Warden on death penalty: "This is wrong"

By DARA KAM dara_kam@pbpost.com
Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau

Saturday, June 28, 2008

TALLAHASSEE — Murderer Pedro Medina was strapped into "Old Sparky" shortly after midnight on March 25, 1997, at Florida State Prison.

Warden Ron McAndrew stood nearby as a guard placed a wet sponge to conduct more than 2,000 volts of electricity onto Medina's shaved head.

The executioner pulled the switch. Within seconds, an arm's length from McAndrew, 6-inch flames leaped out the side of the mask on Medina's head.

The cramped chamber immediately filled with smoke and a putrid, acrid odor.

The executioner, wearing oversize insulated gloves that protect linemen working on electrical wires, sought advice from the warden.

"He looked at me with this big question on his face, and he said, 'Continue?' " McAndrew recalled recently. "I said, 'Continue. Continue.' There's no way we could stop at that point."

Medina's searing death and two executions before it led McAndrew down an unlikely path since he quit prison work: He is a working opponent of the death penalty.

"All three executions ignited a fire of thought," McAndrew said. "Each time I carried out one of those executions, I certainly was asking myself why I was there and is this necessary."

Witness entire process, ex-warden says

On Tuesday, Florida plans to execute by lethal injection Mark Dean Schwab, who raped and strangled 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa. McAndrew opposes the execution.

During his time at Florida State Prison, McAndrew earned the moniker "The Walking Warden" because he spent more time outside his office walking the grounds than behind his desk.

He said he visited Death Row every day.

McAndrew said he supported the death penalty during his 20-plus years with the Department of Corrections.

"One day I just sat down and said, 'This is wrong. This is wrong. We have no business killing people,' " he said, except in self-defense, in defense of someone else or in defense of the nation.

Not everyone agrees.

Proponents of the death penalty, including some families of murdered children such as Rios-Martinez, argue that the execution helps them deal with their loss.

"That will not serve as a substitute for getting our son back, but it is as close as we can get to justice in this rather imperfect world we live in," said Don Ryce, whose 9-year-old son Jimmy was raped, murdered and dismembered in Miami-Dade County in 1995. Juan Carlos Chavez was convicted of the crime.

Ryce said Chavez's execution would bring his wife, Claudine, and him "as close to a feeling of peace to that chapter of our life that we're ever going to get." He said he supports the death penalty, although he may not live to witness Chavez die because of the lengthy appeals process.

"He'll probably outlive us because of our screwed-up system," Ryce said. "But if we're still alive, we'll be there for the execution. And we have had some people promise us if we don't make it, they'll be there for us."

"From the standpoint of not only myself but Claudine, we feel the death penalty is appropriate in this case, knowing that won't bring our child back. Knowing there's no such thing as closure. Knowing that justice has been done. We don't feel that way yet," said Ryce, of Vero Beach.

Although McAndrew understands the feeling of the victims' families, the executions he witnessed still haunt him.

Schwab's will be the first execution since former Gov. Jeb Bush put a moratorium on executions in 2006 pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on lethal injection. The court ruled recently that lethal injection is not cruel and unusual punishment.

McAndrew, a slow-spoken activist, grows agitated when talking about lethal injection and the likelihood that executions will resume in Florida.

The most recent inmate executed by lethal injection, Angel Diaz, took more than 30 minutes to die because the needles had been pushed through his veins into his flesh.

But none of the 26 witnesses on the other side of the glass window looking into the execution chamber knew that because, when the curtains behind the window were opened, Diaz was already on a gurney with IVs in his arms.

"If they're going to be honest and forthcoming about what's going on in the death chamber, then from the second the condemned walks into the chamber until the body is placed in a body bag, all 26 witnesses should be there," McAndrew said.

Opponents welcome an insider's voice

Other death penalty opponents tell him that he's an invaluable resource.

"They say only someone who's been that close to it can speak about it in the way that you do," McAndrew said, his voice growing soft.

The former Air Force sergeant began his career in corrections after returning to the United States following a 15-year stint living and traveling throughout France and Asia as a manager for an international exporter.

He never imagined then that, less than two decades later, he would be the warden of one of the state's toughest institutions, landing in 1996 at Florida State Prison.

There, he oversaw three executions in the electric chair: John Earl Bush, John Mills Jr. and Medina.

His first experience, Bush's execution, was uncomfortable, he said. Bush had killed 18-year-old Frances Slater after abducting her from a Stuart convenience store.

The members of the execution team told the warden that it was a tradition to have breakfast at Shoney's after the early morning executions.

"I got to Shoney's and the food started looking very disgusting," McAndrew said. "At the table directly in front of me, I could see the back of the female attorney (for Bush). She turned and looked over her shoulder at me. She had a look of pain on her face."

He left without eating.

'I'd had all the breakfast I could stand'

Starke is a small town with a population of about 5,500 people, most of whom work at the nearby prison, have retired from there or have family members who do.

Everyone at the restaurant knew the group had performed the execution.

What troubled McAndrew was that the public might misconstrue the breakfast as celebratory.

Before the next execution, McAndrew spoke with the colonel on the team: "I told him I'd had all the breakfast I could stand."

Paul Schauble Jr. spent more than a decade as a Death Row officer, taking condemned inmates to showers and recreation and delivering their meals.

He doesn't have any qualms about the job he performed for 12 years.

"Most of us believe we have a job to do. And whether I believe they are innocent or deserve their punishment, my job is to make sure they stay inside the fence and I take care of all their needs and then I go home," Schauble said.

Although he didn't enjoy it, he believes that the prisoners he tended to deserved to die because their crimes were so egregious and their court appeals, over and over again, had been exhausted. He has been the target of Death Row inmates' wrath. He has been hit with feces and bricks, been gouged and stitched up.

The union representative of the Police Benevolent Association doesn't have a lot of sympathy for the prisoners.

"By the time they get on Death Row, the investigation is so extensive ... I truly believe they are guilty of that crime," Schauble said.

Before dawn on the day of the execution, McAndrew would sit on the side of the inmate's bunk and read the death warrant aloud after explaining that he was required to do so by state law.

"You ask them if there's anything you can do for them. If there's any phone call you'd like me to make, I'll be glad to do that," McAndrew said.

Those last moments alone with the person whose death he was about to facilitate haunt him.

"They share things with you in those last moments too, things that you'll never talk about again," he said.

The positions are reversed now.

"These men come and sit on the edge of my bed, so to speak," McAndrew said. "In my mind, I see them a lot. I wish I had never been involved in carrying out the death penalty."

Prison: Treatment, not prison

By
The Times-Union


We used to have mental asylums.
--------------------------------------------------


Now we have prisons as a major source of treatment for the mentally ill.

We used to consider rehabilitation as the prime motive of prison.

Now we lock people up and throw away the key.

And this nation leads the world in the rate of incarceration.

Does the United States really have that many more criminals per capita than every other country in the world?

A Pew Center report estimated that one out of every 100 American adults is incarcerated, the highest rate reported in U.S. history. More than 2.3 million people nationally were in jails or prisons at the beginning of 2008.

The absolute number of people in U.S. prisons increased by nearly 25,000 people in the first half of 2007. The length of prison terms is increasing

According to The Sentencing Project, here are some rates of prisoners per 100,000 population:

- U.S.: 762.

- Russia: 611.

- U.S. Virgin Islands: 521.

- Turkmenistan: 489.

- Canada: 107.

The 713,473 people released from state and federal prisons represented a new high, The Sentencing Project reported. Are these people going to return to programs that provide treatment and job training? If not, it will be no surprise if the same criminal cycles repeat.

The public needs to be protected from violent offenders. But for nonviolent offenders, treatment often is the best way to deter them from future crimes. Compared to the cost of imprisonment, treatment also is less expensive.

When treatment programs have proven records of success, it is self-defeating not to fully fund them.

It costs more in financial and human terms to fill prisons with no hope of rehabilitation. obama: the musical boomer He listens to early Bob Dylan music on the campaign trail. He is honored that Bruce Springstein has said kind words about him. He also has music from the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder. Kind of like oldies from the 1970s, right? That makes Barack Obama a baby boomer, because music played a huge role in the lives of the boomers, carrying them through the racial traumas of the 1960s, the anti-war movement of the 1970s and the Watergate era. Obama says that America has to get beyond the counterproductive arguments between the Bush and Clinton wings of the boomers. He's right. He should know.




This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/062908/opi_296493995.shtml.

Update: Child killer visits relatives on eve of death

FLORIDA TODAY CAPITAL BUREAU

Condemned child rapist and murderer Mark Dean Schwab is visiting this afternoon with his mother and an aunt at Florida State Prison near Starke where he is set to be executed Tuesday evening.

"He's calm and he's following all instructions," said Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

Schwab, 39, was sentenced to death for the 1991 abduction, sexual assault and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, 11, of Cocoa. Schwab murdered the boy about a month after getting out of prison for rape of another boy in 1987.

Schwab has a three-hour, non-contact visit from Mary Killam, his mother, and Shirley Muhs, his aunt. Both women live in Ohio, according to Department of Corrections records.

This evening Schwab will have phone contact with his attorneys, Plessinger said.

On Tuesday, Schwab will have another visit with family members. For the last hour of that three-hour visit Schwab and family will be allowed to touch each other. Schwab has put in his request for his last meal, which will be served before noon Tuesday. He has requested a religious adviser, and a Baptist minister, a state prison chaplain, is meeting with Schwab.

Schwab would be the 65th person executed in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. There have been no executions, however, since December 2006 when a botched lethal injection led to a state-imposed moratorium, since lifted. Schwab's scheduled November execution was delayed by a U.S. Supreme Court review of lethal injection in a Kentucky case.

Earlier story: Schwab lawyer eyes US Supreme Court

BY JOHN A. TORRES
FLORIDA TODAY

Denied by Florida courts, Mark Dean Schwab has one last appeal for his life with the US Supreme Court before Tuesday's scheduled execution.

The nation's top court issued a stay of execution in November for the child rapist and murderer, only hours before he was scheduled to die. But the court has since ruled on the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case that opened the door for several states -- including Florida -- to resume executions.

"I have not heard that he has filed anything" with the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Sandi Copes said Sunday evening.

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a ruling by Titusville Judge Charles Holcomb denying Schwab's claims for a new hearing based on the argument that the state's lethal injection protocol may cause him pain. Separately, the U.S. District Court denied Schwab's request to file another appeal. At that point, Schwab's attorney, Peter Cannon, promised to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We never know, never know," Cannon said. "We have to file an appeal, but this is not a useless appeal."

Schwab's lawyers say Florida's methods do not meet the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Kentucky case. They point to Department of Corrections training records that they say reveal several errors during mock executions in the past year.

They say little has changed since the botched execution of Angel Diaz in December 2006 that took twice as long as normal and caused the inmate pain.

They argue Florida's lethal injection protocol violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that protects against cruel and unusual punishment.

In their rulings, both Holcomb and the Florida Supreme Court reiterated that any form of capital punishment -- no matter how humane -- may cause pain.

Schwab was sentenced to death on July 1, 1992, for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa.

The crime occurred about a month after Schwab was released from prison for raping then 13-year-old Than Meyer of Cocoa Beach in 1987.

"We will never know why he would want to hurt someone so pure and beautiful as Junny," Meyer, now 34, wrote in an e-mail to FLORIDA TODAY on Saturday. "It is too bad our families have had to suffer for so long waiting for Schwab to pay his dues. But we can all look forward after Tuesday, and try to make a new beginning, without ever forgetting Junny and what beauty and joy he brings to so many people."

Contact Torres at 242-3649 or jtorres@floridatoday.com.

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Florida set to resume executions

By Nathan Crabbe crabben@gvillesun.com

Sun staff writer


Published: Monday, June 30, 2008 at 6:01 a.m.


Florida is set to put convicted child killer Mark David Schwab to death Tuesday, resuming executions for the first time since a botched execution more than 18 months ago.

In that time, the state has made changes to the lethal injection process such as redesigning the death chamber and adding a step to ensure an inmate is unconscious before lethal drugs are injected.

But critics say the state failed to address problems with the drugs themselves and training of the people administering them.

"If you keep doing what you've done in the past, why do you not expect the same result?" asked Peter Cannon, an attorney representing Schwab for the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel's Tampa office.

Florida and the three dozen other states with lethal injection use a similar three-drug combination in executions. Inmates are first injected with a sedative, then a paralyzing agent and finally a drug that stops the heart.

Legal challenges have raised questions about the drugs. Schwab's appeal suggests Florida's high dosage of the sedative slows the effect of the other drugs. An Ohio judge earlier this month ordered the state to drop two of the drugs and deliver only a massive dosage of the sedative.

Members of a commission studying Florida's execution method recommended the state consider discontinuing use of the paralyzing agent, which is banned in the euthanization of pets. The commission also recommended the state look into updating all the chemicals used in the process.

But the Florida Department of Corrections decided to stick with the existing drugs because they're the same ones used in other states, said spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.

"Right now, this is the protocol that other states are using, so we didn't want to deviate from that," she said.

Unless a court issues a stay, Schwab will be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison near Starke. Schwab was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez in 1991.

His execution would end a hiatus that started with the botched execution of Angel Diaz and continued with the U.S. Supreme Court considering a legal challenge to lethal injection.

The execution of Diaz, who appeared to be wincing in pain and required a second round of lethal drugs, led to the appointment of the commission that studied Florida's execution process. The commission found IV lines had been pushed through Diaz's veins and recommended changes to prevent the problem from happening again.

Before executions could resume, however, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a lethal injection challenge that put executions on hold across the country. In April, the court issued a decision upholding lethal injection in a Kentucky case, Baze v. Reese.

The high court ruling didn't end the debate over lethal injection, said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in death penalty issues.

"Baze didn't close doors at all," she said. "It left a wide-open door."

Denno said an Ohio judge's decision this month to drop two of the three drugs in the combination could start a trend of such cases. She said attention to lethal injection has also spurred a wave of new research exposing flaws in the method.

"This is stoking the fire of the issue," she said.

University of Miami researcher Teresa Zimmers has taken part in three studies of executions. She said one problem with lethal injection is that states fail to adjust the drug dosage depending on the inmate's body weight or medical history.

"That one-size-fits-all approach doesn't seem to be working well," Zimmers said.

While states use the same drugs, they deliver different amounts. Florida administers five grams of the sedative sodium pentothal, compared to two grams in Georgia and Ohio. Florida officials have argued the larger amount ensures an inmate is unconscious.

But Cannon studied previous executions in the state, finding the larger dose could be interfering with other drugs. Florida executions lasted 13.8 minutes on average - longer than the time a state expert testified they should take, and longer than the average times in Georgia and Ohio.

Schwab's appeal suggests the sedative is slowing the effect of the other drugs. But Dr. Kayser Enneking, chairwoman of the anesthesiology department in UF's College of Medicine, questioned that conclusion.

"I'm not sure that a larger dosage would have any effect on slowing the effect of the other drugs," she said.

There are also questions about the paralytic drug. Because the drug can mask unconsciousness, the American Veterinary Medical Association bans its use in euthanizing animals.

Some members of Florida's commission, including Gainesville Circuit Court Judge Stan Morris, suggested the state consider dropping use of the paralyzing drug. State officials argued the drug serves a purpose by masking involuntary convulsions that could shock observers, including the victim's family.

Denno said an Ohio case shows the drug issue is fertile legal ground.

Earlier this month, an Ohio judge ordered the state to use only a massive dosage of the sedative drug to execute inmates - the same method used in euthanizing animals, but a method that could make executions last as long as 45 minutes.

Zimmers said states are essentially conducting unethical medical experiments with inmates in continually tweaking execution procedures.

"They're pretty much arbitrary decisions made in some cases by judges," she said.

But medical ethics have limited the involvement of doctors in the process. Florida shields the identity of medical professionals involved in executions, going so far as to mask the doctor who declares inmates dead.

Enneking said those ethical constraints, as well as the fact the drugs were made for purposes other than causing death, make it difficult to identify problems with the method.

"There's no perfect way to do this as far as I can tell," she said.

Zimmers said doctors are already involved in the process, so it's time for them to apply medical knowledge to lethal injection.

"If it's so ethically loaded, it demands it should be examined," she said.

Slain trooper's baby continues to gain weight, still hospitalized

David Blanton, grandfather of Tye Blanton, and his mother Michaela Blanton are pictured with the baby immediately following his baptism Wednesday, June 25. Family members looking on include, from left, Mary Youngbird, maternal grandmother of Tye’s father, Trooper Shawn Blanton; Jennifer Blanton, Shawn’s stepmother; Nikki Nations, Shawn’s paternal grandmother, and at center, Jeanell Youngbird, Shawn’s mother. - Special to the Citizen-Times

Mike McWilliams • MMcWilliams@CITIZEN-TIMES.com • published June 28, 2008 7:24 pm


ASHEVILLE – The prematurely born son of slain state trooper David Shawn Blanton, Jr., continued to gain weight Saturday.

In a statement released by Mission Hospitals, Michaela Blanton said her son, Tye, now weighs 3 pounds, gaining an ounce since Friday. Tye, who was born about seven weeks early on May 31, weighed 2 pounds, seven ounces at birth. He also has grown from 14 inches to 15 1/2 inches since birth.

“He’s a fighter, like his daddy,” Blanton said in the statement.

Tye remains in critical condition at Mission Hospitals. He has a heart condition that will require surgery at Duke University Medical Center.

Blanton, 24, died June 17 at the hospital after he was shot twice on the side of Interstate 40 near Canton. More than 2,000 people attended his funeral.

Michaela Blanton also said Saturday that Tye was baptized Wednesday at Mission’s neonatal intensive care unit. The Rev. David Christy, senior pastor at Central United Methodist Church of Canton, performed the baptism. Christy married Michaela and Shawn and officiated Blanton’s funeral.

About 15 family and friends attended the baptism, Blanton said.

“It was very peaceful and beautiful,” she said.

Blanton also expressed appreciation for “the tremendous outpouring of concern and love,” at a benefit Friday at Andy Shaw Ford in Sylva.

“I’m humbled by the generosity of the people, both their contributions and even more, just by being there,” Blanton said. “It was so good to have an event where people could come and just be happy with us.”

Blanton also thanked the community for the prayers for Tye and asked that the prayers continue.

Funds set up to benefit Michaela and Brendan Tye Blanton include the Trooper David Blanton Memorial Fund. Contributions can be made at Mountain Credit Union branches.

Contributions to the Michaela Nicole Blanton FBO Brendan Tye Blanton fund can be made at N.C. State Employees Credit Union branches. Checks can be mailed to SECU, c/o Michaela Nicole Blanton FBO Brendan Tye Blanton, P.O. Box 97, Waynesville, NC 28786.

Authorities have said they will seek the death penalty against Edwardo Wong II, 37, of Florida, who is charged with first-degree murder and robbery in Blanton’s death.

Court denies Schwab's appeal

BY BILL COTTERELL • FLORIDA TODAY • June 27, 2008

TALLAHASSEE -- Mark Dean Schwab's legal alternatives are diminishing ahead of his Tuesday execution.

The Florida Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision Friday, denied Schwab's appeal.

Schwab, a child rapist and killer, now heads to the U.S. Supreme Court as the last stop before his scheduled lethal injection.

The Florida high court affirmed a Brevard County circuit court that denied Schwab a full hearing on the constitutionality of Florida's death-sentence procedures.

One of Schwab's attorneys, Peter Cannon of the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, said the case is poised for a U.S. Supreme Court challenge. He said he and co-counsel Mark Gruber and Daphney Gaylord contend that Florida's mix of chemicals, training methods and physical procedures do not comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings in an April case that set lethal-injection standards.

"We're exactly where we should be now," said Cannon. "It's up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if Florida is doing it right or not doing it right."

State Attorney General Bill McCollum said precedent is on Florida's side.

"Based on the litigation that has occurred thus far, I stand by our belief that the procedures used to carry out lethal injection in Florida are constitutionally sound and the decisions made by the state and federal courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, have been correct," McCollum said.

Schwab was sentenced to death July 1, 1992, for the abduction, sexual assault and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, 11, of Cocoa.

Scwhab's execution would be Florida's first since December 2006 when a botched lethal injection led to a state-imposed moratorium, since lifted. Schwab's November execution was delayed by a U.S. Supreme Court review of lethal injection in a Kentucky case.

Judge weighs death for man who killed partygoers

Kevin Evers, right, with Stephen Harper, one of his public defenders. Evers has pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder.

The fate of the man who admitted killing three Miami Beach partyers in 2003 for playing loud music is in the hands of a judge.

BY LAURA ISENSEE lisensee@MiamiHerald.com

When Kevin Evers shot and killed three revelers at a Miami Beach birthday party in 2003, people here and abroad were shocked: Two young fathers from Argentina and a Brazilian woman died because Evers thought the music was too loud, sending him into a rage.

Now five years later, Evers awaits his fate: Life in prison or the death penalty.

The penalty phase of his case ended with closing arguments Thursday. Judge Stanford Blake will weigh Evers' actions that night and his criminal history against his mental health and childhood.

Evers pleaded guilty to three murders and two counts of attempted murder. His attorneys tried without success to persuade prosecutors to accept a plea deal for five consecutive life sentences, one for each victim and survivor.

PASSED ON JURY TRIAL

Evers gave up his right to a jury trial and instead asked Blake alone to hear the sentencing phase. In most death-penalty cases, a jury decides guilt, then has another hearing to recommend a sentence. The judge then issues the final sentence.

Prosecutor Reid Rubin on Thursday argued that two factors aggravated Evers' crime, justifying the death penalty: his previous violent criminal history, and the fact that his actions that night put many people at great risk.

Evers was charged with kidnapping with a weapon in Nevada in the 1990s, and served a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to lesser charges.

''We're not talking about rehabilitation here -- we're talking about punishment,'' Rubin said.

Rubin stressed that as many as 20 people could have been killed at the 2003 party, when Evers confronted the revelers with a loaded gun. He was carrying extra ammunition. ''He opened fire on them like they were animals,'' Rubin said.

Defense attorney Steven Yermish argued that other factors mitigated Evers' crime, warranting a life sentence: a bipolar disorder, psychotic episodes, neurological brain damage that impairs his ability to restrain his impulses, and a childhood scarred by abuse and neglect by alcoholic parents.

Yermish said Evers knows he will die in prison. ''The only question is when and by whose hand: the state of Florida or God,'' he said.

ILLNESS AND STRESS

Yermish recounted defense testimony by three medical experts that Evers suffers from mental illness, which influenced him the night he opened fire on the revelers.

''He was in need of hospitalization to prevent harm to others,'' Yermish said.

The defense argued that traumatic events in Evers' life triggered a downward spiral: the death of his wife in childbirth and giving up their daughter for adoption a few months before the shooting.

During the final arguments, Evers sat quietly, flanked by his team of defense attorneys. After the court appearance, he changed from a collared shirt and thick gray sweater into a bright orange prison uniform.

Blake is expected to sentence Evers later this summer.

Since taking the bench in 1995, Blake has given the death sentence once: He followed a jury's recommendation in 2003 and sentenced Michael Seibert to death for murdering an 18-year-old high school student and then butchering her body.

Melrose slaying suspect to face death penalty

BY RON BARTLETT

The State Attorney’s Office is expected to file paperwork today at the Putnam County Courthouse that will seek the death penalty against accused killer Toby Lee Lowry.

Assistant State Attorney Matt Cline, the prosecutor for the case, said he met with State Attorney John Tanner and Assistant State Attorney Noah McKinnon to decide the issue.

Cline said seeking death in a capital case is the most important and difficult decision the state can make, and every mitigating factor is considered.

“In any case where the death penalty is a possibility, it’s a legal weighing analysis,” he said. “You look at the aggravators, you look at the statutory mitigators. Obviously, we feel the aggravators outweigh the mitigators.

“It’s the biggest decision a prosecutor can make.”

Cline said the decision was “clear cut.”

Lowry, 22, is charged with first-degree murder, burglary with an assault or battery and robbery with a deadly weapon in the April 25 slaying of 66-year-old James Thomas Stewart.

Stewart was found in his Melrose home by investigators, having been beaten with steel rods, stabbed multiple times and suffocated.

Also charged in the murder is Lowry’s girlfriend, 15-year-old Morgan Amanda Leppert.

On May 22, a grand jury determined that Leppert will be tried as an adult. However, she will not face the death penalty because of a state statute which forbids capital punishment for minors.

Leppert and Lowry have pleaded not guilty to the crimes.

On June 13, Lowry reportedly attempted to commit suicide in his cell at the Putnam County Jail.
After being treated at Putnam Community Medical Center, he was later returned to an isolation cell at the jail where he was placed on suicide watch.

rbartlett@palatkadailynews.com

Quince to become Florida's first black woman to serve as chief justice

By Jim Ash • Florida Captial Bureau Chief • June 27, 2008

Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince can add another precedent to her resume today when she becomes the state's first black woman to serve as chief justice.

Quince, a 60-year-old product of segregated schools, takes charge of the state's court system and becomes to first black woman to head any branch of Florida government.

Quince graduated from Howard University and earned her law degree at Catholic University. She is a veteran of the Florida judicial system, serving as an assistant attorney general handling death penalty cases and judge on the Second District Court of Appeal.

In 1998, Gov. Lawton Chiles and Gov.-elect Jeb Bush shared Quince's appointment to the Supreme Court when a question arose about which administration had the authority.

Quince moved to Tampa 30 years ago and is the mother of two.

A ceremony at the Supreme Court is scheduled for 3:30 p.m.

Judge: Chance of pain definite during Schwab execution

BY JOHN A. TORRES • FLORIDA TODAY • June 26, 2008


Titusville Judge Charles Holcomb on Wednesday cleared the way for the execution next week of child rapist and murderer Mark Dean Schwab, who argued that a lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Holcomb rejected Schwab's motion to vacate his sentence, saying any method of execution could cause pain.

He said that even though executions must be deliberated, it does not give Schwab or his attorneys the right to file motions on matters already decided.

"This process does not require the court to continually review claims which have already been found wanting," Holcomb wrote. "At this late stage in the legal process, Schwab is barred from relitigating prior claims and from raising any new claims which could have been raised at an earlier date."

Schwab was convicted in 1992 of raping and killing Junny Rios-Martinez, 11, of Cocoa. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

The state revised protocol after the December 2006 execution of Angel Diaz took twice as long as normal. The state has not executed anyone since then, waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case.

Holcomb quoted Chief Justice John Roberts, who said capital punishment was constitutional. "Some risk of pain is inherent in any means of execution -- no matter how humane," Roberts wrote.

Contact Torres at 242-3649 or jtorres@floridatoday.com

Prison term cut in half for Jack Abramoff associate

Jack Abramoff testifying before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

By Vanessa Blum South Florida Sun-Sentinel

2:23 PM EDT, June 25, 2008

A federal judge in Miami on Wednesday cut in half the prison term of a onetime business partner of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, rewarding him for cooperating with federal and state probes.

U.S. District Judge Paul Huck agreed to reduce Adam Kidan's 70-month sentence for fraud to 35 months based on requests from prosecutors . They said Kidan, 43, provided substantial assistance to officials investigating the 2001 slaying of Fort Lauderdale entrepreneur Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis and other criminal matters.

Brian Cavanagh, the prosecutor in charge of Broward County's homicide unit, said Kidan provided "a detailed explanation" of his knowledge of the Boulis killing.

Kidan is expected to testify at the trial of Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello, Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari, and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo, who could face the death penalty if convicted of Boulis' murder. All three pleaded not guilty.


After Kidan gave a deposition in November 2007, three men assaulted Kidan in a prison bathroom, said his attorney, Jonathan Rosenthal.

"There was a perceived threat," Rosenthal said.

Federal prosecutors said Kidan was particularly helpful with the federal fraud case against Abramoff.

Kidan and Abramoff were co-defendants in a fraud case stemming from their purchase of Dania Beach-based SunCruz Casinos from Boulis in 2000. Both pleaded guilty to creating phony financial records to convince lenders to back their bid for the gambling cruise line and received 70-month sentences.

Federal prosecutor Lawrence LaVecchio said Kidan alerted prosecutors in 2003 to e-mails implicating Abramoff, which prosecutors said warranted a reduction of one-third.

"If it were not for Mr. Kidan's cooperation, we very well might not have had sufficient evidence to charge Mr. Abramoff," LaVecchio said.

With the reduction, Kidan has 15 months remaining on his sentence at the federal penitentiary in Lisbon, Ohio. Kidan's original release date was Dec. 14, 2011.

The SunCruz case and the Boulis case intersect because Kidan and Boulis were fighting for control of the cruise line when Boulis was killed. Kidan has denied any involvement in the hit and says two men charged in the case confessed they were behind it.

Cavanagh, who said Kidan's information filled in gaps in the government's case, told Huck he has concerns for Kidan's safety.

"I'm worried because we need him as a witness," he said. "I admire his courage."

Vanessa Blum can be reached at vbblum@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4605.

Man convicted in Curious George murder case

By Missy Diaz South Florida Sun-Sentinel

5:14 PM EDT, June 24, 2008

Although Vincent Puglisi may not have delivered any of the 37 stab wounds or 83 blunt force injuries that killed Curious George collaborator Alan Shalleck, the prosecutor argued, Puglisi was just as guilty as the man who did. After just 90 minutes of deliberations on Tuesday, a 12-member jury agreed. They convicted the 56-year-old Puglisi of first-degree murder and robbery with deadly weapon.

Puglisi will return to court next month to find out if he will spend the rest of his life in prison or die by lethal injection for his crimes. He showed no visible reaction to the jury's decision.

The plan to rob and kill Shalleck was hatched over a pizza shared between Puglisi and Rex Ditto as the sadomasochistic lovers watched the 2006 Super Bowl in a Fort Lauderdale restaurant.

The men needed $450 to move so they decided robbing and killing Shalleck, a 76-year-old retiree with little money, during a spanking party would be the best way to solve their financial quandary.



Puglisi had known Shalleck for a year, meeting him through an ad in a gay magazine in which Shalleck sought spanking partners.

Just before midnight on Feb. 5, 2006 - Super Bowl Sunday - Puglisi and Ditto arrived at Shalleck's Boynton Beach mobile home for what was supposed to be a night of consensual sex among friends. When it was over, Shalleck's lifeless body, wrapped in plastic garbage bags and drained of nearly all the blood, lay in his driveway.

In Puglisi's confession to police, he recounted that as Ditto, 32, and Shalleck, engaged in a sex act, Ditto "freaked out" and began strangling Shalleck.

When Shalleck wouldn't die, Ditto grabbed one of Shalleck's spanking paddles and clubbed him repeatedly in the head. When that didn't do the job, Ditto retrieved a steak knife from the kitchen, plunging it into Shalleck until the cutlery broke. When a second knife also broke Ditto resorted to a butcher knife, but Shalleck kept fighting, according to Puglisi.

In Tuesday's closing arguments, Assistant State Attorney Andy Slater convinced jurors that Puglisi acted as principal to Ditto in the killing.

"They were acting in concert in furtherance of the same common plan" to rob and kill Shalleck, he said. Puglisi admitted to holding a pillow over Shalleck's face while Ditto savaged him. Puglisi also helped steal Shalleck's jewelry, watch and a checkbook.

The defense painted a picture of Puglisi as a simple-minded, co-dependent follower who would do anything for another man's affection. That's what led him to collude with Ditto, a young, handsome and "crazy" arsonist who landed in South Florida following Hurricane Katrina, Assistant Public Defender Shari Vrod opined.

"Mr. Puglisi's sin was that he did absolutely nothing (to stop the killing)," Vrod said. "He stole, he lied, he covered up. He may be morally reprehensible, despicable ... but that doesn't make him guilty of a murder."

When the penalty phase begins July 21, the defense will likely address the issue of proportionality. Ditto last year took a plea deal that removed the death penalty as an option.

Missy Diaz can be reached at mdiaz@sun-sentinel.com or 561-228-5505.

Jurors vote against executing Crawford

Convicted child-murderer Richard L. Crawford is seen in court Tuesday, where a jury recommended that he receive life without parole during his advisory sentencing. The judge will decide July 18.

Life term likely for Ocala man who killed son

By Suevon Lee
STAR-BANNER


Published: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 12:12 p.m.

OCALA -A jury recommended Tuesday that a judge spare Richard L. Crawford his life and sentence him to the lesser of two fates: life in prison, with no chance of parole. But some jurors wanted to see Crawford get a death sentence.

The recommendation for a life sentence came after nearly three-and-a-half hours of deliberations, the outcome of which dissatisfied at least one juror - Artie Adkins.

In a phone interview, Adkins - one of five men on the jury - said he was a proponent for giving Crawford capital punishment and was joined by two others, according to a poll jurors took 20 minutes before it emerged to announce its decision to the courtroom.

"The other two plus myself decided there's no use in arguing," Adkins, 60, a Vietnam War veteran, said. "We could not convince nine people to change their vote. I was very disappointed in it. I left as quickly as possible and I wouldn't even say goodbye to the jurors."

Whatever decision the jury came to, it needed a majority vote, with more than six people leaning one direction.

Senior Judge William T. Swigert must assign the recommendation "great weight" under Florida law when he sentences Crawford on July 18.

The state does not plan to request a jury override, Assistant State Attorney Robin Arnold said, explaining that in only rare circumstances in death penalty cases do prosecutors request the judge bypass the jury's recommendation.

The jury did not make its decision "haphazardly," she said.

"I can't be disappointed with what they decided," the prosecutor said.

The 12-member panel found Crawford, 33, guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse two weeks ago in the fatal beating of his 5-year-old son in February 2006.

Adkins said the jurors were unanimously convinced of Crawford's guilt during the earlier phase of the trial - but that when it came to the sentencing portion, "they all fell apart."

"[Crawford] did the crime, we all know that, so why not give him the punishment he deserves?" he asked. "The death penalty is a good deterrent for this kind of crime."

Crawford was stoic as a court clerk read the jury's decision early Tuesday afternoon. His defense attorney, James Tarquin, said afterwards his client was "relieved" and had been "very nervous" beforehand. "Anyone [in that position] would be," Tarquin said, adding that he believed the state had no business seeking the death penalty because the crime was not premeditated or intentional. "It should be used very sparingly," he said.

Tarquin said he plans to file motions for judgment for acquittal and a new trial in the days ahead.

Members of the defendant's extended family embraced outside the courtroom following the decision, but declined comment. A family friend, Pat Dalton, said in a phone interview later that nobody in the family had expected Crawford to be found guilty two weeks ago.

"I went in that day to see him walk out," Dalton, 54, said, of her attendance at court the day of the guilty verdict last Friday.

Crawford's mother, Arthur Crawford, who was once married to Dalton's uncle, is "very grateful to the Lord," Dalton said regarding Tuesday's decision. "She's a very God-fearing woman."

Earlier Tuesday, the seven-woman, five-man jury panel listened to closing arguments of the penalty phase of the trial from Assistant State Attorney Janine Nixon and Tarquin as the lawyers sought to drive home what punishment they believed the defendant deserved.

"[Crawford] left him in that room to die alone," Nixon said, referring to the place in Crawford's southeast Ocala home where the state asserted the defendant fatally whipped his son with a belt on Feb. 16, 2006.

"Coreyon knew he was going to be hit, again and again, here and here and here and here," Nixon said, gesturing with her hands the wide area where Coreyon, a kindergarten student at Evergreen Elementary School, suffered bruising on his body - injuries so severe the state portrayed the crime as heinous, atrocious, and cruel.

Tarquin, on the other hand, implored to the jury to see that the beating represented one "aberration" in his client's life and that life in prison without parole would be enough punishment for his client.

"Every single day he's going to be punished for the rest of his life," he said. "We're talking about Richard Crawford's 33 years on this earth, and they want to kill him for one day."

The defense presented as mitigators Crawford's character - which family members spoke positively about on Monday afternoon - and his relatively young age. Coreyon was one of 12 children that Crawford fathered with various women.

Still, Dalton - who said she has a relationship with both the defendant's and victim's family - is convinced Coreyon wasn't killed by his father, nor Alnethia Coley, the little boy's grandmother who had legal custody over the child at the time of his death. The defense had attempted to portray Coley as culpable in the child's death during the trial.

"The lifestyle they led - anyone could have done it," she said. "I do believe there is a guilty person out there, but they have convicted the wrong man."

Suevon Lee can be reached at 867-4065 or suevon.lee@starbanner.com.

NC prosecutor wants death penalty for Fla. man in trooper shooting

Associated Press - June 25, 2008 2:04 PM ET

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. (AP) - Prosecutors want to seek the death penalty in their case against a Florida man accused in the fatal shooting of a North Carolina Highway Patrol trooper.

The Asheville Citizen-Times is reporting that Haywood County District Attorney Michael Bonfoey asked a judge to decide whether there is enough evidence to try Edwardo Wong II of Ormond Beach, Florida, for capital murder. The judge has not yet scheduled a hearing.

Wong is accused in the June 17th shooting death of trooper David Shawn Blanton Junior. The trooper was shot during a traffic stop in western North Carolina.

Wong is charged with first-degree murder and robbery with a dangerous weapon.

Wong spent seven years in a Florida prison for crimes including assault on a law enforcement officer.

Lee mother waits for son's killer to die

Nelson: Appeal has lasted 8 years (news-press.com file photo)

Owens: Killed in north Cape Coral in '95 (news-press.com file photo)

Frustrated family talks about appeals that followed '95 murder

BY PAT GILLESPIE • pgillespie@news-press.com • June 25, 2008

Linda Owens is hoping to outlive her son's killer.

Owens, the mother of Tommy Owens, who was murdered in 1995, has watched as Josh Nelson goes through the second round of appeals on Florida's death row - there since he was sentenced in 1996.

Nelson, 18 at the time, along with Keith Brennan, were convicted of luring Tommy Owens to a remote area of north Cape Coral and beating him with a baseball bat and cutting his throat because they wanted his car. Brennan's appeals have been exhausted and he is serving a life sentence, State Attorney Steve Russell said. He was 16 at the time of the killing.

Attorneys gathered Monday to discuss Nelson's appeal - his attorney is trying to get Nelson's and Brennan's psychological and psychiatric records from five Florida agencies, who have cited public records exemptions and denied records requests.

A judge will review the requests and decide which records to order for release. Nelson's attorney hopes to use the records to save his client's life.

Nelson's most recent appeal has lasted for eight years and has been delayed because of the death of a judge, a turnover in attorneys and the natural course of appeals cases, attorneys said. A judge set another hearing for September.

Tommy Owens' father, Donald - who supports Nelson's execution -died in 2004. Now, Linda Owens is hoping she can see justice for her son's murderer.

"I would like to see Josh Nelson die and I would like to be alive to see it," she said Tuesday. "We do want to get this finished and done."

Attorney Terri Lynn Backhus of Tampa represented Nelson for a time, but said in 2004 she had a conflict with Nelson and asked to be removed from the case. Lee Circuit Judge William Nelson, who presided over the case, died in 2003 and court administrators had to reassign his cases. Two judges have been assigned to Josh Nelson's case since then - Lee Circuit Judge Thomas Corbin and Lee Circuit Judge Lynn Gerald Jr., according to court records.

Gerald addressed Backhus' motion in 2007, three years after she filed it and eight months after Gerald was appointed to the case. Then, in October, Nelson's current attorney, Michael McDonnell of Naples, was appointed to the case.

Backhus said appeals cases are supposed to take a long time - they are designed to be thorough and they don't have time constraints, unlike active criminal cases. Because of budget cuts and active criminal caseloads rising, appeals cases tend to move to the back of the court schedule.

According to the Florida Department of Corrections, death row inmates have an average stay of 14 years. Nelson has been there 12.

McDonnell, too, makes no apologies for the delays. He said he is trying to determine whether to raise issues of ineffective assistance of counsel, a common target of appeals, as well as the constitutionality of the death penalty.

"I am the only person between him and the end of his life," McDonnell said. "It's a very serious responsibility."

Russell, who is working on Nelson's appeal, said the process can be drawn out for victims' families.

"The death penalty appellate process can be frustrating for the families and others involved," he said. "Sometimes they go on too long and hopefully we'll get a resolution in this case."

Linda Owens said she doesn't believe Nelson's death will bring justice, but she wants to see the day it happens.

"It's not something you can dwell on or it will eat you up," she said. "The wheels of justice shouldn't move this slow."

School killing trial may be moved from Miami

Michael Hernandez, 18, is set to stand trial in September for stabbing to death classmate Jaime Gough.

By EVAN S. BENN
ebenn@MiamiHerald.com

A Miami-Dade judge will decide Friday whether to move a teenager's murder trial to another Florida city, where potential jurors will be less likely to be swayed by media coverage of the 2004 high-profile killing.

Michael Hernandez, 18, is set to stand trial in September for stabbing to death classmate Jaime Gough in a bathroom at Southwood Middle School when both boys were 14. He cannot get a fair trial in Miami-Dade or Broward counties because of intense media coverage of the case, defense attorney Richard Rosenbaum argued at a motion hearing Tuesday.

Prosecutors agreed with the change-of-venue request, suggesting Tampa or Orlando as possible options. Rosenbaum said he preferred Palm Beach County but would accept Tampa or Orlando.

Attorneys for both sides told Circuit Judge John Schlesinger they believed the hundreds of news stories published and broadcast about the case since 2004 have tainted potential South Florida jurors.

''It's not a matter of whether they know about it, it's whether they can be fair,'' Schlesinger said, adding that he will make a decision Friday about whether to move the trial.

Hernandez, who faces life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder, is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. If jurors agree with that defense, Hernandez would be sent for mental-health treatment.

State attorneys dispute death penalty complaints

Schwab lawyers continue to protest Tuesday execution

BY JOHN A. TORRES • FLORIDA TODAY • June 25, 2008

Attorneys for the state said it seems lawyers representing convicted child-killer Mark Dean Schwab are using the court system to advance their position against the death penalty.

Responding to the number of appeals and motions filed on Schwab's behalf -- including a third successive motion objecting to lethal injection -- Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Nunnelley said Tuesday in court that the starting point for any argument has to be that the U.S. Constitution allows for capital punishment.

"It follows then, that there has to be a way to carry out that constitutionally permitted sentence," he said. "No method will ever be satisfactory to those who oppose capital punishment."

Schwab is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. next Tuesday.

Both sides were in court Tuesday presenting their cases to Judge Charles Holcomb, who has promised a response sometime today.

Schwab's attorneys say the state's revised lethal injection protocol does not guarantee the elimination of pain or suffering and that Department of Corrections workers are not being properly trained.

After petitioning the court for DOC training records earlier this month, Schwab's attorneys determined that more than 30 percent of the state's mock executions since last July have contained errors.

"The DOC does not understand the chemicals. Executioners are not even showing up for training," Schwab attorney Peter Cannon said. "That's why we are here. The DOC fails to live up to the standard."

Cannon also criticized an extra step the state has added in the execution process that ensures prisoners are unconscious when the lethal drugs are administered, a complaint that Nunnelley questioned.

"Ensuring the inmate is unconscious before any painful drugs are inflicted makes it worse?" he asked.

Assistant State Attorney Wayne Holmes, who helped prosecute Schwab, defended the state's record in performing executions.

"The state's Department of Corrections has been very successful putting people to death," he said after court proceedings. "I'm confident they will be able to put Mr. Schwab to death."

Schwab was convicted in 1992 of kidnapping, raping and killing 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa.

Contact Torres at 242-3649 or jtorres@floridatoday.com.

Prison food takes $83 million bite out of state budget

Auditors say privatizing service could save up to $38M per year.

Charlie Cain / Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Taxpayers spend $83.4 million a year feeding Michigan's 51,000 prison inmates, and could save nearly half that amount by hiring a private food service company, a critical new state audit says.

Furthermore, the State Auditor General's office says, even more money could be saved by cutting back on fresh produce and milk, trimming overall calories and preventing convicts from stealing additional meals.

"Reducing costs would assist (the Department of Corrections) in achieving its goal to provide the greatest amount of public protection while making the most efficient use of the state's resources," said the auditors, whose job is to make sure the state is getting the best bang for taxpayers' bucks.

Their review found that it costs nearly $5 per day to feed each inmate: $2.48 in food, plus $2.50 to pay the state employees who supervise food service.

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard has been bugging the state for years to trim prison costs, including reductions in its food service budget.

"The state could provide the same three square meals with someone else doing the cooking," said Bouchard, whose jail food service costs dropped by half when the county hired a private company.

"If they could get the cost down to my price, it would save the state $39 million without breaking a sweat," he said.

Bouchard, a former state senator, is among those pressuring Gov. Jennifer Granholm and state lawmakers to trim prison spending so other state programs -- such as higher education and revenue sharing with local governments -- will stop being shortchanged. Prisons eat up one-fifth of the state's general fund spending: $2 billion a year.

Russ Marlan, spokesman for the state corrections department, believes $2.48 per day for inmate food is a bargain, when you consider how far that money would stretch at a fast food drive-through. The national average for food stamps is about $21 a week, per person.

"I know some people think inmates should get bread and water and live in tents with dirt floors," Marlan said. "But I know I couldn't feed myself for $2.48 a day."

Bouchard isn't convinced. His 2,000-inmate jail hired a private company for jail food service in 2000, and overnight, he said, its food budget dropped from $3.3 million to $1.6 million.

"My cost is about 88 cents per meal," Bouchard said. "With a contract as large as the state's, I would think any good negotiator could get a lower price than mine. But, even if they got only the same price as I get, the savings would be around $39 million on food alone."

State auditors, urging the state to look into privatization, said Florida privatized its prison food operation in 2001 and now pays $2.56 per prisoner, per day. Kansas, which went private a decade ago, pays $4.14 per day to feed each inmate.

Based on those costs, the auditors estimated Michigan could save $10 million to $38 million a year if it negotiated a similar deal.

The corrections department will consider privatization, but it isn't all it's cracked up to be, Marlan said.

"The auditors didn't go to Florida to look at the system but just took numbers off the Internet. Florida is having some real issues with people getting sick and other problems," he said.

Last month, the St. Petersburg Times reported that Florida prison officials fined their private food contractor $241,000 this year for violations that included insufficient staffing, insufficient food and slow delivery of meals. In April, 277 inmates at a Panhandle prison complained of getting sick after eating chili.

Marlan said the Michigan corrections department does all it can to save money. In 2005, for example, it eliminated coffee from the chow line because it has no nutritional value. That saved $500,000 a year. Inmates can still buy java from a vending machine.

Prison farms help out, he said. Last year, inmate farmers harvested more than 257,000 pounds of produce worth $276,000 -- including asparagus, green beans, cabbage, carrots, onions, tomatoes and pumpkins.

Marlan said the state buys $14.5 million in produce and other food from farmers and firms in Michigan, but there's no guarantee that a private contractor would continue to patronize Michigan farmers and suppliers.

Other audit findings:

• Auditors questioned whether Michigan should reduce the amount of milk and fresh produce inmates get, noting that Oakland County and other states have gone that route and still meet federal dietary guidelines.

"We won't do that," said Marlan. "We will continue to provide them because it helps us in the long run to reduce future health care costs. With an average minimum sentence in our prisons of over four years, and with more than 4,000 doing life terms, health care costs are a big concern."

Food, Marlan said, helps prison officials keep inmates in line.

"Inmates are not in control of the system but they significantly outnumber our prison staff member," he said. "So the best way for us to run safe and secure prisons is to understand what the inmates' desires, needs and wants are and to respect them as human beings. Food is, and always has been, a very important tool in behavior control -- just like mail and prison visits."

• The audit said the state could save money by cutting the number of calories from 2,900 to 2,500 a day for men and from 2,600 to 2,000 for women.

Marlan said the current level of caloric intake falls within the range of federal guidelines.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences says the number of calories needed depends on many factors including age, height, weight, body fat and physical activity.

"There is no one-size-fits-all number for caloric intake," said Christine Stencel, a spokeswoman for the academy. She said that depending on those factors, the level of calories needed by a 30-year-old man ranges from 1,848 to 3,720 a day.

• $882,000 in leftovers, which in most homes end up in a lunchbox or back on the dining room table a day or two later, were not accounted for by prison officials, auditors said.

Marlan said the leftovers were not discarded, stolen or lost. He said the prisons didn't fill out the forms to account for them, but is now.

• Auditors said inmates were apparently double-dipping in the food line and taking nearly $300,000 in extra meals.

While some inmates may occasionally grab a second meal, Marlan said that's not the reason the number of meals exceeds the prison headcount. "One of the reasons for the extra meals is that our food services directors have to predict how many of the 1,100inmates will choose between beef stew or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

Run-In With Murder Suspect Crunches Woman's Finances

By ANTHONY CORMIER

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: June 23, 2008

WEST BRADENTON — She had a hard time getting by even before a murder suspect smashed her car one night near the interstate.

Sundstrom worked two jobs, lived alone in a duplex and drove a 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier with nearly 100,000 miles on it. She fretted over bills that she sometimes could not pay on time.

Then, on the night of June 8, came the collision with a sport utility vehicle driven by Harold Dean Wallwin, a homeless lawn man accused of murder.

Sundstrom was sitting at a light and heard a screech before Wallwin ran into her car's front end. Doctors told her not to go back to work. Her car is totaled -- the insurance company offered $800, she said -- and family can only do so much to help.

She says she feels for those who knew Mary Jane Blake, the widow who hired Wallwin to clean her garage and was found dead in her home on Lockwood Ridge Road.

She is angry with Wallwin. She says that one gruesome act affected so many people: Blake's family, her family, co-workers covering her shift at Winn-Dixie, friends who wired cab money.

"He gets three square meals and a cot in jail," Sundstrom says. "I get a stack of bills I don't know how I am going to pay."

She says she spent three years trying to get her life back together after leaving an abusive relationship and moving into a domestic-violence shelter.

Sundstrom is a chef by trade and found modest work in grocery store bakeries and, recently, the cafeteria at Haile Middle School.

She lives in west Bradenton with her birds. The Cavalier was a prized possession. It gave her independence.

The day of the crash, she taught a friend's daughter how to make cinnamon chili.

"She is a great cook," says Sol Cruz, 15.

She dropped Cruz off at 9 that night in Sarasota and headed toward the highway. She idled at Bee Ridge and Cattlemen roads. Tires screeched in the distance. A sport utility vehicle roared around the corner.

"My God," Sundstrom says she thought. "He's going to hit me."

Wallwin clipped two vehicles, drove into oncoming traffic and jumped the median to get back on Bee Ridge, authorities say. He was stopped a few minutes later.

In the back of a Florida Highway Patrol car, Sundstrom was retelling the accident to a trooper. His Motorola two-way pager chirped and the trooper put it to his ear.

"A homicide?" he said. "Really?"

Sundstrom did not want to pry. It started to rain, and she needed a cab to get home. Her back was aching. She had a few dollars, and the fare was going to be about $140 to drop her off in West Bradenton. A friend wired the money.

"Look at my car," she told the trooper. "What am I going to do?"

"You should feel lucky," the trooper said. "That guy killed a lady."

The next day, she rode her bicycle to a walk-in clinic. A doctor told her not to go back to work. She lifts heavy, frozen dough at Winn-Dixie, carries boxes and rolls bread. The doctor prescribed painkillers and ordered her not to work for at least a month.

In the doctor's office, Wallwin's mug shot appeared on a TV news program. She learned that Wallwin was accused of killing Blake, 76, with a hammer after cleaning her garage for $20.

"Sick," Sundstrom says. "He's sick."

Wallwin eventually was charged with murder, DUI and leaving the scene of an accident.

Wallwin, in jail, did not respond to requests for an interview. He will be arraigned July 11.

Police say he told them he killed Blake, and prosecutors could seek the death penalty.

Sundstrom, meanwhile, is trying to get by.

Her family drove down a temporary car from New Jersey, but the brakes were shot and they had to put it in the shop. She was using the bike and sometimes relying on friends. Her bosses have been understanding, but she needs the paycheck.

Rent is due soon, and her landlord already gave her a break after the accident. On Thursday, she realized that she could not afford both her cellular and home phone bills.

"It might be too expensive to keep the cell," she says. "But I don't know what else to do."

Ax murderer asks judge to throw out death sentence

Rene Stutzman

Sentinel Staff Writer

3:50 PM EDT, June 23, 2008

SANFORD

Ax murderer John Buzia is back in Seminole County, asking a judge to throw out his conviction and death sentence.

Buzia, 48, was convicted of murdering Charles Kersch, 71, at the victim's Oviedo home in 2000 with an ax he'd found in the victim's garage. Buzia had done home repairs for Kersch.

Buzia confessed but now is challenging one of the most powerful pieces of evidence the state presented at trial: a palm print found on the cabinet where Kersch kept his axes.

Then-Seminole County fingerprint expert Donna Birks told jurors the print belonged to Buzia. Last year, however, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and a defense expert re-analyzed the print. Both concluded it could not be matched to Buzia or anyone else.

The sheriff's office and FDLE re-examined hundreds of other print identifications made by Birks and co-workers at the sheriff's office. They found ten bad calls, eight by Birks. She has since been fired and the fingerprint section reorganized.

Buzia was returned to Seminole County from death row for the hearing that began this morning before Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. It's expected to last most of the week.

Buzia's lawyers say his conviction and death sentence should be thrown out for a variety of reasons, including Birks' mistake.

They also allege his trial lawyer made several errors. Those attorneys, Tim Caudill and James Figgatt, presented no witnesses at trial.

Another error, Buzia's new lawyers say, was that defense attorneys let nearly two years pass before they had Buzia's blood tested for cocaine. Buzia was on a cocaine binge when he killed Kersch and attacked the victim's wife, Thea Kersch, who survived.

Florida law allows judges and juries to be more lenient with defendants who commit a crime while intoxicated.

Even if Buzia is granted another trial, it's not clear he'll be acquitted. Thea Kersch identified Buzia as her attacker.

State urges judge to deny child killer Schwab's motion

BY JOHN A. TORRES
FLORIDA TODAY

The state responded to convicted child killer Mark Dean Schwab's motion to vacate his death sentence by saying it is untimely and contains nothing new.

Judge Charles Holcomb will listen to arguments today in the latest round of filings as Schwab fights to stay alive. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at
6 p.m. July 1.

On Friday, Schwab's attorneys filed a motion after the court-mandated 1 p.m. deadline arguing that the state's revised execution protocol is not good enough and may cause an inmate pain.

On Monday, the state responded by urging the judge to deny the motion.

"Schwab's motion is not only untimely, but also is procedurally barred," reads the response. "Nothing Schwab has alleged could not have been raised in his prior post-conviction motions."

Schwab's attorneys criticized the Department of Correction's execution methods, citing what they call failed mock executions.

Schwab was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa.

Contact Torres at 242-3649 or jtorres@floridatoday.com.

Arcadia art gallery unveils works of true Highwayman

By Joel Rozen joel.rozen@heraldtribune.com

Published Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
Last updated Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 4:34 a.m.

ARCADIA — Albert "Blood" Black first exhibited his work in Arcadia around three decades ago. At that time, the seminal Florida artist's paintings hung near bags of chicken feed and bales of hay in a local barn.

Last month, when Black pulled up to an Arcadia gallery in his black Chrysler 300 with a trunk full of paintings, his work inspired a bit more reverence.

"You coulda knocked me over with a feather when he asked me to help him," recalls Realtor Gordon "Mac" Martin, owner of the Martin Art Gallery on Magnolia Street. "When the Highwaymen come to town, people get excited about it."

A patriarch of the now-iconic, 20th-century movement of black "Highwaymen" landscape artists, Black had heard about Martin's gallery from a client.

"See, I'm well-known in Arcadia," he says. "I used to do all the paintings in the banks and real estate offices."

Martin was happy to give him all the gallery space he needed.

The brick- and white-walled 1935 plantation house that belonged to Martin's grandparents and doubles as his realty firm's headquarters now boasts a robust sampling of 16 Highwaymen classics. Sunset scenes and depictions of Indian River Drive in Fort Pierce decorate the walls of the building's central gallery room. In the foyer are numerous impressions of the St. Lucie River, gulls circling an abandoned dinghy and royal poinciana trees.

Of the paintings in Martin's stash, 14 are by Black, the others by two of his Highwaymen peers, Willie Daniels and Harold Newton.

Martin currently has the works on informal display but is planning a higher-profile show opening next February.

The exposure may be just another notch in Black's belt of professional triumphs -- a biography covering the artist's prison stint will be published next April; his work has already made it to Gov. Charlie Crist's office walls -- but Black is grateful for every ounce of attention.

Just 50 years ago, he says, his paintings would never have commanded the four-figure prices they often do today.

In fact, in segregated Fort Pierce, where the artist first picked up a brush, a Black original might never have made it into a gallery at all.

Segregation in the arts

The road to critical acclaim was a long one for the Highwaymen.

Much of that delay was due to race.

In the mid-1950s, Florida's artistic landscape was still a white man's world, with little room for the black experience. Black painters found little acceptance at the local studios; many had to rely on their wits to hone their own talents.

"Fort Pierce was a very segregated community," says Jack Hambrick, owner of the Florida-based US News Group production company and executive producer of the recently released documentary "The Highwaymen: The Legends of the Road." "If you were black, the only type of opportunity would be to work in the orange grove fields."

According to Hambrick, selling decorative landscape paintings was, for blacks settled in Fort Pierce, more than just a conduit for artistic expression: It was a way out of menial labor.

Influenced by best-selling 1950s Florida landscape artist A.E. Backus, amateur painters such as Alfred Hair and Harold Newton would turn out favorite panoramas -- beach and backcountry scenes, mostly -- each day by the dozen, frugally splashing oils onto crude Upson board and peddling them still wet along coastal roads like State Road A1A.

The paintings only cost $25 to $35 back then. Without a proper agent, however, business was often slow.

"They didn't know how to sell," Black remembers. The Mississippi native, who reached Fort Pierce in 1961 as a 16-year-old migrant potato picker, first stumbled upon the bohemian group when he was working as a huckster for a typewriter company.

Unlike his new circle of friends -- whose business strategies entailed flashing cardboard signs and hawking their creations in the open dirt road -- Black already had significant sales experience and knew what it took to turn a profit.

"You go into an office, you put your shirt in," he explains. "That'll get you in the door."

Soon, the seasoned merchant was stuffing his friends' work into the trunk of his car and, shirt starched, marching into banks and doctors' offices from St. Lucie to DeSoto to Sarasota counties.

The target buyers were not always impressed with his pitches.

"When I first started, times were tough for a black man," he says. Some clients asked Black if his wares were stolen; others called the police.

"But by me being a man, I could level with them," he says. "Once you got in the office and were presentable, they couldn't say too much."

Black traces his own experience as a professional painter back to 1970, when his companions started letting him fix their paintings whenever their Upson canvases "got scarred on the road."

"We hung out at a bar called Eddy's Place in Fort Pierce, drinking beer and stuff," he recalls of his first taste of the artist's life. "I got better and better. Everybody liked my work -- and it sold from day one."

And sold, and sold. The salesman-turned-artist has watched his status grow from footnote of an unknown art movement to patriarch of a respected school of art.

Artistic triumph can come with personal trials, however, and Black had his share of both. About a year and a half ago, he ended a 12-year period of incarceration in several state prisons.

Convicted of fraud in 1997, Black was initially sent to the Central Florida Reception Center in Orlando. He said he had borrowed too much money from an older female patron to feed his addiction to crack cocaine, though over a span of several years, he had also been arrested on charges of bouncing checks, assault, cocaine possession and violation of parole.

He was inmate number 793362 at the Reception Center. But he was also a painter.

"I mostly got along with the other guards," the artist says of his time behind bars. The guards became his biggest patrons.

"They come up and say, 'Is you the famous Al Black?'" he recalls. "I said, 'I don't know how famous.' They said, 'We want you to fix up our offices.'"

Soon, he had covered the mess hall walls with 90 acrylic panoramas -- and later, at Daytona Beach's Tomoka Correctional Institution, he secured a fan base of fellow inmates, several of whom he began teaching in the prison's hobby shop.

"Some of them turned out to be real good artists," he says.

A scholarly revolution

Part of what helped the Highwaymen artists amass their following came from outside the movement itself.

In 1994, a Florida-based art acquisition agent named Jim Fitch published his article "The Highwaymen" in Antiques & Art Around Florida magazine, effectively launching a scholarly revolution in the way people interpreted black folk art and the "Indian River School."

The stories of struggle and creation in the Jim Crow-era South resonated with both collectors and academics. In 2001, a book called "The Highwaymen" was published identifying 26 painters as members of the group; three years later, all were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, with eight identified as originators of the movement.

"No art movement captured the state as this art movement did," says Gary Monroe, a DeLand-based studio art professor and art historian. "And no Hollywood script writer could improve the Fort Pierce story."

For nearly a decade, Monroe has devoted himself to charting the Highwaymen history -- he was responsible for identifying the 26 innovators -- and next year will release "The Highwaymen Murals," his biography of Black and the prison murals, which Monroe calls "masterpieces."

What drew him to the paintings was their gestural style, he says, the way the unfinished-looking work somehow "beckons the viewer to finish the painting in their mind and become a co-author."

That, and the way the artists' real-life financial concerns shattered old artistic paradigms.

"It's an acquired taste," he says. "But I think by painting fast," the Highwaymen "inadvertently corrupted the cherished concerns of traditional landscape painting. In the process of painting fast to make more money, they actually brought a fresher form to the genre, and challenged it to make something newer and more relevant than the established mode.

"By painting fast, they stripped bare the artifice."

Other enthusiasts agree.

"What really makes the Highwaymen story magical is the story," says Hambrick. "People aren't buying this artwork the way you'd buy works by fine artists. It's more of a populist kind of appeal."

Identifying marks

And many of the pivotal scenes from that Highwaymen story are now on display at Martin's gallery. There's Highway A1A, Eddy's Place, a triptych of the backwoods marsh at sunset, a rendering of the Florida Everglades.

When the artist rolls into the gallery to meet with his latest exhibitor, Martin can barely contain himself.

"For a while, I had 'em in a locked room upstairs," he says of the paintings. "You have to have a certain level of confidence when handling this level of value."

Black walks around the gallery, decked in gold chains, his wrists stacked with bracelets. "She did a very good job," he says when Martin tells him his assistant did the hanging.

Soon the talk turns to money, and the former typewriter salesman has a few suggestions. The typical Al Black painting features three white birds to represent the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Two of the paintings don't, though: these, Martin is told, can be priced higher. (The gallery owner has yet to tag the works but says many will start around $1,000.)

Black also shows Martin how to identify the prison paintings -- they are the ones where his signature is written in those austere block letters.

"When you tell them Al Black painted them in prison, they sell so fast," Black says.

Which will most likely be the fate of the tree painting on display in the front lobby.

"Man," says Martin, ecstatic. "I got me a prison poinciana!"

With killer executed, evidence to go up in flames

By NATHAN CRABBE
THE GAINESVILLE SUN
Published Friday, June 20, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
Last updated Friday, June 20, 2008 at 11:35 a.m.

GAINESVILLE — Nearly 20 years after Danny Rolling terrorized this college town, the more than 2,000 items of evidence tying him to the murder of five college students are finally being destroyed.

Convicted and sentenced to death in the killings, the 52-year-old Rolling was executed in October 2006 at Florida State Prison near Raiford. The evidence, which had been stored away over the years as his case made its way through the appeals process, was made public this week.

The Alachua County Sheriff's Office will burn everything in the next two weeks, ensuring the items do not get into the hands of collectors, said Lt. Steve Maynard, a spokesman for the office.

"There is zero opportunity for anything here to be sold on eBay," he said.

Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell, Gainesville Police spokeswoman at the time of the murders, said she worked with the victims' family members to remove personal items such as checkbooks, jewelry and photographs.

She said she was glad to clear storage space of items that constitute one of the largest cases ever handled by the office.

"It feels good to have it taken care of and destroyed," she said.

Dianna Hoyt, stepmother of victim Christa Hoyt, said nothing would provide complete closure for families. But she said Rolling's execution has removed some of the pain from events that recall the murders.

"You can never have closure in the death of a loved one; you'll always remember that person," she said. "But now at least you know the terrible part is over with."

In August 1990, Rolling murdered five college students in their Gainesville apartments. The slain students were Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Christa Hoyt, 18, of Archer; Manuel Taboada, 23, of Carol City; and Tracy Paules, 23, of Miami.

Their bodies were found over a three-day period at the start of the University of Florida's fall semester. The crimes and their gruesome nature -- some of the victims were mutilated and posed -- had students fleeing Gainesville and the news media descending upon the city.

Ten days after the killings, Rolling ended up in custody at the Marion County jail on robbery charges. It took another five months before police linked him to the killings through DNA evidence. During that period other suspects were investigated, including UF freshman Edward Humphrey.

Humphrey's fingernail scrapings and blood samples were among the remaining evidence. Scores of bags were filled with evidence that did not pan out, including a variety of knives.

"I think every knife that was lying in Gainesville was picked up and collected and returned to us," Hewitt said.

Rolling told police he disposed of a knife used in the murders in a barn on the UF campus. A video of an excavation of the site was among the evidence. The knife was never recovered.

A native of Shreveport, La., Rolling was a homeless drifter at the time of the killings. The evidence included a tent and other camping equipment recovered from the site where he lived in the woods behind what is now UF's Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

Among the items found at the site was an audio recording in which Rolling played guitar and concluded with these words: "Well, I'm gonna sign off for a little bit. I got something I gotta do."

The guitar was not recovered at the camp location, but tracked to a Sarasota man who had bought it from Rolling. The guitar was part of the remaining evidence.

Other items included a backpack found at a Mississippi campsite where Rolling stayed before committing a robbery there.

Rolling's crimes in other states were mostly limited to robberies and thefts, but were later found to include the August 1990 rape of a Sarasota woman and the November 1989 slayings of three Shreveport residents.

The Sarasota attack against Janet Frake occurred about a week before Rolling appeared in Gainesville. Frake was 30 at the time and lived alone. Rollins apparently entered her home through an unlocked window and waited inside for her.

"What I encountered that night was pure evil," Frake said in a 2006 interview. "That's what it was -- pure evil."

Also while in Sarasota, Rolling bought a pistol, jewelry and a pair of glasses that were found at his Gainesville campsite.

On Aug. 18, he checked into a Gainesville hotel -- eight days before the first of five bodies in the Gainesville murders was found.

As jury selection began in his murder trial in 1994, Rolling pleaded guilty.

He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection, an event that attracted throngs of protesters and national media attention.