Psychiatric overhaul urged

Gov. Charlie Crist and the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court called for a major overhaul of the state's mental health system on Wednesday to better address the needs of the severely mentally ill.

Crist and Chief Justice Fred Lewis released a 170-page report that lays out an ambitious plan to help the mentally ill who end up in jails and prisons because they haven't received the treatment they need.

Florida leaders say it's time to change the system to ensure that the mentally ill get the help they need before they get in trouble with the law and wind up incarcerated. Not only will it help the troubled, it will save money and better protect the public.

The report, sponsored by the Supreme Court, envisions using money now spent on mental health treatment for prisoners deemed incompetent to stand trial. Instead, those individuals would be targeted for intensive community-based mental health treatment before they get arrested.

Money for the project would also come from Medicaid, which doesn't cover people in institutions but can pay for treatment before they're institutionalized.

"What we're doing is focusing on this very small group of people who are costing the state a ton of money and are recycling through the criminal justice system," said Miami-Dade County Judge Steven Leifman, chairman of the Supreme Court's mental health subcommittee. "About 80 percent of those people can live comfortably and safely in the community."

Leifman said the project will need about $20-million in general revenue to get started, but after that, it will be able to sustain itself with Medicaid money and the $48-million now being used for the extra forensic mental health beds that he says will no longer be needed.

"You need to have the money up front to develop a system of care for them to move them into the community," he said. "We have people in there on third-degree felonies that don't have to be there."

Leifman said the plan eventually will save money. The state currently spends $250-million per year on 1,700 beds for mentally ill inmates. At this rate, the state will be spending $500-million per year by 2015.

That money is designed to restore competency to inmates so they can be tried for their crimes and then sent to jail or prison, where they continue to cost the state money.

Leifman said treating mentally sick people earlier will prevent them from becoming high-cost inmates.

Leifman led a subcommittee that studied the state's mental health system after the state Department of Children and Families found itself overburdened with the mentally ill. It got to the point the agency couldn't get inmates into treatment beds within the 15 days required by state law. In some cases, inmates languished in jails for months, straining jail guards' resources and, in some, cases harming themselves.

Hillsborough County sued the DCF in an effort to get the agency to follow the law.

Pinellas Circuit Judge Crockett Farnell threatened to fine and even jail then-DCF Secretary Lucy Hadi if she didn't follow the law.

Eventually the Legislative Budget Commission called a special meeting and allocated nearly $17-million to create more beds and $48-million annually to cover the costs.

But the Supreme Court recognized that wasn't the ultimate solution and directed a mental health subcommittee, led by Leifman, to study the issue and seek solutions.

"It's extremely positive, and it's recognizing the impact mental health issues are having on the criminal justice system," said Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender Bob Dillinger, who pushed for the DCF to
address the inmate issue last year. "It can be done in a way that eventually saves a ton of money."

But the push to revamp how Florida deals with the mentally ill is coming during one of the worst economic downturns for the state in more than a decade.

Even Chief Justice Lewis acknowledged the challenge of Florida's budget situation on Wednesday. "Today I hope we are going to discuss plans and programs and ideas that may be implemented without creating unrealistic expectations," he said.

Crist had not reviewed all the recommendations included in the report, but said that the budget situation won't keep him from pushing for changes in the mental health system.

"We have some difficult times, but my heart is there," Crist said.

Rep. Bill Galvano, a Bradenton Republican and chairman of the House committee that deals with mental-health legislation, said lawmakers would likely consider the recommendations during the 2008 session. He said that despite bad financial times it was apparent to him that the current "system is broken."

"Even in a bad economic year, it may well be worth the fight," Galvano said.

Times staff writer Chris Tisch contributed to this report.

BCSO: Inmate hangs himself

Man was arrested in Mexico Beach last week on sexual assault charges

By Tony Bridges

PANAMA CITY

A Bay County Jail inmate who attempted suicide over the weekend has died.

Shawn J. Gomes, 45, hung himself with a bedsheet in the jail’s bathroom and was discovered early Saturday, according to Ruth Sasser, spokeswoman for the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.

He was taken to Bay Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead Monday.

The Sheriff’s Office is investigating the death. Gomes was not on a suicide watch in the jail, Sasser said Sunday.

Gomes was arrested last week and charged with sexually assaulting a Mexico Beach woman he had invited to his home.

After his arrest, sheriff’s investigators searched his home and discovered photos of several women in various stages of sexual activity. Some appeared to be unconscious.

The investigation into the photos will continue, Sasser said.

Man found guilty in stabbing

Lionel Michael Miller (from left) and defense attorneys Larry Henderson and Gerald Hooper sit in Orange County Courthouse. (RICARDO RAMIREZ BUXEDA, ORLANDO SENTINEL / November 20, 2007)

Lionel Michael Miller was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder and could face the death penalty.

Sarah Lundy

Sentinel Staff Writer

November 21, 2007

Lionel Michael Miller is one step closer to facing the death penalty.

An Orange County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder Tuesday for fatally stabbing an Orlando woman with Alzheimer's disease and attacking the neighbor who tried to save her.

The 12 jurors also found Miller -- a 58-year-old transient described as a "crackhead" by his lawyers -- guilty of burglary of a dwelling with battery and attempted robbery with a deadly weapon.

The penalty phase will begin Monday when attorneys from both sides are expected to call witnesses who will talk about why Miller should or should not be ordered to die by lethal injection.

The jury will recommend either a death sentence or life in prison without parole. Chief Circuit Court Judge Belvin Perry will make the final decision.

Prosecutors say Miller went after 72-year-old Jerry Smith, figuring the woman who appeared to suffer from dementia would be an easy target.

He had met the widow several days earlier while Smith worked in her front yard on East Gore Street.

On Easter Sunday last year, Miller walked to Smith's turquoise bungalow with plans to rob her, police said.

But Smith put up a fight.

About 8 p.m., a neighbor -- Larry Haydon -- was walking his Labrador retriever when he heard Smith's screams from inside her home.

Through a window, he saw Smith struggling with Miller, he said.

"Jerry Smith ended up not being as easy a target as he thought," prosecutor Robin Wilkinson told the jurors during closing statements.

When Haydon tried to help Smith, Miller jabbed a 14-inch knife into the good Samaritan's right side, just below his rib cage, authorities said.

Smith ran out the back door yelling, followed by Miller. He caught up to her, stabbed her multiple times and then fled.

Haydon and Smith sought refuge at the home of a neighbor who called police.

Smith, the mother of criminal defense attorney Chris Smith, later died from the multiple stab wounds, including the lethal blow to her lower back.

Miller's lawyer, Gerod Hooper, tried to sway the jury by saying detectives focused on Miller early in the investigation. Someone else could have been in the house at the time of the killing, but police didn't seek the evidence to prove it.

"They got it in their heads that they were going to close the case quick and blame it on the crackhead," he said during closing statements.

The jury spent five hours deliberating before reaching a verdict shortly after 5 p.m.

Chris Smith stared at Miller as the verdict was read.

The defendant showed no emotion when he learned his fate. The courtroom remained silent as officials fingerprinted Miller, a stocky man with short cropped hair and a tan blazer. He looked far different than the skinny man with scraggly hair whom police arrested last April.


Sarah Lundy can be reached at slundy@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6218.

Prosecutor launches homicide unit to cope with soaring Lee crime

By KATHLEEN CULLINAN

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

In express recognition of Lee County’s crime spike and the onslaught of new felony cases, State Attorney Stephen Russell is dedicating two veteran prosecutors to form a homicide unit.

Russell said Tuesday it’s a bid to help his prosecutors cope with their mounting workload in a year that has seen both a 16 percent crime spike locally and, statewide, a wave of budget cuts. He said he’s worried the office could lose more money by the end of the fiscal year.

“It’s just this push-pull we’ve got,” Russell said in his office. “Crime’s going this way and resources are going that way.”

Starting this month, Dan Feinberg and Bob Lee are settling into a Cape Coral office to found the new support unit. Along with an investigator and a support staff of one, the prosecutors will keep off the daily docket and stay available should major murder cases arise also in the 20th Judicial Circuit’s other counties -- Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades.

Russell said he expected the homicide unit over time will grow and propel defendants more quickly through the legal system.

But he emphasized that restructuring can only do so much to alleviate the added burden of shuffling hundreds more arrests every year through the courts. Russell said Florida’s top prosecutors already lost a slice of their budgets in state cuts this year — Russell lost more than $100,000 — and he’s concerned he could end up losing up to $1 million before all is said and done.

About 95 percent of his roughly $17 million allocation this year went to salaries for 300 or so employees, including just more than 100 attorneys, in the five counties, Russell said. Every quarter, he said, the state has withheld about 1 percent, but the expectation was that the money would ultimately be replaced.

Russell said instead he’s picking up signals that Tallahassee will lop off the money for good. And if that happens, he said, it means more jobs in his office left open, less travel for training and fewer trips to gather witness statements.

A call to the governor’s office was not immediately returned Tuesday afternoon.

Russell said even without the cuts he would be asking for a greater piece of the budget pie. He claims his Southwest Florida offices are being underfunded compared to the others because of perception — folks elsewhere in the state don’t realize how big and crime-riddled various places here have become.

“The trends have changed in Florida, yet the money continues to go to some of those areas that were built up way back,” Russell said. “When they come here, where do they go? They go to a conference on Marco Island, they go to the Ritz in Naples. And that’s their image — ‘Oh, there’s no crime here. Everybody’s wealthy, living on the beach’...I think that the perception does not meet reality. We have changed dramatically over the last 10 or 15 years.”

Major crime reports shot up in Lee County in a host of categories during the first half of this year, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. There were 28 murders, compared with 21 during the same period in 2006, for instance. Hundreds more robberies and burglaries were also called into local agencies based in Lee County.

At the same time, overall crime fell in neighboring Charlotte and Collier counties.

Lee County Sheriff’s officials have cited the growth in Lee and the economic downturn as factors in the increase. Russell noted it is difficult to pinpoint the cause, but said it is translating into a swamped staff of prosecutors — and a jail overstuffed with defendants waiting six months, or much more, to resolve their cases.

His office already keeps separate domestic violence and special victims units, among others, tasked with working in those specialized areas of criminal law.

In taking on homicides, Lee and Feinberg will focus solely on a type of case that can become epic with complicated twists — particularly, Russell said, when the state is seeking the death penalty.

The state attorney said other felony prosecutors will continue to work on their homicide cases. Rather than snatch those away, he said, the object is to give the new unit the freedom and flexibility to pick through particularly the incoming cases and take enough to curb the backlog.

“It obviously puts a lot of stress on the system,” Russell said. “I’m concerned that victims’ families have to go through a system, a tragic event, in greater time. In other words, I’m concerned it becomes two years, three years, as a norm.”

Gassed Behind Closed Doors

Michele Gillen (CBS4) Necessary discipline or cruel and unusual punishment?

A controversial practice regarding the treatment of the mentally ill in Florida's maximum security prisons has some attorneys and mental health experts raising concerns over its use.

"Here they are just gassing him. You can see they are just spraying him in the face," said Miami attorney Leon Fresco. "I would describe it as the eighth amendment does - cruel and unusual punishment."

According to lawyers representing mentally ill prisoners who have been incarcerated in Florida prisons, the state allegedly allows guards to spray inmates suffering from mental illness with chemical agents to "discipline them."

"They call these inmates bugs. They say these inmates are bugs. A bug is a term they use for a crazy person. And they gas them and it's just shocking and it's just something we can't allow it to continue anymore," said Fresco who has been investigating the treatment of the mentally ill behind bars.

"If they see behavior they don't like they gas them, just like you'd gas a bug that you don't like," said Fresco.

"They're acting out because of their mental illness and as a result of that they're being punished, pure and simple," said Randy Berg, co-counsel for Florida Justice Institute. "This certainly by anyone's definition, I think, is torture. This is a practice of the Florida Department of Corrections currently to gas known mentally ill inmates who are acting out by banging on their cells."

Jerome Maxime Thomas of Lauderhill says he prays every day that his son Jeremiah, who has been diagnosed with severe mental illness, will survive his incarceration at Starke Prison and the alleged chemical gassings he has been subjected to over a period of years, despite orders from the medical staff that he was not to be gassed given his severe mental illness.

"My son has told me he should have died many times, but the Lord has kept him alive," said Thomas, "Something must be done, because it's going too far."

Lawyers say Thomas, who was convicted of second degree murder and robbery and is scheduled to be released in 2018, has been gassed with an arsenal of chemical agents including pepper spray and CN gas, which is prohibited in many prisons because of a link to inmate deaths.

"He (Jeremiah) was gassed twice a day, sometimes as many as eight days in a row," said Berg.

After the gas, prisoners are usually asked if they would like a shower to wash the toxic chemicals. The water apparently doesn't always do the trick and some inmates suffer burns.

According to Department of Corrections written instructions guards are only allowed to use one second bursts of a chemical agent, but that rule is reportedly not always followed.

Lawyers for former inmate Curt Massie, who suffered second degree burns across his body, says he was gassed with OC and CN gas for making a funny face at a nurse who failed to give him his anxiety medication. Massie's attorneys say he has second degree burns over more than 60-percent of his body from the procedure.

Massie allegedly was gassed repeatedly in his cell despite pleading with the guards to stop. Records show that one guard admitted that his "use of force report" was altered by adding the words "kicking his cell door" to justify the use of the gas on Massie.

"From a taxpayer standpoint it makes absolutely no sense that we're wasting our resources to gas the guy, make him decompensate, send him to the hospital where we are spending tax dollars to attempt to bring him back to mental competency or stability bring them back and gas them again," said Berg.

Attorneys suing the state over the procedure have been able to obtain videotapes of a handful of gassings. Videotaping gassings was instituted to monitor the use of the chemicals but several wardens prohibited the filming.

"It's certainly inappropriate to use chemical agents for mentally ill people who are acting out solely because of their mental illness," said Berg. "We should be sympathetic to their treatment because they're going to get out. If you treat human beings like animals and literally like rats they're going to be that way when they get released to society so it's in our best interest to treat these people like human beings while they're in there."

Curt Massie was freed from prison last month. Jeremiah Thomas is set to be released in 5 years.

"I hope that someone is listening. I hope that those who are viewing will take account. And will tell themselves we can not allow this to continue," said Thomas.

"I would submit that these people are much worse off than when they went in when we release them," said Berg "and some of these people frighteningly enough get released directly from close management from solitary confinement to the street, that as a citizen frightens me quite frankly. We're making these people more and more angry, more and more mentally ill, and then releasing them directly to the street, it makes no sense."

Given the pending lawsuit against the state, the current secretary of corrections cannot discuss any particular cases involved; however, he met with Michele Gillen to address the overall policy of chemical gassing the mentally ill.

According to James McDonough, Secretary of Corrections, "We do not use chemical agents for punishment. We do not use chemical agents for discipline. We only do it to insure the security and reduction of harm."

"The fact that the videotaping was discontinued in prior administrations a concern to you:" asked Gillen.

"Enough of a concern that we have a policy that says you sure as hell better videotape," said McDonough. "We are seeing the incidents of chemical agents and physical force going down, not slightly but deeply."

Apalling acts don’t justify executions

By Marshall Knudson

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

I was only six years old in the spring of 1994 when my parents first told me about the brutal slayings that had taken place just four years before in our hometown of Gainesville, Florida. Five college students were murdered, and, in a series of grisly scenes, their bodies were disfigured and theatrically arranged in a spectacle that stunned the community. It was that spring that Danny Rolling stood trial for those murders, to which he eventually confessed. Rolling was sentenced to death.

Last autumn, as I was just starting classes here, Rolling was finally executed, 16 years after the murders took place.
Growing up, I was greatly touched by the events surrounding the student murders. Both of my parents were professionally involved, with my mother serving as victim’s advocate for the families and my father working to dispel the fears and allay the trauma inflicted on the community. People could not understand the blithe disregard for human life that Rolling exhibited. The word thrown around most often was “monster”—how else can we understand the source of such unfathomable evil? In fact, it was easy to view Rolling’s death sentence in that light, as if we had vanquished a terrible beast. The blow dealt to humanity seemed to require his death.

In recent months, the subject of capital punishment has been pushed to the forefront, and my childhood feelings have returned with a bad taste. Economists, legal experts, and advocates on both sides of the debate have jumped aboard an already-full bandwagon, seated right behind the Supreme Court. The Court recently agreed to review a Kentucky prisoner’s challenge to lethal injection as a method of execution on the basis that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. A stay of execution issued in a similar case has provided a de facto moratorium on such executions.

This is a rare moment for reflection on the issue of capital punishment. As some states move toward dismantling their execution programs, old arguments have been shouldered anew, bolstered by recent studies that suggest a negative correlation between the use of the death penalty and the frequency of violent crime. Critics have found fault with these studies on the basis of scarcity of data, failure to account for all the factors that may affect the rate of violent crime, and the existence of numerous findings to the contrary. The deterrence argument is like a punching bag for death-penalty partisans: It’s been battered around repeatedly without any sure-fire prospect of victory for either side.

Yet leaving aside the notion that murderers act in response to incentives of which they have reasonable knowledge, the economic argument is being rolled out from another angle. The question is whether the costs of execution are greater than the alternative arrangement of life imprisonment without parole. Conventional wisdom—or research—has said that giving life would be cheaper than dealing death, but there seem to be efforts afoot to change that calculation in favor of death.

The Los Angeles Times reported in August that the Bush Administration was in the process of hashing out new regulations inspired by the refurbished USA PATRIOT Act. These new rules would allow participating states to create a “fast track” toward execution by narrowing the window for habeas corpus pleas to federal courts, an important part of the appeals process for capital cases. Similar measures have been proposed in order to obstruct the appeals that so frequently halt, or at least delay, executions. The idea is that after a certain period has elapsed, the convict ought to lose the right to challenge his date with the executioner. Additionally, anti-terror legislation has imposed strict limits on the number and scope of appeals.

Technical obstructions don’t stop there. On August 23, Luther J. Williams was put to death in Alabama after the Supreme Court agreed with four votes to hear his plea, but lacked the five votes needed to stay his execution. The machinery of death chugged forward unfazed, and Luther was killed by lethal injection, his case rendered “moot.”
In some states, like Virginia, the submission of new evidence is strictly regulated so that after a certain amount of time has passed, without competent counsel, convicts can lose the opportunity to make a fair case. The use of DNA evidence, which has overturned verdicts in many cases, is often restricted. In some instances, DNA evidence has motivated witnesses to repudiate their charges, revealing a deeper problem with the reliability of witness testimony in general.

There are numerous problems with capital punishment in America, but even an abundance of exonerations and revealed irregularities have not inspired changes to the scientific sangfroid of state executions. The fact is that media-driven cases like Danny Rolling’s serve as exemplars, collapsing an issue of great complexity. The “monster” is always terrifying when it consumes the lives of innocents, whether it is a serial killer or the deadly needle of a sterile prison chamber. We are remiss in calling a callous system that would deal death for bureaucratic trifles “humane.” We cannot calculate the value of innocent lives lost, but we can be sure that their value is the same, no matter who or what is responsible for killing them.

Marshall Knudson is a second-year in the College majoring in political science and romance languages and literature.

In prelude to death, a legal firestorm

Emotion, glitches mire struggle to delay a Texas killer's execution

BY KEVIN JOHNSON
USA TODAY

Michael Wayne Richard already was dressed for his execution in Texas' death house on Sept. 25 when the U.S. Supreme Court announced at 7:30 p.m. it wouldn't postpone the convicted killer's lethal injection.

"I'd like my family to take care of each other," Richard, wearing a white smock, matching pants and slippers, called out. "Let's ride. I guess this is it."

By 8:23 p.m., Richard, 48, was dead. He was the 42nd person executed in the United States this year and the 26th in Texas, the leading death penalty state.

Now, his execution for the rape and murder of a nurse in 1986 has become the latest flashpoint in the national debate about whether the death penalty is being applied fairly. It followed a frenzied, behind-the-scenes legal fight that led to intense criticism of the Texas court system and confusion about the actions of the nation's highest court.

The U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, refused to intervene in Richard's execution -- even though, just hours earlier, the court had said it would use a Kentucky case to review questions about lethal injection.

The court's decision effectively has put executions on hold across the nation. Since allowing Richard's execution, justices have stopped the next four. The latest was Thursday, when the court issued a stay five hours before Mark Dean Schwab was to be executed at Florida State Prison in Raiford for the rape, torture and murder of 11-year-old Cocoa resident Junny Rios-Martinez Jr. in 1991.

That would have been the only execution this year in Florida, which appears headed to its first execution-free year since 1982.

That stay also means Richard's execution is likely to be the last until the Supreme Court rules in the Kentucky case next year. With 385 inmates on Florida's death row, that decision surely will have an impact.

While executions are carried out before dozens of witnesses, much of what leads up to -- and sometimes prevents -- them occurs behind the scenes. Interviews with defense lawyers and state officials, along with court and prison documents, reveal the legal chaos that played out in the hours leading up to Richard's execution.

IQ argument

Even in death, Richard never will be a particularly sympathetic figure.

Just two months after his parole for convictions on auto theft and forgery charges, Richard attacked nurse Marguerite Dixon inside her home in a Houston suburb, sexually assaulted her, shot her in the head, took two TVs and fled in the Dixon family's van, according to Texas prison records.

Whether Richard deserved to die for the 1986 attack wasn't part of the argument his attorneys made in their last request to the Supreme Court to delay the execution. Instead, the attorneys argued that because the court had announced earlier that day that it would review the entire lethal injection process, it simply was not Richard's time to die.

For two months before the execution, Greg Wiercioch, David Dow and other death penalty lawyers with the Texas Defender Service in Houston pursued appeals based on claims that Richard, a former mechanic, was mentally retarded.

His IQ once was measured at 64; a score of 70 or below generally indicates retardation, Wiercioch said.

(In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that executing mentally retarded offenders violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.)

On the morning of Sept. 25, Richard's attorneys filed what they thought would be their final appeal to the Supreme Court on the retardation issue.

At 9 a.m. Texas time, the Supreme Court announced it had accepted the Kentucky case, which tests the standard for deciding whether the mix of three drugs used in lethal injections carries a risk of suffering.

Most states, including Texas and Florida, have adopted the same mix of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic; pancuronium bromide, a paralyzing agent; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Dow learned of the court's decision at 10:15 a.m., when he finished teaching a law class at the University of Houston.

By 11:40 a.m., he was on a conference call with six Texas Defender Service lawyers in Houston and Austin to devise a new appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. If rejected, they would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution until the justices ruled on the lethal injection issue.

The defense team's plans began to unravel about 3:15 p.m., when its computer system at the Houston office of the Texas Defender Service, a privately funded group specializing in death cases, crashed as attorneys were drafting the new appeals.

The crash cut off electronic contacts between Houston and the Texas Defender Service's office in Austin, where paralegals and attorneys were standing by to print the required 10 copies of the documents for delivery to the Texas appeals court before the 5 p.m. closing.

Repeated efforts to repair the computer system failed. By 4:30 p.m., Dow said, the defense team in Austin began alerting the clerk at the state Court of Criminal Appeals about the problem and the likelihood that Richard's appeal would be late.

Louise Pearson, the court clerk, did not respond to USA Today's request for comment. Defense attorneys say at least four pleas for more time to file Richard's appeal were denied -- the last at about 4:48 p.m., after attorneys had regained some computer operations. Dow said his team asked the court about filing the appeal electronically. The request was rejected, he said.

"Everybody in the office was outraged," Dow said.

Less than a half-hour before the scheduled 6 p.m. execution -- as the defense team turned to its last option, the Supreme Court -- the computer problems flared again.

The lethal injection appeal took on added importance about 5:30 p.m., when the high court rejected the defense's mental retardation appeal. Dow said the last-ditch lethal injection appeal to the Supreme Court may have been undermined because the Texas court had never ruled on it, leaving no record for the Supreme Court to consider.

Shortly before 6 p.m., after a conversation with Wiercioch, the attorney general's office directed prison authorities to suspend the execution until the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in.

'The integrity of the process'

The 29 witnesses for the execution were gathered in holding rooms near the death chamber when the Supreme Court received Richard's new appeal.

As 6 p.m. passed and the delay lengthened, Patricia Miller -- Richard's sister and one of three Richard supporters designated to view the execution -- said a prison worker suggested that the passing time might be "a good sign."

But about 8:10 p.m., the witnesses were ushered into the viewing rooms.

Miller said she saw her brother strapped to the gurney.

"We could hear him," Miller said, referring to Richard's brief final statement. "He closed his eyes. We heard him take his final breath."

Nothing in Miller's description indicated Richard showed any signs of pain, a key issue before the Supreme Court in the Kentucky case.

Carmen Hernandez, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the gruesome facts of the case and Richard's offensive conduct shouldn't be the issue.

"It's about the integrity of the process," Hernandez said. "The test of whether the system is fair is how it runs in a difficult case, when there are no mitigating factors and the defendant is not particularly sympathetic.

"In a death penalty case, there is irretrievable finality. You ought not to close the courtroom doors, especially on a day of an execution."

Death Row Survivor

Speaker Decries Death Penalty

This article was published on Monday, November 19, 2007 5:25 PM CST in Columns
By John Brummett THE MORNING NEWS

Juan Melendez, a Puerto Rican who had done itinerant fruit-picking in Florida, learned English during 18 years on death row. He says his teachers were other condemned men. He says they essentially commanded him to learn to communicate with them.

He speaks the language well enough now to be an accomplished public speaker. He travels the country telling audiences why he shouldn't have received the death penalty, how he finally got freed and that the death penalty is beyond fixing.

Last week he spoke to about 125 people at the annual dinner of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The group soon will ask Gov. Mike Beebe -- in futility, I suspect -- to impose a moratorium on executions.

When Melendez was convicted in 1984 of killing a cosmetology school owner, he knew maybe four English words, and three of them, he says, were curse words. So he sat in a courtroom lacking much understanding of what all those well-attired people and important-looking people were talking about.

The jury was being kept a bit in the dark, too, such as to the fact that another man, a police informant, had confessed to the murder. But the authorities preferred to go after the riper target of this Juan Melendez, in spite of the absence of a single shred of physical evidence. It had two witnesses, both dubious. Melendez will admit to hanging with a bad crowd and doing some petty crimes.

That one of the two witnesses was getting spared jail time in exchange for his testimony -- well, juries don't get advised of that kind of thing. That would be prejudicial to the prosecution. Never mind that it might be helpful to the man whose day in court it supposedly actually is, and who is about to get two prime decades of his life taken from him.

"I thought it was just a procedure," Melendez, 32 at the time of that trial, said in an interview before his speech last week. He recalls sitting there at the defense table assuming he couldn't be in any real trouble, since he didn't kill anybody and the elaborate exercise unfolding before him surely would come to that conclusion.

But then he could understand one thing -- the photographs of the victims that were shown the jurors. This was a brutal crime, with a slit throat, three bullet wounds and a pool of blood.

Powerful emotion is one of the fatal flaws in the death penalty. A reasonable doubt that might be applied to a lesser crime becomes less a viable option to a juror determined to try to fashion some form of justice out of such horror.

Then you have the problems with witnesses, since they are human beings possessed of the usual and varying frailties. Some are simply mistaken. Some are simply liars. Some are simply looking for a deal.

Next comes the politically elected prosecutor, whose career perhaps rests on his landing a conviction, since the case is likely his most high-profile, and who is inclined to make his bed with whatever excuses for witnesses he can find.

Throw in the uneven pattern of prosecution -- from one jurisdiction to the next, from one race to the other and from one economic class to the other.

When, at 50, Melendez got freed, it was because anti-death penalty legal groups had gained him a new trial. When required to try Melendez anew, the prosecution had no case at all. The confessor had long since died. The old witnesses' stories weren't the same as before. There remained no physical evidence.

This is Melendez' most thoughtful point: Even if a man did the crime, the man we kill is never the man we convicted. Years on death row, with only four hours a week spent out in the yard, will change you.

The underlying question -- beyond the haunting one of whether we might be putting in the grave an innocent man -- is what we're really accomplishing by killing him even if he did it.

John Brummett is a columnist and reporter for Stephens Media group in Little Rock. jbrummett@arkansasnews.com

Speaker returns to discuss death row

By: Alice Miller, Staff Writer
Issue date: 10/31/07

Almost exactly one year after his last appearance on campus, Juan Melendez returned to UNC to speak to about 25 students about his experiences on death row.

Melendez, who served almost 18 years on death row before he was found innocent and freed from a Florida prison, stressed in Tuesday's "Wrongfully Convicted" program that innocent people often receive the death sentence.

"My story is not unique," he said. "It happens all the time."

He enthusiastically described the positive effects of his imprisonment, such as learning to read, write and speak English better from friends who became closer to him than family.

He explained how those people, unlike the guards who watched him, made him feel like a human being.

But he compared these ups to the downs of witnessing unfair racial treatment among the prisoners, of the suicides of death row inmates and of never knowing how much time he had left to live.

Melendez was the 99th death row inmate to be freed in the U.S. To date, more than 120 innocent people have escaped death row before their executions.

The UNC Law Death Penalty Project sponsored the event both last year and Tuesday night.

Jennifer Karpowicz, president of the club and a third-year law student, said she was happy to have Melendez return.

"(It's) important for people to hear that our system is imperfect," she said.

While in prison, Melendez went through stages of feeling enraged, betrayed and afraid. But he kept a positive attitude, which he said was a key factor in maintaining his sanity and his will to live.

He said he attributes his positive spirit to "lots and lots of beautiful dreams," as well as the continued support of his mother and aunts from Puerto Rico and letters from his pen pal supporters located around the United States.

Some of the audience members Tuesday night were undergraduate students from professor Donna LeFebvre's criminal law class.

Mona Mohajerani, a senior political science major, said Melendez's speech brought a personal angle to the death penalty, which is often discussed as a political issue.

"You hear a lot about it, but I have never put a face to it," she said.

Elie Hessel, a junior psychology and political science double major, also said Melendez's experiences hit home to her when she realized people on death row are "real people with personalities and families."

The Death Penalty Project has many events throughout the year to increase awareness about death penalty issues. Events vary from visiting speakers, such as Melendez, to fundraisers to volunteering.

To end the evening, Melendez called for the audience to get involved to end the cycle of injustice in the political system. He said he wants to help others who find themselves in the same situation he was.

"Law is made by human beings, carried out by human beings," he said. "We are human beings, and we make mistakes."



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu

Council seeks alternatives in treating the mentally ill

Circuit Judge Janet Ferris remembers a case when a mentally ill man was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer.

The man was sleeping on a bench at Florida State University when the officer came up him and told him he was trespassing. The man, thinking the officer was the devil and trying to hurt him, struggled with the officer.

He ended up in jail.

Ferris said she's concerned that many people who are mentally ill, like this man, end up languishing in the Leon County Jail without really getting the treatment they need.

"The county jail has become like a mental-health facility," Ferris said. "And that's hard because it's a jail. It's not a mental-health facility. So I think the idea is to try to move them out of the jail as quickly as possible."

The Criminal Justice Mental Health and Substance Abuse Advisory Council, created in mid-September, met last week to discuss its plans to create a mental health court to make treatment more accessible and effective for people who are mentally ill and to reduce their length of stay in the jail. Similar courts have been created in Miami-Dade, Sarasota and Gainesville.

"The big thing is linking them to services in the community," said Kendra Brown, court mental health coordinator. Such services include housing, transportation, treatment plans and medication.

A mental health court would put all criminal cases that involve mental health issues on the same docket, which would be heard by the same judge trained to deal with these issues, said Merribeth Bohanan, assistant public defender.

Council members say many of the mentally ill who have not received the treatment they need are repeat offenders and they place a strain on resources. This population is rapidly growing in Leon County.

In a report, the council showed that the jail's annual expenditures on mentally ill inmates increased from about $128,000 in 2004 to $162,000 in 2006.

In any given month between 20 and 30 percent of the jail's 1,200 inmates are treated by its mental health staff, said Colleen Meringolo, health services administrator for Prison Health Services, which has a contract with the jail. Their conditions range from depression to schizophrenia.

"We do not charge people for services," Meringolo said. "If they don't have the money, they don't have the money. We still see them."

In October, the jail spent about $16,000 on prescription drugs, she said. Staff members include a licensed psychiatrist, who works 12 hours a week, a licensed clinical social worker who works 40 hours a week and a mental health coordinator, who works 30 hours a week.

The council put together a state grant application, which it submitted Nov. 1. The members won't find out if they will receive any money until early next year, but they plan to move forward with the mental health court proposal with or without the money.

In order to establish the mental health court, the council will need Chief Judge Charles Francis to sign an administrative order.

Ferris said the mental health court would be similar to the drug court model in that it would put more of an emphasis on treatment.

"We're trying to lead them to sobriety as opposed to just punishment," she said.

Church Group Says Orlando Police Used Excessive Force

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Members of a church group said they will file a formal complaint Monday morning against an Orlando police officer. Jump Ministries members said they were pepper-sprayed without warning or reason over the weekend when officers tried to clear away crowds.It was early Sunday morning, around 2:30am when people were leaving the downtown bars and clubs. It was very crowded and police were trying to control the situation when several people, including members of a church group said they were hit by pepper spray.

The pungent pepper spray sent several people to the ground. One man said the chemical affected him so severely he even had to go to the hospital.

"My throat started to burn and then my eyes started to burn and my face felt like it was on fire," said Odies Garcia, a church member.

Members of Jump Ministries were in the midst of shooting a religious video when they said police came up from behind them and sprayed the group. The Bishop said he plans to file a formal complaint with the Orlando Police Department.

"I believe last night absolutely was racially motivated and was an indictment of the church," Dr. Durone Hepburn said, the church Bishop.

The church said home video shows the officers releasing the spray, but Eyewitness News enhanced the video and it appears it is merely a man blowing cigarette smoke.

Orlando's police chief said the department will investigate.

"It's not to be used like bug spray. It's to help a situation from getting violent," Chief Michael McCoy said.

Chief McCoy said that each time pepper spray is released there has to be a very good reason and that reason must be documented.

Boy's murder spurred laws to save others

By Randy Schultz

Palm Beach Post Editorial Page Editor

Sunday, November 18, 2007

The news last week was that the Supreme Court halted the execution of Mark Dean Schwab.

The news 16 years ago was that this pedophile never should have been able to murder 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez.

Under the death warrant Gov. Crist signed, Schwab faced execution at 6''p.m. Thursday. But the high court had blocked every other execution until the justices consider whether lethal injection - the method of execution in all but one of the 38 states that allow capital punishment - is constitutional. So it came as no surprise Thursday afternoon when the court stopped the clock on Schwab.

There are death-penalty cases where guilt is in doubt. This is not one of them. Schwab most certainly killed Junny Rios-Martinez. He led investigators to the boy's body, near Cocoa. There are death-penalty cases in which killer and victim come together through tragic twists of fate. This is not one of them. Schwab picked his victim after seeing his picture in the paper, for winning a kite-flying contest. He pursued him until a bit of unfortunate luck went his way.

Even opponents of capital punishment might agree that if it is the law, it is for people like Mark Dean Schwab. But Schwab's place in the debate over lethal injection matters less than what Florida has done to keep the next Schwab away from the next Junny Rios-Martinez.

Released early, he killed soon

The timetable of events is enough to make anyone seethe:

On July 20, 1987, Schwab lured a 13-year-old boy to an apartment, and then held a knife while he raped him.

On March 18, 1988, Schwab was sentenced to eight years in prison.

On March 4, 1991, Schwab was released and given 15 years' probation. Yes, he served much less than half of his sentence. When he got out of prison, his mother bought him a car.

On April 18, 1991, Schwab killed Junny Rios-Martinez.

How could this happen? Travel back to the early 1990s, when Florida faced a prison crowding crisis.

When crack cocaine hit the state in the mid-to-late 1980s, the Legislature overreacted, passing laws that gave prison time for everything from selling to using. The state's prison population swelled, and the Department of Corrections had to get rid of inmates well before their release date to meet constitutional requirements on crowding. The violent got out with the less-violent.

But Wayne Holmes, who prosecuted Schwab and is now chief of staff to Brevard County State Attorney Norm Wolfinger, takes it back even earlier. "I started in 1979," he said last week, "and judges did not take sex offenders seriously." At that time, he recalled, judges could find child victims incompetent to testify against their attackers. "Fortunately, there have been so many changes since then."

Some are beyond rehabilitation

First came a law named for Junny Rios-Martinez, requiring that sex offenders do at least 85 percent of their time. The state began building prisons, to head off another crowding crisis.

The courts now provide support for child victims, not hostility. Changes in statutes of limitation allow prosecution longer after a crime, when the victim feels confident enough to come forward. Schwab's first victim has done so. Many counties have crimes-against-children prosecutors. The state now won't release hard-core sexual predators until they have been cleared to return to society.

It's all part of a growing realization that some of these criminals are beyond rehabilitation. "The problem," Mr. Holmes said, "is that this is a behavioral disorder, not a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia, when the mind just isn't working right. The pedophile will obsess, and he will reoffend. How do you change that person's behavior?"

Mr. Holmes remembers asking a psychologist in court if a sex offender could be treated successfully. "He said, 'If you give me $1 million and no other patients, I couldn't guarantee it.' "

Mark Dean Schwab is sick, but not stupid. To get to his first victim, he befriended the boy's family. He tried the same trick with Junny Rios-Martinez, but the family was vigilant. Schwab was able to succeed only because, when he called the boy's school posing as the father with a message to meet him at a ball field, a new person at the school took the call. At that ball field, Junny got into a rental truck with Schwab.

Because of Junny Rios-Martinez, other children haven't been killed. The system doesn't make news for such successes. But it's still news.

_

Lack of screening

The pervasive lack of training is compounded by
the fact that many jurisdictions place individuals on
the execution team without screening them for any
necessary qualifications, such as whether they have
the requisite skills and expertise, are reliable, and
can be trusted to handle dangerous, and addictive,
controlled substances. As a result, many current and
former execution team members are particularly ill-
suited to carry out the complicated three-drug proce-
dure.

Give him death, jury decides

A 7-5 vote recommends Timothy Permenter die. The judge has the final say. A hearing is Tuesday.

By JOSE CARDENAS, Times Staff Writer
Published November 17, 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A jury recommended the death penalty Friday for Timothy Permenter, who was convicted earlier in the 2003 murder of his girlfriend, Karen Pannell.

Pinellas County Circuit Judge R. Timothy Peters did not sentence Permenter immediately. Peters, who has the option to follow the jury's recommendation or impose a life sentence, scheduled a status hearing Tuesday.

Jurors voted 7-5 for the death penalty. The same jury convicted Permenter, 40, of first-degree murder last month.

Prosecutors said Permenter stabbed Pannell 16 times, mostly around her neck and heart, and left her in a pool of blood in her kitchen.

He wrote the word "Roc" on the wall with her blood, they said. Roc was the name of one of Pannell's ex-boyfriends.

Pannell, 39, was an American Airlines employee at Tampa International Airport.

More than a dozen of her family members from Georgia and Florida attended the trial. A smaller group of the relatives was in court Friday.

A brother and former sister-in-law became teary-eyed when the jury made its recommendation.

During testimony earlier in the day, prosecutors said there were several aggravating factors jurors should consider when deciding between life in prison and a death sentence.

Permenter was a convicted felon on probation when he killed Pannell, prosecutors said. Six of the 16 felonies he was convicted of committing were violent.

But the main factor was the cruelty of the killing, prosecutors contended. Permenter probably stabbed Pannell once in the back, paralyzing her. Then he stabbed her 15 more times while on top of her, according to court testimony.

She was conscious during the attack and aware of her impending death, prosecutors said.

"She was looking up into the eyes of her murderer," said Assistant State Attorney Bill Loughery. "There's no question it was atrocious, heinous and cruel."

A forensic psychologist testified on Permenter's behalf that he believes Permenter is psychotic.

Because of his mental illness, the psychologist testified Permenter meets two statutory requirements that can mitigate against a death sentence.

The psychologist, Robert Berland, said he interviewed Permenter's extended family and friends. An ex-girlfriend said Permenter mumbled to himself when he thought he was alone, a sign that he is delusional.

"He doesn't perceive the world the same way," said Assistant Public Defender Bob McClure in his closing argument to jurors. "That mental illness is always in the background."

The defense tried to paint a picture of a dysfunctional upbringing Friday.

Permenter's mother, Donna Finch, gave birth to him as a teenager. She said she divorced Permenter's father after two years of marriage. The father left the state and never contacted his son.

Finch said she raised Permenter with her father, Alex D. Finch, a former Clearwater mayor and lawyer who was murdered in his office in 1989 when Permenter was in his early 20s.

But the psychologist testified other family members said Permenter and two sisters were raised mostly by Donna Finch's grandparents.

McClure told the jury Permenter would never get out of prison. He said his life was worth saving.

"Understand that society is going to be protected from him," said McClure, pointing to his client. "Tim Permenter is dressed in a nice suit. It's the last time in his life he's ever going to dress nicely again."

Jose Cardenas can be reached at jcardenas@sptimes.com or 727 4224.

So-called medically qualified personnel who participated in the Diaz execution

The refusal to allow Mr. Lightbourne the opportunity to question the people who will carry out executions has led to the blind presumption of deference to the executive branch in fulfilling its obligations.

Mr. Lightbourne tried at every turn in the proceedings below to learn information from and present the testimony

Taylor v. Crawford, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 42949 (W.D. Mo. June 26, 2006).

of the executioners and so-called medically qualified personnel who participated in
the Diaz execution and who will participate in future executions

(and to this day does not know whether the individuals are the same).

It is a denial of due process to deny Mr. Lightbourne the opportunity to learn or present information necessary to overcome the presumption that the DOC will properly perform its duties.

In other states where defendants have been afforded the opportunity to question
individuals serving as executioners or medical personnel, defendants have learned
facts which certainly overcome the presumption here that the DOC will properly
perform its duties.

For example, a defendant in Missouri discovered that a doctor responsible for mixing the chemicals used in executions was dyslexic and sometimes mixed smaller doses of the drugs than were called for in Missouri’s execution protocol.

Prosecutors want death for accused turnpike shooters

By Derek Simmonsen

Friday, November 16, 2007

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Local prosecutors want to seek the death penalty for two men accused of gunning down a family of four in Port St. Lucie last year, but the final decision rests with the U.S. Attorney General.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida has already reviewed the case and recommended execution. Now it's up to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was sworn into office Wednesday and must approve any federal death penalty prosecution.

Mukasey is expected to decide in the next two to three months on whether to approve seeking the death penalty in the case.

"He has a significant backlog of matters," Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Carlton said. "We have been advised it will be at least two months."

The Attorney General personally reviews each case and makes a decision on whether to seek death after getting recommendations from a committee, Carlton said.

The trial, which was set for February, has now been postponed and a new date is not set. The prosecution and defense will meet again in 60 days if the Attorney General has made his decision; otherwise they will meet again in 90 days to talk about a new trial date.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Hurley noted that some federal judges have given the Department of Justice a deadline on when to announce a decision, as it has sometimes taken up to a year. The attorneys agreed that wasn't necessary at this point.

In April, Ricardo Sanchez, 24, and Daniel Troya, 24, pleaded not guilty to drug charges and armed carjacking resulting in death and using a firearm in a violent crime resulting in death for the Oct. 13, 2006 shooting deaths of Greenacres residents Jose and Yessica Escobedo and their sons, Luis Damien, 4, and Luis Julian, 3. Their bodies were found on the side of the turnpike in Port St. Lucie. Defense attorneys for the suspects went to Washington, D.C., last week to meet with officials from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Defense attorney James Eisenberg, who represents Troya, said the attorneys are moving forward with the idea that the death penalty will be on the table. If so, he expects the trial to possibly occur in the fall of 2008. If the death penalty is taken away as an option, the trial could occur sooner.

Four other individuals face drug charges and up to life in prison in connection with Jose Escobedo's alleged drug ring. On Oct. 31, defendant Kevin Vetere pleaded guilty to the charges against him. He was indicted on a charge of conspiracy to possess cocaine with the intent to distribute. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Jan. 18.

Child killer's delayed execution means agony for family

STARKE, Florida (CNN) -- The call. He expected it. Dreaded it. But he didn't hesitate to answer.

When Junny Rios-Martinez's cell phone rang Thursday afternoon, he and his wife were in their car, getting the family together on their way to witness the execution of their son's killer scheduled for that night.

"It was a woman from the governor's office. She told me there was a stay."

"I told her thank you, that I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised."

Mark Dean Schwab, 38, won a stay from the Supreme Court hours before he was scheduled to be put to death.

When Rios-Martinez hung up, no one said a word.

"There was a silence in the car that lasted several minutes. Everyone knew by the tone of my voice what happened," Rios-Martinez said.

Junny and Vicki Rios-Martinez had been waiting for more than 16 years to see their son's killer executed. Now, they'll have to wait even longer.

The Supreme Court is reviewing whether executions by injection violate the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. At issue is whether the drug mix used in more than 35 states can cause pain that can't be detected.

The high court is studying a Kentucky case and isn't expected to rule until sometime next year.

Rios-Martinez said the delay gives him just one more reason to be fed up with a criminal justice system he feels has let him down.

"People tell me I'm full of anger. Why shouldn't I be? My son was my life. He was the light of my eyes. I loved him more than anything," said Rios-Martinez. Watch the father say people seem to forget who the victim is »

In April 1991, Schwab posed as a reporter and told the family he wanted to do a surfing story about 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez Jr.

When Schwab showed up at their home, the family said he was wearing a fake newspaper ID. Junny's parents had no idea Schwab was just out of prison. He'd served three years for sexual assault and was released early.

For three weeks, Schwab courted the family. The boy's mother said he brought him McDonald's coupons and an Easter card.

At one point, she said her husband got suspicious and she told him not to worry. "I said you watch too many crime shows on TV."

Junny's parents said Schwab wanted to act as the boy's agent and take him to interviews with surfing magazines out of town. Each time Junny's mom would insist on going along, she said Schwab would agree, and then come up with an excuse to cancel the trip.

Finally, Junny's parents said, Schwab called the boy's school and pretended to be his father. He left a message to have Junny meet him and the school passed it along.

According to state records, on April 18, 1991, a schoolmate of Junny reported the boy got into a U-Haul truck with a man. Days later, Junny's body was found in a footlocker. Authorities said he'd been raped and asphyxiated.

The family's emotional wounds remain raw after all these years.

When they got the call that Schwab's execution was stayed, the family drove to a relative's home and debated what to do next.

Should they get back in their cars and keep heading to the prison -- if nothing else, to meet with waiting reporters?

"The family was split. Some wanted to go, others didn't," said Rios-Martinez.

"I left the room to meditate and asked Junny what he wanted me to do. He told me we shouldn't go. He told me he wanted us to celebrate his life." The family agreed.

Rios-Martinez tried to remain positive and upbeat, but he was seething. He was counting on seeing Schwab again in person, this time strapped to a gurney.

He remembered an encounter with his son's killer years earlier after his conviction. Rios-Martinez went to the jail where Schwab was being held and said he asked a jailer to allow him to see Schwab.

Junny's father said a clear Plexiglass partition separated the men.

Schwab was lying down with a piece of paper hiding his face. Junny's father said Schwab then stood up.

Rios-Martinez said he found himself staring into the eyes of the man who took his son's life.

"I asked the officer to open the door, but he wouldn't, Rios-Martinez said.

If he had, Rios-Martinez said, he would have "grabbed Schwab by the throat and made him visualize the last moments of my son's life...his bewilderment and anguish."

The boy's father said he often imagines how his son must have suffered.

He said he told Schwab: "I'm looking at a dead man. I told him I would be the first and last face he saw before he died."

The victim's family is convinced it's just a matter of time before Schwab's execution is rescheduled.

"I promised him [Schwab] I would be there in the front seat."

But, for now, he prefers to put Schwab out of his mind.

"As far as I'm concerned, he no longer exists. It's over. It's over."

On Saturday, Junny's family and friends will hold what they're calling a celebration of his short life at the Junny Rios-Martinez Park in Cocoa, Florida.

"We decided to accentuate the positive," Rios-Martinez said.

They plan on showing a video about Junny's life. He would have been 28 years old.

"The family is more united than ever. My son's spirit lives in all of us."

All AboutU.S. Supreme Court

Memorial Held For Murdered 11-Year-Old

The family of an 11-year-old who was murdered 16 years ago held a memorial for their son Saturday.

The memorial for Junny Rios-Martinez was meant to focus attention on the victim, instead of on the killer who was supposed to be executed for the murder earlier this week.

An officer who investigated Martinez's murder spoke along with Martinez's friends and family.

"We have found peace and we have found joy and we want to share that with the community who suffered with us through all of this," said Vicki Rios-Martinez, Junny's mother.

Mark Schwab, the man who killed Junny, was set to die by lethal injection on Thursday. Schwab's execution was postponed by the Supreme Court until sometime next year.

A sick system: Reform Florida's treatment of mental illness

State prisons and county jails throughout Florida are filled with people who suffer from mental illnesses.

That says as much about the condition of our society as it does the inmates.

"On any given day in Florida, there are approximately 16,000 prison inmates, 15,000 local jail detainees and 40,000 individuals under correctional supervision in the community who experience serious mental illness," according to a state report issued Wednesday.

Those troubling statistics were compiled in a report by a legislative Mental Health Subcommittee that recommends substantial changes in the treatment of mentally ill Floridians, especially those accused of crimes. Indeed, radical reform is needed.

The Florida Supreme Court called for the report. As a result, the subcommittee produced a 180-page document that exposes ineffective and outdated systems, treatments and practices.

"The first state psychiatric hospitals were opened in the United States during the 1800s, and were intended to serve as more appropriate and compassionate alternatives to the neglect and abuse of incarceration" that befell the mentally ill, according to the report's executive summary.

Asylums became crowded, lacked staff and "turned into houses of horrors."

By the mid-1900s, a half-million people were held in such places. A belief emerged "that people with serious mental illnesses could be treated more effectively and humanely in the community."

There was some logic in that belief. But mental hospitals released thousands of people and "unfortunately," the subcommittee report says, "there was no organized or adequate network of community mental health centers to receive and absorb these newly displaced individuals."

Promises of sustained increases in community-based funding evaporated. With limited options available, mentally ill men, women and juveniles struggle to cope. Inappropriate behavior, homelessness, substance abuse and minor crimes often lead to arrest and incarceration. Now, the report says, "jails and prisons once again function as de facto mental health institutions for people with severe and disabling mental illnesses. In two centuries, we have come full circle, and today our jails are once again psychiatric warehouses."

The report calls for Florida to develop a system that effectively and humanely treats mentally ill people for their illnesses and prevents them from getting stuck in costly, dangerous jails. Taking these steps won't be easy or inexpensive but they are the right steps to take

After Flawed Executions, States Resort to Secrecy

Ellyde Roko in New York Times, July 30, 2007

Media Source: nytimes.com



After Flawed Executions, States Resort to Secrecy

By ADAM LIPTAK

A Missouri doctor who had supervised more than 50 executions by lethal injection testified last year that he sometimes gave condemned inmates smaller doses of a sedative than the state’s protocol called for, explaining that he is dyslexic. “So it’s not unusual for me to make mistakes,” said the doctor, who was referred to in court papers as John Doe I.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch identified him last July as Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff, revealing that he had been a magnet for malpractice suits arising from his day job as a surgeon and that two hospitals had revoked his privileges. In September, a federal judge barred Dr. Doerhoff from participating “in any manner, at any level, in the State of Missouri’s lethal injection process.”

Naturally, state lawmakers took action to address the issue.

A new law, signed this month by Gov. Matt Blunt, makes it unlawful to reveal “the identity of a current or former member of an execution team,” and it allows executioners to sue anyone who names them.

The governor explained that the law “will protect those Missourians who assist in fulfilling the state’s execution process.”

In the wake of several botched executions around the nation, often performed by poorly trained workers, you might think that we would want to know more, not less, about the government employees charged with delivering death on behalf of the state.

But corrections officials say that executioners will face harassment or worse if their identities are revealed, and that it is getting hard to attract medically trained people to administer lethal injections, in part because codes of medical ethics prohibit participation in executions.

The Missouri law addresses that point, too. It bars licensing boards from taking disciplinary actions against doctors or nurses who participate in executions.

The job of executioner has never been a high-status profession, of course, which accounts for the hoods that hangmen wore. But in the old days, as John D. Bessler wrote in a history of executions, killing condemned prisoners “called for no expertise apart from the ability to tie a knot.”

Lethal injections are different. They require executioners to insert catheters and to prepare three chemicals and inject them, in the right dosage and sequence, into intravenous lines. If the first chemical is ineffective as a sedative, the other two are torturous.

Yet a federal judge in California found last year that prison execution teams there had been poorly screened and included people who had been disciplined for smuggling drugs and who had post-traumatic stress disorder.

In a decision a week ago Sunday, a state court judge in Florida, Carven D. Angel, halted the execution of a death row inmate, saying, “We need to have people with competence and experience” to perform executions.

But, according to lethal injection procedures issued by Florida’s corrections department in May, there is only one job requirement to be an executioner there: you must be “a person 18 years or older who is selected by the warden to initiate the flow of lethal chemicals into the inmate.”

Those credentials struck Judge Angel as a little thin.

“I don’t think that any 18-year-old executioner,” the judge said from the bench, “with the pressure of a governor’s warrant behind him to carry out an execution, and with the pressure of the whole world — the press and the whole world — in front of him and looking at him is going to have enough experience and competence to stop an execution when it needs to be stopped.”

The concern is not hypothetical. In December, Florida executioners had to inject Angel N. Diaz, a convicted murderer, with a second dose of lethal chemicals after the first set did not do the trick. It took Mr. Diaz 34 minutes to die, and witnesses said he continued to move, squint and mouth words after the first dose hit.

It would be good to know more about who is performing executions in Florida. But that state’s law, like Missouri’s, forbids the disclosure of “information which identifies an executioner.” Quite a few states have similar laws, and a new Virginia law shielding executioners came into effect this month.

A forceful and persuasive article published in the Fordham Law Review in April argued for “a right to know who is hiding behind the hood.”

Its author, Ellyde Roko, who will start her third year of law school at Fordham in the fall, said in an interview that society’s interest in knowing how the death penalty is administered should outweigh the relatively flimsy interests supporting secrecy. “Not knowing who the executioners are takes away a huge check on the system,” she said.

A 2002 decision of the federal appeals court in San Francisco allowing the press and public to view executions in California supports Ms. Roko’s position.

“Even assuming an execution team member were identified by a witness, the notion of retaliation is pure speculation,” Judge Raymond C. Fisher wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. “No execution team member has ever been threatened or harmed by an inmate or by anyone outside the prison because of his participation in an execution.”

Indeed, Judge Fisher continued, there are far more likely targets for retaliation, including the warden, the governor and the judges who rejected the condemned prisoner’s appeals. And all of their names are public.



Email: fordhamlawyer@law.fordham.edu

Man sentenced to death for killing his parents with baseball bat

BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) A 25-year-old man was sentenced Friday to death for fatally beating his parents with a baseball bat while they slept.

Blaine Ross was convicted earlier this year on two counts of first-degree murder.

``Accordingly, Blaine Ross, you have not only forfeited your right to live among us, but under the laws of the state of Florida you have forfeited your right to live at all,'' Circuit Judge Edward Nicholas said.

Ross originally told police he came home and discovered the bodies of his parents, Richard A. Ross, 54, and Kathleen M. Ross, 52, on Jan. 7, 2004. He was charged several days later with the crime. In a confession to police, Ross said he didn't remember committing the crimes because he had been using alcohol, marijuana and Xanax.

Prosecutors said Ross killed his parents because they told him to grow up and they cut him off financially.

``They were just sentences for terrible deeds,'' Art Brown, assistant state attorney said.

The case will automatically be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court.

``This is not an appropriate case for the death penalty, and I am very sorry that the state of Florida saw fit to pursue that here,'' assistant public defender Adam Tebrugge told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Information from: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, http://www.herald-trib.com

Manatee man gets first death sentence in county in almost 20 years

By MICHAEL A. SCARCELLA

michael.scarcella@heraldtribune.com

BRADENTON -- The lives of Richard and Kathleen Ross were taken in the middle of the night, their heads crushed with a baseball bat gripped in the hands of the son whom they loved.

Blaine Daniel Ross, a troubled youth, unemployed and drifting in life, slipped ropes around the necks of his parents. He scattered clothing to stage a burglary, a move that did not fool anyone.

Despite the brutality of the January 2004 murders, and the clumsy effort to conceal the crime, his other relatives stood by him. They did not want him to die. Ross, his family and his attorneys said, was a life worth saving.

But now Ross, 25, will join the ranks of Florida's death row inmates, nearly 400 killers awaiting execution by lethal injection. Ross was sentenced to death Friday.

In balancing aggravating factors with those that portray Ross as a sympathetic person, "the scales of life and death tilt unquestionably to the side of death," Circuit Judge Edward Nicholas said in court.

Ross showed no emotion, seeming prepared for the words that followed.

"Accordingly, Blaine Ross, you have not only forfeited your right to live among us, but under the laws of the state of Florida you have forfeited your right to live at all," said Nicholas, who presided over the Ross trial earlier this year.

The death sentence, which court observers said was largely anticipated, was the first in Manatee County in nearly two decades.

Of the 385 men on death row in Florida, there are 13 killers convicted in Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties. No women are awaiting execution.

For the state, the death sentence instantly became a highlight in the career of a veteran prosecutor who has unsuccessfully sought execution in several murder cases in recent years.

"They were just sentences for terrible deeds," said Assistant State Attorney Art Brown, who walked away from court smiling.

Attorneys for Ross said the case will be automatically appealed to the Florida Supreme Court. A ruling is expected in the next couple of years.

Assistant public defenders Carolyn Schlemmer, John Scotese and Adam Tebrugge were dismayed by the judge's order. The sentence, the lawyers said, will not serve as a deterrent.

"My feeling is that the sentence imposed compounds the tragedy of the case," Tebrugge said outside the courthouse. "In my opinion, this is not an appropriate case for the death penalty, and I am very sorry that the state of Florida saw fit to pursue that here."

Executions in the United States are on hold at least for a few more months, when the U.S. Supreme Court plans to debate whether the procedure for lethal injection is tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment.

Courts across the nation have blocked executions until the U.S. Supreme Court renders an opinion.

Ross, his lawyers said, should have been sentenced to life in prison without parole, punishment that critics of the death penalty say is worse than death.

This summer, a jury in Bradenton recommended that Richard E. Henderson, 22, who killed his parents, brother and grandmother in November 2005, spend the rest of his life locked up. A judge agreed.

In that case, Henderson's attorneys, including Schlemmer, said Henderson was insane when he attacked his family with a metal pipe, and that he has a lengthy history of mental illness.

Ross did not rely on insanity.

Instead, his lawyers said Manatee County sheriff's detectives coerced a confession and that someone else may have been responsible for the murders at the Ross home in the Lionshead subdivision. Jurors did not buy the defense.

"The law is always a profession where one can second-guess how you handled a case," Tebrugge said in an interview Friday.

The prosecution's case against Ross was solid: the state had a confession, blood evidence on Ross' pants and a motive.

Ross vehemently denied killing his parents during more than four hours of questioning with sheriff's detectives. He finally broke down, saying he did not know why he killed his mother and father.

"You were right that I didn't do this on purpose," Ross told an investigator. "It took me a second to realize that it happened."

Brown, the prosecutor, said Ross killed his parents for money. He thought he would get thousands of dollars. In the end, he got nothing.

Ross' mother had changed the PIN to her ATM card a day before she was killed. Just hours after the murders, Ross tried unsuccessfully to convince a bank employee to give him the number.

Prosecutors described a chilling crime scene, with blood on the ceiling of the bedroom. Some of that blood, Brown said, ended up on Ross' pants.

Nicholas, the judge, said Ross likely killed his parents swiftly so as to not wake the other one. Richard Ross, a nuclear medicine expert, was struck twice in the head; his wife, Kathleen, a Verizon executive, was struck at least four times.

"It is clear to this court that the defendant has a loving family who cherishes him," the judge said, reading from a 22-page order. "The brutality of the murders stands in stark contrast to the quality of the relationships in his life."

Ross' attorneys begged for his life, saying that years of drug abuse made Ross unable to think clearly and to behave appropriately. An expert who testified at Ross' trial in April said Ross suffers from a pre-schizophrenia mental condition.

Nicholas said there is no substantial, or even convincing, evidence that Ross suffers from a debilitating mental illness.

Ross, the judge said, fabricated symptoms such as hallucination as part of his defense.

But Nicholas struggled with how much weight to give to Ross' extensive drug use as he debated whether Ross was under the influence of drugs when he killed his parents. There was no proof, he said, that drugs rendered Ross unable to discern right from wrong.

And the fact that Ross was 21 when he was arrested did not carry much weight, Nicholas said. Ross was an adult then and had shown an ability to care for others who needed him.

Florida stands alone in the country in not requiring a unanimous jury vote in life-or-death decisions in capital cases.

In the Ross case, jurors voted 8-4 in recommending death. Judges rarely cast aside jury recommendations.

The recommendation, Nicholas said, reflected the conscience of the community.

Lethal injection files

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