Updated: Feb 21, 2022
Capital Case Round Up
The latest developments in capital cases around the U.S. This page includes brief updates about grants of relief, resentencings, and other important case developments.
Updated: Feb 21, 2022
The latest developments in capital cases around the U.S. This page includes brief updates about grants of relief, resentencings, and other important case developments.
Feb 14, 2022
A federal district court has overturned the death sentence of an Alabama death-row prisoner whose abandonment by his state post-conviction counsel led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the right of access to federal habeas corpus review. On January 27, 2022, Judge Karon O. Bowdre of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama overturned Cory Maples’ death sentence, holding that his trial counsel had provided prejudicially deficient representation during the penalty phase of his capital trial in 1997.
Bowdre found that Maples’ trial lawyers conducted an unreasonably limited mitigation investigation, only briefly speaking to Maples’ father, stepmother, and a mental health expert who was not provided vital information about Maples. Counsel failed to interview any other family members, failed to obtain educational records, failed to investigate evidence of Maples’ suicidality and depression, and as a result failed to provide the jury with critical mitigating evidence about Maples’ chronically abusive and traumatic background and the resultant mental health issues. The court found that, had counsel performed a reasonable investigation, there was a reasonable probability that at least one more member of his jury, which made a non-unanimous 10 – 2 recommendation for death at trial, “would have been swayed to vote for life.”
Jan 24, 2022
On January 13, 2022, the Florida Supreme Court granted new trials to two Florida death-row prisoners. The court overturned Joe Simpson’s 2007 conviction and death sentence because of prosecutorial misconduct. It also overturned Peter Avsenew’s 2018 conviction and death sentence because of the improper presentation of remotely-recorded testimony.
Simpson was sentenced to death in 2007 for the murders of Archie Howard Crook, Sr. and his pregnant girlfriend, Kimberli Kimbler in 1999. In a 5 – 1 decision, the Florida Supreme Court overturned Simpson’s conviction and sentence because prosecutors unconstitutionally withheld from the defense evidence that one of the state’s lead witnesses, Crook’s son “Little Archie,” was a confidential informant for the state.
Another state witness, George Durrance, told police that Simpson confessed to the killings to him. The prosecution also did not inform the defense that Crook’s son had been an informant against Durrance in an unrelated case. The Florida Supreme Court held that this should have been disclosed to Simpson.
In ruling that the suppression of this evidence was prejudicial, the majority wrote that the “relationship between Simpson, Little Archie, and Durrance was of critical importance in this case, and the information Little Archie provided to law enforcement pertaining to Durrance casts a different light on this relationship.” The majority determined that “Little Archie’s testimony and credibility were of significant consequence when we consider the lack of evidence linking Simpson to the scene of the crime.”
Chief Judge Charles Canady dissented, arguing that the evidence withheld by the prosecution was immaterial to Simpson’s case, writing: “The fact that Little Archie had been a source to law enforcement in unrelated matters is of little, if any, relevance.”
Avsenew was sentenced to death in 2018 for the murders of Steven Adams and Kevin Powell in 2010. At trial, because of her health problems, prosecutors presented testimony from Avsenew’s mother via a video recording. The Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure permit the use of pre-recorded video testimony in certain limited circumstances in which a witness is unavailable to attend trial. The rules mandate that, when this occurs, the court must “keep the defendant in the presence of the witness.” The testimony in the case established that Ms. Avsenew could not see her son as she was testifying.
The court unanimously reversed Avsenew’s conviction. In assessing the prejudicial effect of the rules violation, the justices wrote: “Without question, the impact of Ms. Avsenew’s incriminating testimony on the jury would have been even greater because she is Avsenew’s mother.”
The Florida Supreme Court remanded the two cases to county trial courts to conduct new trials.
Dec 26, 2021
James Coddington, the last of the seven death-row prisoners scheduled to be put to death in Oklahoma’s five-month execution spree, has received a stay of execution.
On December 23, 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Friot, who is presiding over a challenge brought by Oklahoma death-row prisoners to the constitutionality of the state’s lethal-injection protocol, stayed Coddington’s March 10, 2022 execution date “until a final judgment on Mr. Coddington’s claims in this case has been entered by this Court.” The Oklahoma Attorney General’s office consented to the stay.
On August 11, 2021, Judge Friot ordered a trial in the prisoner’s lawsuit, scheduled to begin in late February 2022. At the same time, he dismissed six prisoners — including Coddington — from the lawsuit, saying they could not prevail on their constitutional challenges because they had not designated an alternative method by which they could be executed. Although then-Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter had assured the court the state would not seek execution dates while the lawsuit remained unresolved, his successor, John O’Connor, disregarded that representation and sought death warrants against the six and a seventh prisoner who was not a party to the lethal-injection challenge.
Later, on October 12, 2021, Friot reinstated Coddington as a party to the lawsuit, finding “credible corroboration from an independent evidentiary source” that Coddington mistakenly believed that “he had already effectively communicated his choice of a firing squad” as his “alternative method of execution.”
Citing “the unique circumstances of this situation,” Coddington’s lawyers and the Oklahoma attorney general’s office stipulated that Coddington’s execution should be stayed.
Dec 12, 2021
Florida death-row prisoner Paul Durousseau was re-sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole December 10, 2021, when a second capital sentencing jury reached a non-unanimous sentencing verdict.
Durousseau was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 on charges that he had raped and murdered a 24-year-old woman in Jacksonville in 1999. The trial court imposed the death penalty in that case after the jury split 10 – 2 in favor of death. At the time, Florida was one of three states that permitted judges to impose death sentences based upon non-unanimous jury recommendations for death.
The Florida Supreme Court overturned Durousseau’s death sentence in January 2017 following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state’s sentencing procedures, which reserved for the trial judge the final finding of facts necessary to impose a death sentence, violated capital defendants’ rights to a jury trial. Citing the non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendation in that trial — also a 10 – 2 vote — the Florida court ruled that the constitutional violation in Durousseau’s case could not be considered harmless error.
Oct 22, 2021
A second Ohio death-row prisoner has been resentenced to life without parole under a new state law that makes individuals who were seriously mentally ill at the time of their crime ineligible for the death penalty.
Donald Ketterer, who was sentenced to death in Butler County in February 2004, was transferred from death row in Ohio’s Chillicothe Correctional Institution on October 6, 2021 to a state prison in Warren County after a Butler County Court of Common Pleas ruling in September that vacated his death sentence. “Ketterer suffered from bipolar disorder on Feb. 24, 2003, when Lawrence Sanders was murdered,” visiting Judge James Brogan wrote, “and because of his bipolar disorder, lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.”
The Ohio legislature voted in December 2020 to exempt individuals whose serious mental illness “significantly impaired the person’s capacity to exercise rational judgment” at the time of the murder in either “conforming [his] conduct to the requirements of law” or “appreciating the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of [his] conduct.” The proposal designated certain illness as serious mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and delusional disorder.
Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill on January 9, 2021 and it became law on April 12. Ketterer’s lawyers then filed a post-conviction motion in July seeking to overturn his death sentence, detailing his long history of mental illness. On June 23, 2021, David Braden became the first Ohio death-row prisoner to have his death sentence vacated because of serious mental illness.