CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

July 22, 2011

PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT IN CASEY ANTHONY CASE

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , — johntfloyd @ 9:41 pm

Prosecutors Fail to Disclose Favorable Evidence that Contradicted Expert’s Testimony

By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

We have repeatedly made clear our disdain for prosecutorial misconduct (here). And here we go again. More dirty, underhanded prosecutorial tactics. Just two days after our July 16 post concerning the Casey Anthony “not guilty” verdict, The New York Times carried a report about these tactics being employed by Orlando prosecutors bent on convicting Anthony for capital murder of her two-year old daughter. In our July 16 post we made the following observation about manner of how little Caylee was murdered that prosecutors presented to the jury:

“The problem is that theories are nothing more than opinions until they are supported by facts. The Casey Anthony jurors had the remarkable courage to face an inevitable hostile public reaction by refusing to accept the prosecutors’ theory [of how Caylee was killed] without a single piece of direct factual evidence to back it up. For example, prosecutors wanted the jurors to accept that because they offered evidence that Anthony had conducted Internet searches for chloroform, she must have used it in the commission of the murder. Yet prosecutors did not produce any chloroform, any evidence that Anthony purchased chloroform and, worse yet, that Caylee was even killed with chloroform.”

The Times report, titled “Software Designer Reports Error in Anthony Trial” and written by Lizette Alvarez, now informs us that the prosecutors’ claim that Anthony conducted 84 Internet searches for information about chloroform was false, or misleading at best. A software designer named John Bradley told the Times the prosecution’s case about the chloroform was based on “inaccurate data.” The Times described the “error” this way:

“According to Mr. Bradley, chief software developer of CacheBack, used by the police to verify the computer searches, the term ‘chloroform’ was searched once through Google. The Google search then led to a Web site, sci-spot.com that was visited only one time. Mr. Bradley added. The web site offered information on the use of chloroform in the 1880s.

(more…)

May 31, 2011

REQUESTS FOR DNA TESTING PRESENT ENORMOUS CHALLENGES

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , — johntfloyd @ 2:23 pm

Right to Appointed Counsel Not Absolute: Courts Only Required to Appoint Counsel if Reasonable Grounds Exist for DNA Testing

By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Ruben Gutierrez was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the September 5, 1998 robbery/murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville. The elderly woman owned a mobile home park and the trailer in which she lived doubled as an office. Gutierrez was a friend of Harrison’s nephew. He and the nephew, with other neighbors, frequently gathered behind the Harrison trailer to drink and socialize. Through this relationship Gutierrez got to know a lot about how Harrison conducted her business affairs; specifically, that she did not trust banks and kept all of her money in her trailer/office. Gutierrez was one of the few people who knew Harrison kept large sums of money in the trailer.

According to court records, the 21-year-old Gutierrez concocted a plan to “rip-off” Harrison. He recruited two accomplices, Rene and Pedro Garcia, to help him carry out the robbery scheme. On September 5 Gutierrez and Rene Garcia entered the Harrison trailer. When they left with some $600,000.00 Harrison lay dead or dying in a pool of blood, having been stabbed numerous times with two screwdrivers as well as having been severely beaten. Who did what inside the trailer is subject to some dispute. What is virtually certain is that Pedro Garcia remained in a getaway vehicle nearby.

The ensuing police investigation developed information from Harrison’s nephew and four other witnesses that Gutierrez had been seen in the trailer park on the day Harrison was murdered. Three days after the Harrison murder the police went to Gutierrez’s home only to learn he was not there, but they were assured by his mother that she would bring him to the police station. The following day Gutierrez went to the police station and provided investigators with an alibi for the day of Harrison’s murder. He told police he and a friend drove around in the friend’s Corvette all that day, but after interviewing the friend, the police found the alibi did not stand up.

Over the next four days the police arrested Rene and Pedro Garcia who gave statements implicating Gutierrez in the Harrison murder. The police arrested Gutierrez who gave them a second statement. This time he told the police that although he planned the Harrison “rip off,” it was the Garcias who entered the Harrison trailer while he waited in the park. He said that when the Garcias came to pick him up, Rene Garcia had a screwdriver with a lot of blood on it and stated he had killed Harrison. The Garcias, according to Gutierrez, had taken a blue suitcase and a tackle box filled with Harrison’s money. Saying he was repulsed by the murder, Gutierrez told the police he told the Garcias he did not want any of the money and led the police on an unfruitful search for the blue suitcase where he said the Garcias had thrown it.

(more…)

January 22, 2011

TEXAS DEATH PENALTY INQUIRY SHUT DOWN

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 2:09 pm

The Real Reason for Abolition: Texas Poses Greatest Risk of Executing an Innocent

By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

For two days in December of last year Harris County Criminal District Court Judge Kevin Fine allowed attorneys representing accused capital murderer John Edward Green to present evidence that the process for carrying out the death penalty in this state is so flawed that it creates an unconstitutional risk that an innocent person could be executed. The two-day hearing in the Green case drew national and international media attention because it involved a challenge to the death penalty in the very State which has executed more people than any other since the executions resumed in this country on January 17, 1977.

Last March, Judge Fine’s decision to hear the issue ignited a swirling legal and political firestorm when he declared from the bench during a pretrial hearing in the Green case that the death penalty as applied in Texas was unconstitutional. Harris County District Attorney lashed out at the ruling, saying: “We respectfully, but vigorously, disagree with the trial judge’s ruling, as it has no basis in law or fact. Words are inadequate to describe this Office’s disappointment and dismay with the ruling; sadly it will delay justice for the victims and their families. We will pursue all remedies.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General Gregg Abbott joined the fray by calling Fine’s decision “an act of unabashed judicial activism.”  A term so often used whenever republicans are confronted with a threatening or novel issue contrary to their ideology.

The following day Judge Fine issued a clarified ruling saying that he had not declared the state’s death penalty itself unconstitutional but had merely called into legal question the procedures under Article 37.071 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedures for carrying out the penalty. The Judge ordered both sides to be prepared to conduct a hearing on the motion.  The case seemed to simmer, disappearing from the political spotlight while the fall elections played themselves out across the state and nation.

Then early last month the firestorm was reignited when the hearing based upon Green’s motion began.  Green’s attorneys sought to present a host of local, state and national death penalty experts who were prepared to offer evidence why the risk of an innocent person being executed, especially in Texas, has become so great as to render the entire death penalty process unconstitutional. To courtroom observers, this seemed like an honest and reasonable motion considering the gravity of possible sentence.  However, Lykos’ office this time chose a different response to the hearing process by refusing to even participate.  The prosecutors responded to the defense motions to admit evidence with panicked whispers of “no comment” and timid assertions that they would respectfully refuse to participate in the hearing.  This shocked, irritated and eventually amused the local criminal defense bar, who had never known the DA’s Office to remain mute on any point in their zealous application of the death penalty. Finally, the District Attorney sought, and secured, an order from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals shutting down the hearing until the appellate court could entertain arguments from the parties involved.

(more…)

December 11, 2010

THE TEXAS DEATH PENALTY SYSTEM BROKEN

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer, Homicide Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 1:59 pm

Nationally Recognized Experts, Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Cite Risk of Innocents Being Put to Death, State of Texas Replies “No Comment”

By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

That question could reasonably be asked of any state that maintains the death penalty. Every system of punishment is cracked in one way or another. The fact that 138 condemned inmates in 26 death penalty states have been exonerated since 1973, and the fact that there have been261 DNA exonerations in this country since 1989, and the fact that our law books are filled with reversals of criminal convictions and death sentences offers compelling evidence that our entire criminal justice system, and, in particular, our death penalty systems is if not broken, certainly flawed. Earlier this year Harris County Criminal District Court Judge Kevin Fine stirred considerable legal and political controversy when he declared from the bench that Texas’ death penalty procedures were unconstitutional. The backlash was so intense, from the state’s attorney general to its governor, that Judge Fine clarified his ruling the next day by saying he had not actually declared the death penalty process unconstitutional and ordered attorneys in the case to submit additional legal arguments detailing how the process was so flawed that it violated the “cruel and unusual punishment” provisions of the Eighth Amendment.

University of Houston Law Center Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson was quoted at the time in the Houston Chronicle at the time as saying: “You never know [if such a ruling will withstand appellate review), but I don’t see it happening at this time. Technically, they’re [the appellate courts] are bound by precedent. There are laws on the books that have ruled on this type of question.” But Professor Thompson added that Judge Fine may have simply wanted to trigger a dialogue in the court system about the death penalty. “If they [judges] feel strongly enough, sometimes they’ll grant a motion like this to buck the system, just to stir the waters.”

Judge Fine’s ruling came in the case of John Edward Green who was indicted for capital murder in an “ambush robbery” in southwest Houston in June 2008 which left Huong Thien Nguyen dead and her sister critically wounded. The alleged evidence against Green is a palm print, an eyewitness identification, and a jailhouse informant—all of which are flawed according to Green’s attorneys, Richard Burr, John “Casey” Keirnan, and Robert Loper. The attorneys have argued in extensive pretrial motions and briefs that their client is innocent, and because the Texas death penalty process is so broken in that it creates a high risk of innocent people being put to death, their client cannot receive a fair trial.

(more…)

March 9, 2010

TEXAS DEATH PENALTY PROCEDURE UNCONSTITUTIONAL?

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 12:37 am

Judge Acknowledges Innocent People Have Likely been Executed

Harris County Criminal District Court Judge Kevin Fine on Thursday, March 4, 2010, created a tsunami of controversy in the Texas legal community when he reportedly made a comment that he was declaring the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. The comment was made during a hearing on a motion filed by defense attorneys in the case of John Edward Green Jr. who is facing a capital murder charge. What Judge Fine actually did was to declare Article 37.071 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure unconstitutional which is the statute that outlines the procedures for imposing the death sentence in this state.

“Are you willing to have your brother, your father, your mother be the sacrificial lamb, to be the innocent person executed so that we can have a death penalty, so that we can execute those who are deserving of the death penalty?” Judge Fine mused from the bench. “I don’t think society’s mindset is that way now.”

The reaction to Judge Fine’s comment/ruling was immediate and volatile. Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos issued a statement respectfully disagreeing with the ruling: “We respectfully, but vigorously, disagree with the trial judge’s ruling, as it has no basis in law or fact. Words are inadequate to describe the Office’s disappointment and dismay with the ruling; sadly it will delay justice for the victims and their families. We will pursue all [appeal] remedies.”

But Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott were not so understanding in their reactions to Judge Fine’s ruling. Abbott called the decision “an act of unabashed judicial activism.”

(more…)

October 5, 2009

TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY IMPEDES INQUIRY ABOUT WHETHER TEXAS EXECUTED AN INNOCENT MAN

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 11:46 am

Governor’s abrupt Dismissal of Chairman, Two Members of Texas Forensic Science Commission on Eve of Hearing Smacks of Political Cover-up

By: Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

It is one thing for a governor to have possibly presided over the execution of an innocent man but quite another for that governor to effectively shut down an official investigation into whether the forensic evidence used convict the man was reliable.

That’s precisely what Texas Gov. Rick Perry did on September 30, 2009 when he abruptly replaced three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission two days before the commission was scheduled to hear testimony from a renowned forensic expert who has cast serious doubts on the forensic evidence that sent Cameron Todd Willingham to his death on February 17, 2004 under Perry’s watch.

The governor has denied any ulterior personal or political motives for the firing of commission chairman Sam Bassett, an Austin attorney, and two other commission members. Bassett was instrumental earlier this year in securing the services the highly touted Maryland fire scientist and expert named Craig Beyler. The commission charged Beyler with the very specific task of determining whether the forensic evidence used to convict Willingham was reliable and satisfied nationally recognized scientific standards for the use of such evidence in arson cases. Beyler was not charged with the task of making a determination of whether or not Willingham was actually innocent.

“He [Beyler] appears to be one of the pre-eminent people in the fire and arson investigation field,” Bassett was quoted as saying in a January 27, 2009 Chicago Tribune article. (more…)

March 15, 2009

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT:

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , — johntfloyd @ 1:45 pm

AN INDICTMENT BY A DEATH ROW SURVIVOR

By: Billy Sinclair

I am pleased to announce, through the website of the John T. Floyd Law Firm, that my wife, Jodie, and I have recently released our second book, Capital Punishment: An Indictment by a Death Row Survivor. Released by the prestigious publishing house Arcade Publishing (New York), Capital Punishment is a collection of fourteen essays that examines the entire spectrum of the subject of the death penalty: its methods of executions, its Southern regional phenomenon, its racism, its tortuous botched executions, and its impact on our society.

Capital Punishment is not an academic study. The death penalty is told through the human drama it inevitably creates: the persons put to death, those put them to death, and those who tried to stop it. When Jodie and I decided to write my prison memoir, A Life in the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story (Arcade Publishing, New York 2000), we did so with one overriding objective—to tell as honestly and realistically as possible the story of one man’s struggle to survive inside one of the nation’s most brutal and violent prisons, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. We would like to believe that we were true to that literary objective. The media critics thought we were as the following book reviews suggest:

Associated Press – “A hopeful tale of an unbreakable human spirit.”

New York Times Book Review – “A numbing tale of crime, punishment, and redemption.

Boston Globe – “Well researched, persuasive, and morbidly compelling … Sinclair’s firsthand account of life in prison offers an authentic, sometimes grisly narrative.”

New Orleans Times-Picayune – “What Sinclair’s book does most eloquently is to tell us how little we know about justice.’

Loyola New Orleans Magazine – “Louisiana’s corrupt prison system, sex, violence, and a mismatched love story unfold in the nonstop, gut-wrenching pages of … a seamless narrative.”

Publishers’ Weekly – “A powerful tale, and readers will be shaken by the sorrow, greed, and corruption they encounter in it.”

But we approached the writing of Capital Punishment with a completely different literary objective. We had an obvious biased objective from the outset. We tell the reader as much in the “Preface” of the book. We both strenuously oppose the death penalty, and as individuals and authors, we have often spoken out against it and published written opposition to it. But first and foremost we are journalists. Jodie earned a master degree in journalism from the prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism and was an award-winning television journalist for many years who witnessed the execution of Gary Lockhart in Huntsville in 1997. I was the recipient of the highly acclaimed George Polk and Sidney Hillman journalism awards writing about death penalty as co-editor of the THE ANGOLITE, the newsmagazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. (more…)

March 13, 2009

BOOK RELEASE

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , — johntfloyd @ 5:05 pm

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT:
AN INDICTMENT BY A DEATH ROW SURVIVOR

By: Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer John Floyd

I am happy to announce the release of another book by my good friends Billy and Jodie Sinclair entitled Capital Punishment: An Indictment by a Death Row Survivor, released by Arcade Publishing (New York). The book is a compelling collection of essays commenting on the death penalty from many different perspectives about this controversial and, in my opinion, most despicable, inhumane and arcane of punishments that continues to thrive in this so called modern world.

I have always been an opponent of the death penalty. I first seriously considered the issue in 1987 when I was in college and was required to do a research paper on the subject. Our assignment was to look at the death penalty objectively from both sides. It was the type of project typical of a freshmen government class intended to force the student to examine both sides of a controversial issue in order to appreciate its pro and con policy arguments. I was shocked when I came across a pro-death penalty article which attempted to do a cost/benefit analysis on the issue. The author supported the death penalty even after factoring in the variable that perhaps 30 innocent people had been executed. This study concluded that the cost of 30 innocent souls being executed was outweighed by the benefits derived from the death penalty, namely deterrence and justice/revenge for the crime victim’s friends and families.

I guess until that point in my life, I had never seriously considered the possibility that innocent people might be found guilty and sentenced to death. I had certainly never considered the horrid possibility that such innocents would have been executed.

That was enough for me. In my naïve state as a college freshman, I had single handedly concluded that the death penalty was immoral simply because an innocent person might be executed. Simple and straight forward, huh?

As I continued my college education, my opposition to the death penalty only solidified, but the reasons for that opposition remained basically the same. From my vantage point it was intrinsically immoral to exact the most serious, final and irrevocable punishment, if the system could not guarantee that innocent people would not be executed. (more…)

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress © 2010 John T. Floyd III Crimnal Defense Attorney : Webmaster Kevin Grey Lee