Jared Loughner faces court hearing over forced drugging

A federal judge is today scheduled to consider whether to commit Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner to an additional four months of forced treatment for schizophrenia in a bid to restore his mental competency to stand trial.

Loughner's attorneys have opposed the involuntary medication regimen ordered by U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns and were expected to reiterate their arguments during today's hearing in San Diego. They argue that the government doesn't have the right to force what they say are dangerous anti-psychotic drugs on a pre-trial detainee who hasn't been convicted of any crime.

Burns indicated last week, however, that he was inclined to authorize a third period of commitment as doctors treating the 23-year-old suspect at a prison hospital in Missouri report that he has made substantial progress toward being fit to face trial on 49 felony counts that could lead to a death penalty.

Loughner is accused of carrying out the Jan. 8, 2011, rampage outside a Tucson supermarket that killed six and injured 13 others, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The Democrat left her House seat last month to devote herself to her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head.

Loughner was declared incompetent to stand trial in May, following an initial evaluation term at the federal prison hospital in Springfield, Mo.

-- Carol J. Williams

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Photo: Jared Lee Loughner on Feb. 22, 2011. Credit: U.S. Marshals Service / Associated Press 

'Most hated' man in America gets death for home invasion horror

Two men are now on death row for a deadly 2007 home invasion robbery in suburban Connecticut that shocked the nation with its violence and cruelty, and claimed the lives of a mother and two daughters.

But the sole survivor of the attack said that the sentence handed down Friday provides scant justice -- his loss will forever be his "personal holocaust."

"I lost my family and my home," Dr. William Petit said during Friday's sentencing hearing for one of the killers. "They were three special people. Your children are your jewels."

A New Haven Superior Court judge sentenced Joshua Komisarjevsky, 31, to death for his role in the home invasion robbery, even though Komisarjevsky tried again to shift blame to his accomplice.

"I know my responsibilities, but what I cannot do is carry the responsibilities of the actions of another," he said during the hearing, which was covered by the Associated Press. "I did not want those innocent women to die."

The sentence brings to a close a night of horror that began in July 2007 when he and his accomplice, Steven Hayes, 48 -- both on parole at the time for burglary -- burst through the Petits' front door and overpowered them.

Petit was beaten with a baseball bat and tied up in the basement of his Cheshire home. His wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, was forced to go to a bank and withdraw money before Hayes raped and strangled her.

The girls, 11-year-old Michaela and 17-year-old Hayley, were tied up in their bedrooms and Komisarjevsky sexually assaulted the younger girl. The children died of smoke inhalation after gasoline was used to set the house on fire in an apparent bid to destroy evidence.

Meanwhile, a bloodied and battered Petit managed to free himself and crawl out a window to run for help. But help arrived too late.

Death row inmate to North Carolina: 'Kill me if you can, suckers'

Danny Robbie Hembree considers himself a gentleman of leisure. He enjoys color TV, air conditioning and abundant food. He naps pretty much whenever he feels like it.

He also happens to live on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C. But that’s not a bad thing, he wrote in a taunting letter to his hometown newspaper, the Gaston Gazette.

In fact, Hembree wrote, the state of North Carolina has taken the "death" out of death row.

"Kill me if you can, suckers. Ha! Ha! Ha!" Hembree gloated in his letter, portions of which were published by the Gazette on Tuesday.

Hembree, 50, was sentenced to death in November for suffocating a 17-year-old girl in 2009, and is also accused of killing two other North Carolina women. But no one has been executed in the state since 2006 because of legal challenges over lethal injections and whether a physician must oversee executions.

"Is the public aware that the chances of my lawful murder taking place in the next 20 years if ever are very slim?" Hembree wrote on lined notebook paper in what he described as an editorial.

Meanwhile, life is sweet. "Is the public aware I am a gentleman of leisure, watching color TV in the A.C., reading, taking naps at will, eating three well-balanced meals a day?" he wrote.

Oh, and he also receives free government healthcare, he pointed out.

The man who prosecuted Hembree, Gaston County Dist. Atty. Locke Bell, was not amused.

"He’s sitting down there looking at the law and laughing," Bell told the Associated Press. "He’s been sentenced to death. He shouldn’t be watching color TV." Hembree's execution should not be delayed, Bell said.

Bring it on, Hembree wrote: "I am a man who is ready to except [sic] his unjust punishment and face God Almighty with a clear conscience unlike you cowards and your cowardly system."

And lest readers dismiss Hembree as a complete sociopath, note that moments after he was convicted in November, he blew a big kiss to his mom.

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Photo: Danny Robbie Hembree and his defense lawyer, Rick Beam, in an earlier court proceeding in Gaston County, N.C. Credit: Mike Hensdill / Gaston Gazette

Death penalty: N.C. fight will resume after the holidays

In one of the most closely watched legislative tussles over the death penalty since the September  execution of Troy Davis, the North Carolina Legislature will be called back after the holidays to vote on whether to overturn Gov. Beverly Perdue's recent veto of a bill that would weaken efforts to address racial disparities in capital cases.

In 2009, the Legislature, which was then controlled by Democrats, passed the Racial Justice Act, which gave death row inmates and death penalty defendants the ability to use statistics on racial bias as a means of challenging their prosecutions.

But Republicans took control of the Legislature in November and passed a new bill that Democrats said would effectively dismantle the Racial Justice Act.

Republican supporters of that new bill, along with many state prosecutors, argued that the Racial Justice Act amounted to a "backdoor deal" to end the death penalty in the state.

The bill landed on Perdue's desk roughly two months after Davis' execution in Georgia, which put the death penalty back in the center of the America's civic conversation but doesn't seem to have resolved the bitter disagreement over the matter.

Perdue, a Democrat who has said she supports the death penalty, vetoed the bill Dec. 14, leading some critics to question her true stance on capital punishment.

"You no longer have any moral authority to suggest that you strongly support the death penalty," a local prosecutor named Richard Shaffer wrote to her, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. "Your action has shown that particular statement to be untrue."

Shaffer resigned from the governor's crime commission in protest.

Perdue has argued that although she still believes in the death penalty, she wants to be sure that it is carried out without the taint of racial bias.

News & Observer reporter Craig Jarvis writes that Republicans have enough votes to override the veto in the Senate. But it seems less likely that an override will get the three-fifths vote necessary to succeed in the House.

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Photo: North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue. Credit: Mike Spencer / Wilmington Star-News / Associated Press 

Former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal won't face death penalty

Former Black Panther and convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal will be spared the death penalty, the Philadelphia district attorney announced Wednesday, bringing a quiet end to a racially charged case that spanned 30 years.

Seth Williams, the city’s top prosecutor, said Abu-Jamal will spend the rest of his life in prison. He said the “decision to end this fight [over a death sentence] was not an easy one to make” and that he remained convinced that Abu-Jamal was guilty as charged and deserved to die for his crimes.

But he said he also had concluded that prosecutors could not likely win another death sentence for the now 57-year-old convicted murderer in the face of steady opposition from the federal courts. And he said he did not want to put the widow of slain officer Daniel Faulkner through the ordeal of another sentencing hearing.

“The survivors of Officer Faulkner have suffered enough, and the best remaining option is to allow his murderer to die in prison,” the district attorney said in a statement.

On Dec. 9, 1981, Faulkner stopped a car driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal’s young brother. Seated in a taxi nearby, Abu-Jamal saw what happened and ran to the scene. Witnesses said he exchanged gunfire with the officer, who was hit multiple times and died at a hospital. Abu-Jamal was arrested at the scene, and his revolver was found next to him.

A radio reporter and a black activist, Abu-Jamal had been a fierce critic of the police, and his trial, conviction and death sentence turned his case into an international cause celebre. Supporters asserted he had been framed by the police.

But over many years and multiple appeals, state and federal courts upheld his guilt for the murder. Federal judges, however, questioned the process that led to his death sentence. Ten years ago, a federal judge said the jury may have been confused over whether it could grant leniency, and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia affirmed that decision in several rulings.

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the district attorney’s appeal, leaving Williams the option of convening a new jury to weigh a death sentence or accepting the lesser sentence of life in prison without parole for Abu-Jamal. Williams said he had decided on the latter.

“While Abu-Jamal will no longer be facing the death penalty, he will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, and that is exactly where he belongs,” he said.

Maureen Faulkner said she accepted the decision reluctantly.

“My family and I have endured a three-decade ordeal at the hands of Mumia Abu-Jamal, his attorneys and his supporters,” she said. “After 30 years of waiting, the time remaining before Abu-Jamal stands before his ultimate judge doesn’t quite seem so far off as it once did when I was younger. I look forward to that day.”

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Photo: Mumia Abu-Jamal leaves Philadelphia's City Hall after a 1995 hearing. Credit: Chris Gardner / Associated Press

 

Phoenix-area 'Baseline Killer' sentenced to death for 9 slayings

A man convicted of carrying out a string of murders and rapes that terrorized the Phoenix area and earned him the nickname "Baseline Killer" was sentenced to death Wednesday by Arizona jurors.

Mark Goudeau, 47, is already serving a 438-year sentence for raping a woman and threatening her pregnant sister. But he didn't become eligible for the death penalty until his conviction in October for  nine slayings and on 58 other charges, the Associated Press reported.

During the sentencing portion of his trial, Goudeau told jurors that prosecutors had "assassinated my character," the AP said.

"I am no monster," he said. "I could look in each and every one of your eyes today and tell you Mark Goudeau is no wolf in sheep's clothing. ... I do pray that one day you guys learn the truth about this case."

The Baseline Killer was described by Phoenix New Times as “an in-your-face murderer who interacted verbally with his victims before abruptly ending their lives with his potent .38."

Prosecutors had strong DNA evidence linking Goudeau, a former construction worker, to the crimes. They also had compelling testimony, including that of a 31-year-old Phoenix woman who escaped the killer. The woman was carjacked at gunpoint in a strip mall and forced to disrobe.

"He said he was going to blow my brains out in the car and my parents were going to read about it in the newspaper the next day,” the woman testified, according to Phoenix New Times. “He pulled the trigger and there was a loud clinking noise. I realized that I wasn't dead, and so I got out of my vehicle and ran.”

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Photo: Mark Goudeau talks to one of his lawyers, Rod Carter, in court at the reading of the verdicts in his murder trial. Credit: Jack Kurtz/Associated Press

Bias on death row? North Carolina lawmakers now not so sure

The North Carolina Senate on Monday approved a bill that critics view as a gutting of the Racial Justice Act, the state law that gives death row inmates and death penalty defendants the ability to use statistics on racial bias as a way to challenge their prosecutions.

The original law was passed in 2009 by a Democratic-controlled Legislature and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue. But last November, Republicans won majorities in both houses, and many of them sided with state prosecutors who have argued that the law would overburden the justice system with new litigation and create a "backdoor deal" to end the death penalty in North Carolina.

The House approved the new bill in June. Now the issue presents a conundrum for Perdue, a death-penalty-supporting Democrat who has effectively navigated tricky political cross-currents in a state that voted for Barack Obama in 2008, only to give the GOP control of the Legislature for the first time in more than a century in 2010.

There's been no word from the governor's office on her next move.

Critics of the original law have questioned whether statistical analyses of death-penalty cases around the state should have any bearing on individual cases under review. Angie West, who lost a loved one to an inmate currently on death row, said at a news conference that it would be wrong to let the inmate off "simply because there's a statistic in another part of the state that says he should get a lighter sentence."

But supporters of the original law say the statistics paint a chilling picture of ongoing systemic bias against minorities. An oft-cited Michigan State University study found that a defendant in North Carolina was 2.6 times more likely to be sentenced to death in cases in which at least one victim was white.

The News & Observer newspaper reported that 154 of the state's 157 death-row inmates have demanded hearings under the Racial Justice Act. Some of those cases, reporter Craig Jarvis noted, "seemed to have nothing to do with race."

Republican state Sen. Thom Goolsby said the new bill would not be a repeal, but a "modification" of the original law. Sen. Josh Stein, a Democrat, characterized it as "utter and total repeal," according to the newspaper.

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Photo: A statue of Lady Justice stands atop the courthouse in Goldsboro, N.C. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

Oregon governor declares moratorium on death penalty

This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

Saying he "simply cannot participate in something I believe to be morally wrong," Gov. John Kitzhaber on Tuesday declared a moratorium on the death penalty in Oregon, granting a temporary reprieve for an inmate who has battled in the courts to hasten his own execution.

"The death penalty as practiced in Oregon is neither fair nor just, and it is not swift or certain. It is not applied equally to all," said Kitzhaber, a Democrat who came back after a hiatus to a third term as governor in 2010.

"It is time for Oregon to consider a different approach. I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer, and I will not allow further executions while I am governor," Kitzhaber said, reading from a statement at an emotional news conference.

The decision cancels the Dec. 6 execution set for Gary Haugen, convicted of the 2004 stabbing and beating of a fellow inmate in prison, where Haugen was already serving a life sentence for the aggravated murder of his ex-girlfriend's mother, Mary Archer.

Only a day earlier, the Oregon Supreme Court,  in a divided opinion,  had cleared the way for Haugen's death by lethal injection, despite objections by the inmate's former lawyers and others that he was not mentally competent to set aside his appeals.

A total of 37 inmates on Oregon's death row now face no possibility of death during the current administration. Kitzhaber's term expires in January 2015 and he has not said if he'll seek reelection. 

Only two executions have been carried out in the 27 years since Oregon voters authorized the death penalty, both approved by Kitzhaber during his previous administration and both involving inmates who had waived further appeals.

"They were the most agonizing and difficult decisions I have made as governor, and I have revisited and questioned them over and over again during the past 14 years," said Kitzhaber, who was a physician and state legislator before being elected to his first term in 1994. 

"It is a perversion of justice that the single best indicator of who will and will not be executed has nothing to do with the circumstances of a crime or the findings of a jury. The only factor that determines whether someone sentenced to death in Oregon is actually executed is that they volunteer," the governor said.

A total of 34 states have the death penalty, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, and 43 people have been executed this year. Texas has had the most executions since the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the death penalty in 1976, with 477, including 13 this year. Illinois adopted a ban on capital punishment earlier this year.

Kitzhaber said he elected not to commute Haugen's sentence to life in prison, nor that of other death row inmates, because he believed the decision was not his alone to make. He said his action Tuesday was intended to "bring about a long overdue reevaluation of our current policy," and during the debate that he hopes will take place in 2013, he will advocate replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Relatives of victims expressed distress over his decision.

"We are again just plain devastated," Ard Pratt, Archer's ex-husband, told the Oregonian. "This is such a miscarriage of justice."

[For the Record, 9:20 a.m. Nov. 23: An earlier version of this post made reference to execution by "legal injection." It should have said "lethal injection."]

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Photo: Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber at Tuesday's news conference. Credit: Don Ryan / Associated Press