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Suspect in some Phoenix freeway shootings pleads not guilty
Law Firm News |
2015/10/06 16:25
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A man accused in some of the freeway shootings that put Phoenix drivers on edge for weeks pleaded not guilty Thursday as his defense lawyers questioned the strength of the evidence against him.
Attorneys for Leslie Allen Merritt Jr., 21, who was arraigned on 15 felony counts, including aggravated assault and carrying out a drive-by shooting, said outside court that the investigation by state police does not place him at the shooting scenes.
"We're going to work diligently to make sure that we investigate this fully, and we believe in his innocence," said Ulises Ferragut, one of Merritt's two attorneys.
Ferragut and attorney Jason Lamm also cited investigators' evolving timeline of the shootings. They plan to do their own investigation, looking into another person possibly admitting responsibility for any of the 11 shootings, Lamm said. They didn't identify that person or provide details.
"It's very, very early in the game to get hard confirmation on that," Lamm said.
Department of Public Safety investigators used ballistics tests to tie Merritt to four of the 11 shootings that occurred on Phoenix-area freeways between Aug. 22 and Sept. 10.
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Virginia executes serial killer who claimed to be disabled
Law Firm Press |
2015/10/04 16:25
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A twice-condemned serial killer who claimed he was intellectually disabled was executed in Virginia on Thursday after a series of last-minute appeals failed.
Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. The 49-year-old was injected with a lethal three-drug combination, including the sedative pentobarbital, which Virginia received from the Texas prison system.
Prieto, wearing glasses, jeans and a light blue shirt, did not resist and showed no emotion as he was strapped to the gurney.
"I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members," he said, before mumbling, "Get this over with."
The El Salvador native was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the murder of a young couple more than two decades earlier. Rachael Raver and her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, both 22, were found shot to death in a wooded area a few days after being seen at a Washington, D.C., nightspot.
Prieto was on death row in California at the time for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl and was linked to the Virginia slayings through DNA evidence. California officials agreed to send him to Virginia on the rationale that it was more likely to carry out the execution.
He has been connected to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia, authorities have said, but he was never prosecuted because he had already been sentenced to death.
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Ohio court: Wording of pot legalization ballot is misleading
Court News |
2015/09/17 10:33
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Ohio's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that part of the ballot wording describing a proposal to legalize marijuana in the state is misleading and ordered a state board to rewrite it.
Supporters of the measure, known in the fall election as Issue 3, challenged the phrasing of the ballot language and title, arguing certain descriptions were inaccurate and intentionally misleading to voters. Attorneys for the state's elections chief, a vocal opponent of the proposal, had said the nearly 500-word ballot language was fair.
In a split decision, the high court sided with the pot supporters in singling out four paragraphs of the ballot language it said "inaccurately states pertinent information and omits essential information."
The court ordered the state's Ballot Board to reconvene to replace those paragraphs about where and how retail stores can open, the amount of marijuana a person can grow and transport and the potential for additional growing facilities.
"The cumulative effect of these defects in the ballot language is fatal because the ballot language fails to properly identify the substance of the amendment, a failure that misleads voters," the court said.
The court allowed the ballot issue's title, "Grants a monopoly for the commercial production and sale of marijuana for recreational and medicinal purposes," to stand in a blow to the backers who had taken issue with the use of the word "monopoly."
Passage of Issue 3 would make Ohio a rare state to go from outlawing marijuana to allowing it for all uses in one vote.
The full text of the proposed constitutional amendment has nearly 6,600 words. It would allow anyone 21 and older to buy marijuana for medicinal or personal use and grow four plants. It creates a network of 10 authorized growing locations, some that already have attracted a celebrity-studded list of private investors, and lays out a regulatory and taxation scheme.
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US court upholds Oklahoma death row inmate's sentence
U.S. Court News |
2015/09/16 10:34
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A divided federal appeals court panel upheld the murder convictions and death sentence Tuesday of a 54-year-old man who went on a multistate crime spree in 2003.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to affirm the death sentence of Scott Eizember, who received the punishment after his first-degree murder conviction in the Oct. 18, 2003, bludgeoning death of A.J. Cantrell, 76. Eizember was also found guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting of Patsy Cantrell, 70, for which he received 150 years in prison, as well as a variety of other charges.
On appeal, Eizember alleged that the trial court allowed two jurors who he alleged were "impermissibly biased in favor of the death penalty," thus "depriving him of trial by an impartial jury and due process in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments."
The court agreed with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and a federal district judge in rejecting Eizember's claims.
Eizember was the focus of an intense manhunt following the shootings in rural Depew but eluded authorities for 37 days. He was discovered that November by a 75-year-old volunteer at a church, but then stole the volunteer's vehicle, which he abandoned near Waldron, Arkansas.
He was captured later that day outside Lufkin, Texas, after kidnapping an Arkansas physician and his wife, holding them at gunpoint for six hours and forcing them to drive. The physician eventually shot Eizember four times. Eizember was convicted of kidnapping, carjacking and using a firearm in a crime of violence in Arkansas and was sentenced 25 years in federal prison.
In a 30-page dissenting opinion, Chief Judge Mary Beck Briscoe wrote that she would affirm Eizember's convictions "but reverse his death sentence and remand for resentencing before a fair and impartial jury."
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