three mausoleums had been smashed open. A ring Vecchiarelli sold to a pawn shop was recovered, and police said two sets of gold dentures were found at an apartment where Vecchiarelli was staying.

Prosecutors are recommending a 20-year sentence, suspended after 10 years served, and five years' probation for Vecchiarelli. Sentencing is set for Nov. 16.

    Man Accused of Robbing Graves Pleads, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Graves-Robbed.html

Man Who Put Girls’ Photos on Internet to Exit a State

August 27, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 26 (AP) — A self-described pedophile said he would leave California after a judge ordered him to stay away permanently from places where children gather, the man told a television station for a report that was broadcast Sunday.

“I have to leave the state, really, I can’t live here under this Orwellian protocol,” the man, Jack McClellan, told the station, KABC. “It’s nightmarish.”

Mr. McClellan did not say where he planned to go. He did not immediately return a message left on his cellphone by The Associated Press. He has been unemployed and living in his car since arriving in Southern California this summer from Washington State.

Mr. McClellan, 45, came to the attention of the authorities because of a Web site where he posted photographs of children in public places and discussed how he liked to stake out parks, public libraries, fast-food restaurants and other areas where little girls congregated. His Internet service provider took down his Web site more than a month ago.

Mr. McClellan maintained he started the site as a form of therapy and would not do anything illegal. He has never been charged with molesting.

But on Friday, the judge, Melvin Sandvig of Los Angeles County Superior Court, issued a permanent injunction and a three-year restraining order that prohibit Mr. McClellan from coming within 30 feet of schools, playgrounds and other places where children congregate.

The ruling narrowed an injunction issued earlier in the month that barred Mr. McClellan from coming near anyone younger than 18 anywhere in the state. Mr. McClellan spent 10 days in jail for violating that injunction when he was arrested this month near a child care center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The new ruling also bars Mr. McClellan from contacting, videotaping or photographing children or publishing their photographs without written consent from a guardian or parent. Mr. McClellan could be arrested if he violates that prohibition.

    Man Who Put Girls’ Photos on Internet to Exit a State, NYT, 27.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/us/27pedophile.html

Texas defies federal court with plan to execute man who did not kill

· Controversial state law led to murder conviction
· Accomplice had sat in car 25 metres from shooting

Monday August 20, 2007
Guardian
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

Texas is poised to execute a man for a crime he did not commit. While the perpetrator of the murder in San Antonio was executed last year, Kenneth Foster, who was sitting in a car 25 metres away at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to death under the "law of parties".

The controversial Texas law removes the distinction between the principal actor and accomplice in a crime, and makes a person guilty if they "should have anticipated" the crime.

While a federal appeals court declared that Foster's death sentence contained a "fundamental constitutional defect", a legal anomaly means the state appeals court cannot overturn his conviction, there being no new evidence.

After the failure this month of Foster's most recent appeal, the 30-year-old African-American's final hope of avoiding execution on August 30 rests with an appeal for clemency to the Texas parole board and the Texan governor, Rick Perry.

"He's on death row because they screwed up," said his attorney, Keith Hampson. "There has been a series of mistakes that has had a cascading effect. Now I'm asking the court to step in on their own motion to correct their mistake. Otherwise this guy gets executed."

On August 14 1996 Foster and three friends were driving around San Antonio smoking marijuana and robbing people at gunpoint. Foster, who was driving, stayed in the car while two others, Mauriceo Brown and Julius Steen, robbed. As they went to the home of Dwayne Dillard, the fourth person in the car, they found themselves in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. A woman asked why they were following her, and as she left Brown got out of the car and followed her to the home of her boyfriend, Michael LaHood. Brown and Mr LaHood argued, and the three in the car, 25 metres away, heard a "pop". Brown returned to the car and Foster drove off.

The four were arrested in connection with Mr LaHood's murder. Dillard was never tried for the crime, and Steen had a deal with the prosecutors. The prosecutors sought the death sentence only for Brown and Foster, and at the district attorney's behest the pair were tried together.

While Brown's conviction was straightforward, Foster's depended on Steen's testimony - who had said he had had "a pretty good idea" of what was going to happen when Brown left the car. In the trial Steen's testimony was key: it showed there had been a conspiracy to commit the armed robbery. If Steen knew about it, the logic went, then so did Foster.

The decision to try Brown and Foster together harmed Foster, said his attorney. Foster, the bigger man, appeared the dominant figure. And when Steen testified, his gang friends arrived to watch. The jury allegedly assumed the gang was linked to Foster; they requested and got armed guards for the remainder of the trial.

Brown and Foster received death sentences in May 1997. Brown was executed by lethal injection last year.

Since Foster's conviction evidence has emerged suggesting there was no agreement to rob Mr LaHood. But the basis for Foster's appeal has been the unconstitutionality of his punishment, a point made by his lawyer in a letter this month to the head of the Texas parole and pardons board. However, the fifth circuit court of appeals concurred with previous rulings that Foster should have known someone might be killed that night in 1996.

"Foster could not have helped but anticipate the possibility that a human life would be taken [during] one or more of his co-conspirators' armed robberies," the court wrote. It said he clearly displayed "reckless disregard for human life".

Foster's lawyer is dismayed. "We're caught by this procedural glitch. Every court that has looked at this [concludes] his execution would be unconstitutional. It's maddening," Mr Hampson said.

The matter now rests with the Texas parole board, which can recommend the governor commutes the sentence if at least five of the seven board members agree. But Mr Perry has never commuted a death sentence, even on such advice.

In Texas 398 people have been put to death since capital punishment was reinstated in 1974, more than in any other state.

    Texas defies federal court with plan to execute man who did not kill, G, 26.8.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2152334,00.html

Life Term for Teen in Principal's Death

August 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:49 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BARABOO, Wis. (AP) -- A 16-year-old was sentenced Friday to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the shooting death of his high school principal.

Eric Hainstock was convicted a day earlier of the first-degree intentional homicide of Weston Schools Principal John Klang last September.

Sauk County Circuit Judge Patrick Taggart said Hainstock would be eligible for parole in 30 years. He also urged the state's Department of Corrections place him a juvenile center.

''I do believe you can be rehabilitated,'' the judge told Hainstock, who showed no emotion as the sentence was read.

Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence. District Attorney Pat Barrett argued Hainstock knew what he was doing when he went to school with guns and ammunition Sept. 29, the morning homecoming was to begin.

Hainstock's attorney, Rhoda Ricciardi, said her client was emotional and immature and never meant to kill Klang. She found him watching the children's cartoon ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' before his sentencing Friday morning.

''There is very little thought to anything he does,'' Ricciardi said.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

BARABOO, Wis. (AP) -- A 16-year-old was sentenced Friday to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the shooting death of his high school principal.

Eric Hainstock was convicted a day earlier of the first-degree intentional homicide of Weston Schools Principal John Klang last September.

Sauk County Circuit Judge Patrick Taggart said Hainstock would be eligible for parole in 30 years. He also urged the state's Department of Corrections place him a juvenile center.

''I do believe you can be rehabilitated,'' the judge told Hainstock.

    Life Term for Teen in Principal's Death, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-School-Shooting.html

Man Indicted in Kansas Teen's Death

August 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:33 a.m. ET
The New York Times

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) -- A man accused of kidnapping a woman from a store parking lot in a crime caught on a surveillance camera was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday in her death, prosecutors said.

Edwin R. Hall was indicted on charges of kidnapping, rape, aggravated sodomy and capital murder in the slaying of 18-year-old Kelsey Smith in June, Johnson County Attorney Phill Kline said.

Hall, 26, is accused of abducting Smith on June 2 from the parking lot of a Target store in suburban Kansas City. Grainy surveillance video from the store showed Smith being confronted and pushed into her car.

Her body was found four days later in a park about 20 miles away in Missouri. Hall was interviewed and arrested June 6, after he saw himself on television in surveillance video and contacted a lawyer, who contacted police.y.

Hall's arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. After that, Kline will have five days to decide whether to pursue the death penalty.

An attorney for Hall has previously refused to discuss the case with the media.

    Man Indicted in Kansas Teen's Death, NYT, 1.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Slain-Teen-Charges.html