It’s been a very long time since I’ve done one of these because I see no particular benefit in a litany of complaints, but good ol’ Texas, incompetence capital of the world, has managed to send me screaming down the hallway again.
We have not one, but two absurdities as reported by the Death Penalty Information Center.
First are the allegations that the judge and the prosecuting attorney were having an affair during the capital trial of death row inmate Charles Hood. Now, I don’t know anything about Hood’s case and he may well be guilty as hell but that doesn’t excuse what amounts to the flagrant flaunting of Texas law. The Texas Constitution prohibits a judge from sitting on a case that has either “affinity or consanguinity” with any of the parties.
The second is even more ridiculous. In granting a stay of execution to Jeff Wood, a federal judge called the rules which required an inmate to demonstrate he was insane before the state would assign him a psychologist and lawyer to show he was insane by definition “an insane system.”
Yep, only in Texas, home of the ultimate village idiot, could it be set up that way.
Wood is also the poor schmuck sentenced to death, under Texas’ “law of parties,” for a shooting which occurred while he was outside waiting in a car. Wood’s attorneys have argued that he didn’t even know that a robbery was going to be attempted never mind that a murder was going to take place (however, other reports indicate that not only did Wood know about the robbery, he knew about the gun).
Since executions resumed in May of 2008 after the Supreme Court decision approving the use of lethal injections there have been 20 executions. All of them have been in the South. Eight of them have been in Texas.
Since the resumption of executions in 1976, there have been 1,119 executions. 921 have been in the South and 413 have been in Texas.
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9 comments:
There is no such rule in Texas were you have to prove your insame in order to hire a psychiatrist to show you are insance.
However, there was a lot of good reasons why Texas courts would not Grant Wood a stay for a hearing.
These quotes are from the ruling by Judge who granted the stay and ordered the hearing.
On August 21, 2008, Federal District Court Judge Garcia order a stay, for Jeff Wood, based upon:
"Admittedly, the evidence of (Wood's) alleged incompetence now before this Court is far from compelling. (Wood) has never been definitively diagnosed with any mental illness."
"Thus, there is evidence before this Court suggesting (Wood's) alleged refusal to comprehend, or perhaps, possibly to admit, the connection between his role in the fatal shooting of Kriss Keeran and the death sentence imposed upon him may be more demonstrative of (Wood's) anti social behavior than of a true mental illness."
". . . the evidence at (Wood's) trial established (that Wood) participated in a pair of armed robberies of convenience stores which culminated in the fatal shooting of a store clerk by (Wood's) accomplice Danny Reneau on January 22, 1996." " (Wood) drove the get-away vehicle in both robberies."
Even with the "minimal evidence of (Wood's) delusional thought processes" (the Jduge's words), the Court decided to issue a stay.
(Civil no. SA-01-CA-423-OG, page 10-11, US District Court Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division, August 21, 2008, http://www.scribd.com/doc/4947243/Judge-Orlando-Garcias-Order-for-a-Stay-of-Execution-for-Jeff-Wood )
You write:
Wood is also the poor schmuck sentenced to death, under Texas’ “law of parties,” for a shooting which occurred while he was outside waiting in a car. Wood’s attorneys have argued that didn’t even know that a robbery was going to be attempted never mind that a murder was going to take place.
Wood's attorneys said that!? Surprise.
Jeff Wood: Robbery/murder and the law of parties
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
"After initially denying involvement in the robbery, (Jeff) Wood admitted in a statement to police that he knew Reneau was going to rob the gas station, that Reneau planned to bring a gun and might use it if (Kriss) Keeran didn't cooperate, according to court opinions." (1)
"Evidence showed the pair had planned the robbery for a couple of weeks and unsuccessfully tried recruiting Keeran (a "friend" of Wood and Reneau) and another employee to stage a phony robbery." (2)
Keeran knew both Wood and Reneau. Their failure to recruit Keeran into the robbery meant that they would have to murder Keeran if they decided to go through with it. They did.
What does armed robbery mean?:"I've got a gun. If you don't do what I say, I'll kill you." In this case, however, it meant that Keeran would be murdered. Period.
"Lucy Wilke, the Kerr County assistant district attorney, who prosecuted Wood, described Wood after his 1998 trial as "not a dummy" and called the slaying "cold-blooded, premeditated."(2) "(She) called Wood "the mastermind of this senseless murder," noting that Wood told his brother, who was not implicated, to destroy the surveillance tape after watching it together, according to the San Antonio Express." (1)
Evidence showed Reneau entered the store before dawn on Jan. 2, 1996, and fatally shot Keeran once in the face with a .22-caliber pistol. Then joined by Wood, they robbed the store of more than $11,000 in cash and checks. Both were arrested within 24 hours. (2)
"According to court records, Wood was waiting outside the store and came in after Keeran was shot, then both fled with the store safe, a cash box and a video recorder containing a security tape showing the robbery and slaying. "(2)
"Wood's lawyers don't dispute he deserves punishment but argue he doesn't deserve to die for a murder that occurred while he was waiting in a car outside the store." (2)
He deserved punishment? Why? Because Wood planned and helped to carry out the robbery/murder, making him culpable for the robbery/murder and, thus, justly sentenced to death.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 to not recommend Gov. Rick Perry commute Wood's death sentence. (2) For good reasons.
For those that wrongly complain about the law of parties:
"What do you think is going to happen when a guy goes into a convenience store to rob it and he’s armed with a gun, and your job is to help him commit that crime?” said Mary Lou Leary, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime. “It’s a very high-risk activity.”(3)
Put another way, guess what, if you're going to rob your "friend", you are going to have to murder him if you don't want to get caught. Does this surprise anyone?
There are many 'non-triggerman" murders that most, if not all, of us, would find equally as culpable, both legally and morally, as the triggerman, such as the person who hires a hit man to murder someone or a case such as Osama Bin Laden's, where he was thousands of miles away from the murder scenes, all over the world.
Texas Law of Parties: A person is criminally responsible for an offense committed by
the conduct of another if acting with intent to promote or assist the commission of the offense, he solicits, encourages, directs, aids, or attempts to aid the other person to commit the offense or if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit
one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it, if the offense was committed in furtherance of the unlawful purpose and was one that should have been anticipated as a result of the carrying out of the conspiracy. (4)
(1) "Texas Panel Won't Halt Execution of Accomplice", by Scott Michels, ABC News, Aug. 20, 2008
http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5617113&page=1
(2) "Death date nears for accomplice in Hill Country murder", by Michael Graczyk, By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press, Houston Chronicle, Aug. 19, 2008, 4:41PMhttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5953000.html
(3) Should murder accomplices face execution? By John Gramlich, Stateline.org, August 13, 2008
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=333117
(4) PENAL CODE, CHAPTER 7. CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR CONDUCT OF ANOTHER, SUBCHAPTER A. COMPLICITY
http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/statutes/docs/PE/content/htm/pe.002.00.000007.00.htm
copyright 2008 Dudley Sharp : Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS , VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Pro death penalty sites
homicidesurvivors(dot)com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
www(dot)dpinfo.com
www(dot)cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www(dot)clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
www(dot)coastda.com/archives.html
www(dot)lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com
www(dot)yesdeathpenalty.com/deathpenalty_co
yesdeathpenalty.googlepages.com/home2 (Sweden)
www(dot)wesleylowe.com/cp.html
Three points dudley. First the issue was not "hire" but "assign." Clearly Wood is claiming he can't afford the legal and medical support he needs and is looking for the state to provide it. That's where the Catch 22 aspect enters.
Second, I'm not criticizing the Texas courts for not granting a stay based upon mental incompetence. I never mentioned it.
Third, clearly Wood is not a good guy but I still think the Texas Law of Parties is iffy. Mary can't control what John does so unless there is a clear conspiricy to commit the capital crime (which in this case there wasn't and in your Bin Laden example there most certainly was) I don't consider it justice.
Alencon:
Sorry for the wrong use of words, which changed the intent. It was not intentional, but it is aggravating.
Attorneys and experts for hearings are assigned all the time to death row inmates in Texas. There is no rule or law against it.
The reason I included Judges Garcia's actual statements was to show that it was quite understandable why Texas didn't assign them.
Texas, most certainly took into account both Texas law and recent SCOTUS decisions. Obviously, the Texas courts did not think Wood's alleged mental problems rose to the level to have him evaluated.
Federal Judge Garcia's words make it quite clear that he thinks that this may well be a scam by Wood, et al, but he decided to get an expert and have a hearing.
Federal and state courts have such disagreements all the time. I haven't read the Texas courts denials, but it appears that the Texas courts likely evaluated Wood's very similarly as did Judge Garcia, but decided against the hearing because cross the necessary threshold to have one. Hardly insane.
Regarding Wood's culpability, please consider that 12 jurors have to unanimoulsy sentence someone to death. 100%, all 12. Not one of them had a reasonable doubt that Wood's culpability was sufficient to deserve death. Not one.
Wood would not allow his attonreys to argue for him in the punishment phase of the trial.
However, Wood has had 12 years of appellate review on all of those issues and ever court has enforced both the verdict and the sentence.
I still think you’re missing the point slightly. The Texas courts refused him a stay to consider his mental incompetence because he hadn’t adequately demonstrated his mental incompetence. Here’s the full quote from Judge Garcia:
“With all due respect, a system that requires an insane person to first make ‘a substantial showing’ of his own lack of mental capacity without the assistance of counsel or a mental health expert, in order to obtain such assistance is, by definition, an insane system.”
Clearly you agree with, or at least are willing to accept, the concept of capital punishment. I don’t think anyone actually agrees with capital punishment, just like no one actually agrees with abortion, they simply accept it as necessary for justice to be served. I will admit that some of the crimes committed by supposedly civilized people temp me not only to howl for their blood but also to volunteer to plunge the needle in. However, ultimately I fall back upon opposing capital punishment because I cannot answer this question with a number other than zero:
How much of an error rate is acceptable in the administration of the death penalty?
In other words, how many innocent men are you willing to allow to be executed in order to insure that the guilty ones get their just punishment? There has to be an error rate because the death penalty is administered by men and men are fallible.
What's your answer?
I know the quote and I get it.
There is no evidnece of insanity. It's ridiculous to even bring it up.
Wood's never been diagnosed with anything and HJudge Garcia reviewed his thoughts within his opinion.
Most likely, Wood is an anti social jerk.
That's exactly why I quoted Garcia.
Texas decided that was not enough to order an evaluation and a hearing.
Judge Garcia differed.
Fine.
In other words, how many innocent men are you willing to allow to be executed in order to insure that the guilty ones get their just punishment? There has to be an error rate because the death penalty is administered by men and men are fallible.
What's your answer?
More innocents will die, absent the death penalty.
The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Often, the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
To state the blatantly clear, living murderers, in prison, after release or escape, are much more likely to harm and murder, again, than are executed murderers.
Although an obvious truism, it is surprising how often folks overlook the enhanced incapacitation benefits of the death penalty over incarceration.
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, that it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is. logically, conclusive.
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don't. Studies which don't find for deterrence don't say no one is deterred, but that they couldn't measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn't deter some? There isn't one . . . although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet, the evidence is compelling and un refuted that death is feared more than life.
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it's a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not, even remotely, in dispute.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that lifers have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 20-25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher, are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
6 inmates have been released from death row because of DNA evidence. An additional 9 were released from prison, because of DNA exclusion, who had previously been sentenced to death.
The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, The New York Times, has recognized that deception.
To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . (1) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 "innocents" from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their "exonerated" or "innocents" list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions - something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can reasonable conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
Full report -All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report - The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) The Death of Innocents: A Reasonable Doubt,
New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,
national legal correspondent for The NY Times
copyright 2007-2008, Dudley Sharp
Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Alencon,
Have you read the opinions, if there were any, regarding Texas' denial for the stay and hearing?
I haven't. I think that would be helpful.
A review of the recent SCOTUS Penetti case may also be in order.
Two points of agreement. First I agree with you that the “innocents” released from death row number often quoted is greatly inflated. Second, clearly, the death penalty is a harsher punishment than life in prison without parole. Or at least it’s more feared. Why else would all those guys be trying to get their sentences commuted?
Clearly, the more feared result would tend to deter if any significant deterrence occurred. I think it’s safe to say that despite those recent studies there is still ongoing debate about just how much of a deterrent effect, if any, the death penalty, and perhaps more importantly, actual executions have. The CJLF has a fair collection of point, counter-point, articles here http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPDeterrence.htm.
When faced with the stark choice of death versus life even most murderers are rationale enough to choose the latter. The question is whether they are rational enough to choose it before, or during, the act. I suspect that they’re not.
Consider for a moment that if we were at that 99.8% conviction accuracy rate since 1976, which we clearly haven’t been, it’s quite possible that 6 innocent men are sitting on death row at the moment and that 2 have already been executed. We expect better than 99.8% accuracy from our telephone or cable TV service.
The administration of the death penalty may in fact be the safest program in the world of those that put innocents at risk, the question is do we have to put innocents at risk at all?
As for no proof of an innocent executed since 1900, I suppose that depends upon ones definition of “proof” and “innocent.” Certainly the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles felt that Lena Baker, if not totally innocent, was at least unjustly executed in 1945 when they issued her a posthumous pardon in 2005. As for more current examples, I think there is sufficient evidence to think that perhaps Carlos DeLuna (Texas), Reuben Cantu (Texas), Joseph O’Dell (Virginia) and Cameron Willingham (Texas) may have been innocent.
No, I didn’t read the opinions. Perhaps I should have. I sort of suspect that Garcia doesn’t think Wood is mentally ill either and in this particular case the denial of a stay was justified. He appears to have more of a concern with the interpretation of the process and is simply using Wood, as the only vehicle he has, to get that addressed.
We all know that judges think they have royal prerogative. Some handle it well and some don’t.
Excellent post:
I'll reply at length, later.
Your thoughts on Garcia are exaclty mine. My opinion is that Texas didn't appeal based upon an easier and more timely victory in Texas than waiting on further appeals.
Could you email your email to me?
sharpjfa@aol.com
I think there is sufficient evidence to think that perhaps Carlos DeLuna (Texas), Reuben Cantu (Texas), Joseph O’Dell (Virginia) and Cameron Willingham (Texas) may have been innocent.
Sharp reply
Check out Cantu
This is titled in "The Matter of Juan Moreno", because Moreno was the witness/victim who recanted and started this ball rolling.
http://www.co.bexar.tx.us/da2/body_pages/morenocantuinvestigation.pdf
O'Dell
Death Of Truth: Sister Prejean's new book Death Of Innocents
Four articles
(a) "FOR GOOD REASON, JOE O'DELL IS ON DEATH ROW"
scholar(DOT)lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp950728/07210224.htm
quote: "The DNA report commissioned by O'Dell and his lawyers actually corroborates O'Dell's guilt. There is a three-probe DNA match indicating that the bloodstains on O'Dell's clothing is indeed consistent with the victim Helen Schartner's DNA as well as her blood type and enzyme factors." "There is certainly no truth to O'Dell's accusation that evidence was suppressed or witnesses intimidated by the prosecution."
(b) "Sabine district attorney disputes author's claims in book"
www(DOT)shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050124/NEWS01/501240328/1060
quote: "I don't know whether she is deliberately trying to mislead the public or if she's being mislead by others. But she's wrong,"
District Atty. Burkett, dburkett(AT)cp-tel.net
(c) Book Review: "Sister Prejean's Lack of Credibility: Review of "The Death of Innocents", by Thomas M. McKenna (New Oxford Review, 12/05). http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1205-mckenna
"The book is moreover riddled with factual errors and misrepresentations."
"Williams had confessed to repeatedly stabbing his victim, Sonya Knippers."
"This DNA test was performed by an independent lab in Dallas, which concluded that there was a one in nearly four billion chance that the blood could have been someone's other than Williams's."
" . . . despite repeated claims that (Prejean) cares about crime victims, implies that the victim's husband was a more likely suspect but was overlooked because the authorities wanted to convict a black man."
" . . . a Federal District Court . . . stated that 'the evidence against Williams was overwhelming.' " "The same court also did "not find any evidence of racial bias specific to this case."
"(Prejean's) broad brush strokes paint individual jurors, prosecutors, and judges with the term "racist" with no facts, no evidence, and, in most cases, without so much as having spoken with the people she accuses."
"Sr. Prejean also claims that Dobie Williams was mentally retarded. But the same federal judge who thought he deserved a new sentencing hearing also upheld the finding of the state Sanity Commission report on Williams, which concluded that he had a "low-average I.Q.," and did not suffer from schizophrenia or other major affective disorders. Indeed, Williams's own expert at trial concluded that Williams's intelligence fell within the "normal" range. Prejean mentions none of these facts."
"In addition to lying to the police about how he came to have blood on his clothes, the best evidence of O'Dell's guilt was that Schartner's (the rape/murder vicitim's) blood was on his jacket. Testing showed that only three of every thousand people share the same blood characteristics as Schartner. Also, a cellmate of O'Dell's testified that O'Dell told him he killed Schartner because she would not have sex with him."
"After the trial, LifeCodes, a DNA lab that O'Dell himself praised as having "an impeccable reputation," tested the blood on O'Dell's jacket -- and found that it was a genetic match to Schartner. When the results were not to his liking, O'Dell, and of course Sr. Prejean, attacked the reliability of the lab O'Dell had earlier praised. Again, as with Williams's conviction, the federal court reviewing the case characterized the evidence against O'Dell as 'vast' and
'overwhelming.' "
Sr. Prejean again sees nefarious forces at work. Not racism this time, for O'Dell was white. Rather, she charges that the prosecutors were motivated to convict by desire for advancement and judgeships. Yet she never contacted the prosecutors to interview them or anyone who might substantiate such a charge.
"(Prejean) omits the most damning portion of (O'Dell's criminal) record: an abduction charge in Florida where O'Dell struck the victim on the head with a gun and told her that he was going to rape her. This very similar crime helped the jury conclude that O'Dell would be a future threat to society. It supports the other evidence of his guilt and thus undermines Prejean's claim of innocence."
"There is thus a moral equivalence for Prejean between the family of an innocent victim and the newfound girlfriend of a convicted rapist and murderer."
"This curious definition of "the victims" suggests that her concern for "victims" seems to be more window-dressing for her cause than true concern."
(d) Hardly The Death Of Innocents: Sister Prejean tells it like it wasn't -- Joseph O'Dell
by Anonymous, at author's request
In lionizing convicted murderer Joseph O'Dell as being an innocent man railroaded to his 1997 execution by Virginia prosecutors, Sister Helen Prejean presents a skewed summary of the case to bolster her anti-death penalty agenda. While she is a gifted speaker, she is out of her element when it comes to "telling it as it was" in these cases.
Prejean got to walk with O'Dell into the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center on July 22, 1997. However, she wasn't in Virginia Beach some 12 years earlier when he committed the crime for which he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. That is where the real demon was evident, not the sweet talking condemned con-man that she met behind bars. O'Dell was, in the words of then Virginia Beach Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Albert Alberi (case prosecutor), one of the most savage, dangerous criminals he had encountered in a two decade career.
Indeed,O'Dell had spent most of his adult life incarcerated for various crimes since the age of 13 in the mid-1950's. At the time of the Schartner murder in Virginia, O'Dell had been recently paroled from Florida where he had been serving a 99 year sentence for a 1976 Jacksonville abduction that almost ended in a murder of the female victim (had not police arrived) in the back of his car.
The circumstances of that crime were almost identical to those surrounding Schartner's murder. The victim of the Florida case even showed up in Virginia to testify at the trial. Scarcely a mention of this case is made in the Prejean book.
Briefly, let me outline some of the facts about the case: Victim Helen Schartner's blood was found on the passenger seat of Joseph O'Dell's vehicle. Tire tracks matching those on O'Dell's vehicle were found at the scene where Miss Schartner's body was found. The tire tread design on O'Dell's vehicle wheels were so unique, an expert in tire design couldn't match them in a manual of thousands of other tire treads. The seminal fluids found on the victim's body matched those of Mr. O'Dell and pubic hairs of the victim were found on the floor of his car.
The claims that O'Dell was "denied" his opportunity to present new DNA evidence on appeals were frivolous. In fact, he had every opportunity to come forward with this evidence, but his lawyers refused to reveal to the court the full findings of the tests which they had arranged to be done on a shirt with blood stains, which O'Dell's counsel claimed might show did not have the blood marks from the defendant or the victim.
Manipulative defense lawyer tactics were overlooked by Prejean in her narrative. O'Dell was far from a victim of poor counsel. As matter of fact, the city of Virginia Beach and state government gave O'Dell an estimated $100,000 for his defense team at trial. This unprecedented amount nearly bankrupted the entire indigent defense fund for the state. He had great lawyers, expert forensic investigators and every point at the trial was contested two to five times.
There was no "rush to justice" in this case.
O'Dell's alibi for the night of Schartner's murder was that he had gotten thrown out of the bar where he encountered Schartner following a brawl. However, none of the several dozen individuals supported his contention - there weren't any fights that night. Rather, several saw Miss Schartner getting into O'Dell's car on what would be her last ride.
But Prejean would want us to believe the claims of felon Joseph O'Dell.He had three trips to the United States Supreme Court and the "procedural error" which Prejean claims ultimately doomed him was the result of simple ignorance of basic appeals rules by his lawyers.
Nothing in the record ever suggested that Joseph O'Dell, two time killer and rapist, was anything but guilty of the murder of Helen Schartner.
Justice was properly served.
-----------
DeLuna - I have a partial review. Based upon what I've read it is all speculation regarding innocence, with no proof and the same with the alleged "real" murderer, there is no evidence for guilt, just lots of one sided speculation. Need to wait for both sides to weigh in.
Willingham - This case causes me great worry. There is evidence of guilt, even absent the fire forensics, which appear totally mishandled and, likely, knowing what we know, now, should not have been entered into evidence. That said, I am waiting for the full review from both sides.
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