From: Abolish - The Mailing List For People Working to Abolish the Death
Penalty [ABOLISH@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU] on behalf of Rick Halperin
[rhalperi@MAIL.SMU.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 2:21 PM
To: ABOLISH@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Subject: NEWS:---ILL., FLA., KAN.
June 15
ILLINOIS:
Illinois preparing broad reforms on capital punishment
A once vocal opposition to reforming Illinois' capital punishment system
has been silenced by the acknowledgment of blunders that sent at least 13
people to death row, and the state is preparing sweeping reforms for how
it investigates and punishes murderers.
The debate has quieted so much here that police and prosecutors no longer
object to videotaping interrogations and confessions in murder cases, a
move they previously said would jeopardize their investigations.
Governor Rod Blagojevich is hearing few complaints as he reviews 2 pieces
of legislation now before him that would dramatically change how police
and prosecutors in the state conduct death penalty investigations.
"No one wants to be on the losing side. No one wants to be the guy casting
a vote against something being cast as a landmark reform," said Thomas
Needham, a former prosecutor and Chicago police chief of staff who sat on
a 14-member commission to author capital punishment reforms. "Who wants to
be the one group who's out there saying no to this?"
In recent weeks, the Illinois Senate passed a broad death penalty reform
package by 56 to 3; the House passed it 117 to 0. Similarly, the Senate
passed a companion bill allowing videotaping of confessions, 58 to 0, and
the House passed it 109 to 7. The dissenters were concerned that local
police won't receive adequate funding to meet the new requirements.
Blagojevich, a former prosecutor elected to office last year, has 60 days
to sign the legislation. It is widely expected he will soon make the bills
into law.
The legislation seeks to reshape every aspect of the legal process, from
police lineups to reviews of death penalty cases by the Illinois Supreme
Court. It also is viewed as a model for other states seeking to reform
their capital punishment systems.
Lineups, both in person and photo arrays, would be "blind" and no longer
be conducted in groups. Beginning with a pilot project, the cops
conducting the lineups would not know who the suspect is, and they would
have to tell the witness that the real suspect may not be in the lineup.
Also, instead of a group of potential suspects being paraded into a
lineup, reviews would be conducted individually, giving a witness time to
to study each person.
Another provision would require a hearing on jailhouse informers to verify
their credibility at special hearings before they are allowed to testify
at trial. And a jailhouse informer could no longer be the only witness in
a capital case.
Police would be required to turn over their field notes, allowing defense
attorneys an oppportunity to check whether evidence discovered early in
the investigation may point toward a suspect's innocence.
There would be greater access to DNA testing, an IQ of 75 would be set for
establishing who is mentally retarded and thus ineligible for the death
penalty, and the number of crimes subject to the death penalty would be
limited.
Also, the state's Supreme Court would no longer be required to find
fundamental errors in a case to overturn a death sentence, and police
found to have lied at trial would face decertification, a move opposed by
police unions.
After a pilot project, police and prosecutors would have two years to put
in place the necessary equipment and safeguards to videotape or audiotape
virtually every murder confession. Among those supporting the move was
Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine, whose spokesman, John Gorman,
said Chicago has conducted more than 700 taped confessions with great
success.
State Senator John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat and sponsor of the death
penalty legislation, said the changes were the product of tough
compromises. "Any one of these provisions would be a major piece of
legislation in any other year," he said.
The legislation comes after 13 people were released from death row -- as
many as had been executed since the death penalty was restored in Illinois
in the 1970s -- after it was determined that someone else committed the
crimes for which they had been convicted.
The state's previous governor, George Ryan, placed a moratorium on the
death penalty in 2000, and before leaving office, commuted all death
sentences and pardoned four other death row inmates. He also established
the 14-member commission to study the death penalty in Illinois and
chastised the Legislature for moving too slowly to fix a system that was
obviously broken.
The commission issued a 200-page report, and the legislation now before
Blagojevich incorporated many of its proposals.
"There's a lot of our recommendations that are adopted, but not by any
means all of them," said attorney Thomas Sullivan, cochair of the
commission. "We hope this is the beginning of a process."
The commission also had proposed setting up a review panel to pore over
every potential capital case and determine whether it warrants the death
penalty. Another recommendation that was not adopted would have allowed a
trial judge to override a death sentence decided by a jury.
Sullivan said the legislation does not go far enough in limiting the
number of crimes subject to the death penalty.
The commission wanted to pare the list to 5 crimes. The legislation would
limit the death penalty sentence to murders committed as part of another
violent crime, such as burglarly or rape.
Still, Sullivan said the legislation addresses a failed system, and he and
others expect other states will heed Illinois' example.
(source: Boston Globe)
FLORIDA---foreign national faces death penalty
Moroccan accused of killing wife cites honor, cultural differences
Abdelhafid Rahmani and Souad Bousserhan traveled to the United States from
their native Morocco in 1995, hoping to make a fresh start. They had had
their rocky times. They had married, divorced but had just gotten
remarried.
Once here, they decided to stay, and that was the problem. As foreigners,
they couldn't. Their solution was a convoluted and illegal one: They each
decided to marry someone else without bothering to first get divorced.
In the end, it was a decision that doomed them both.
Rahmani, 43, goes on trial this week, charged with murdering his wife and
her new husband in what he has said was a jealous rage. Jury selection
began Friday and is to continue Monday.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Rahmani has confessed at least twice - once to a local television reporter
- saying the slayings were to defend his honor.
It is an odd case, one that generated news reports in Morocco critical of
the U.S. criminal justice system.
In those accounts, Rahmani was portrayed as the victim of a philandering
wife, a foreign culture he didn't understand and a callous American legal
system.
2 to 3 years after the 1996 slayings, the Moroccan government got directly
involved, contributing money to his defense and accusing local authorities
of violating his rights by not notifying diplomats as soon as he was
arrested.
His family and friends also made public appeals for money, both in the
Orlando area and in Morocco, saying he needed a new lawyer.
He got one, Kirk Kirkconnell, a respected Winter Park, Fla., defense
attorney. The money, though, didn't last long. Kirkconnell and his
partner, Mike Snure, are now representing Rahmani for free.
But their primary job over the next 2 weeks is to keep Rahmani from
getting a death sentence.
In Morocco, Rahmani worked at a bank and Bousserhan at a police station.
In Orlando, they both went to work at a McDonald's run by Medhat Zamzam,
37, a native of Egypt.
To Rahmani, Zamzam was a friend. To Bousserhan, he would become a lover.
Rahmani and Bousserhan lived meagerly. Rahmani got a 2nd job, working at a
car rental agency. He bought a 1985 Plymouth.
They decided shortly after they arrived that to keep from being deported,
Rahmani should marry an American woman, according to a letter written by
Lakhdar Rahmani, the defendant's brother, that's posted on WAFIN, a news
Web site for Moroccan expatriates.
Abdelhafid Rahmani chose 21-year-old Maudie Mae Hurst of Christmas. They
got married in Orange County, Fla., in September 1995.
It's unclear how they met. Neither Hurst nor her family would answer
questions.
They are still married, though Hurst has filed for divorce, saying their
marriage is irretrievably broken.
Exactly when Bousserhan and Zamzam became lovers is not clear. They
secretly got married one week before the slayings, according to Orange
County records. About that time, Bousserhan disappeared, leaving Rahmani a
note stating that she had gone back to Morocco.
He tried to phone her there a number of times. She finally called him from
Zamzam's home in Winter Park, according to his confession.
Over the next few days, the three of them talked. Rahmani was angry that
his wife had deserted him. Zamzam insisted that Rahmani give Bousserhan a
divorce, and offered $3,000 to $4,000 if he would give her up.
"I wasn't going to give her a divorce. She's my wife," Rahmani said in his
confession. "As a Muslim, this is unacceptable."
That's when he decided to kill them, Rahmani later told a co-worker.<>P>
The final confrontation came about 2 a.m. Feb. 1, 1996. Rahmani said he
smashed a window in Zamzam's home and walked in with a 20-gauge shotgun
he'd just bought from a Kmart. He found his wife packing her bags, walking
around in a slip and new jacket that still had a price tag on it.
Zamzam was there, too. He again demanded that Rahmani give Bousserhan a
divorce, and when Rahmani said no, Zamzam threatened to call the police.
Rahmani then hit Zamzam in the face.
Bousserhan had been defiant when Rahmani first showed up.
"'This is the United States. This is my life,'" she told him, Rahmani said
to a co-worker the night of his arrest.
But after he hit Zamzam, Bousserhan began to scream and beg, "'Don't do
this. You're going to ruin our lives. Wherever you want to go, I will go
with you. I love you,'" he said.
But sometime after that, police said, Rahmani opened fire, pulling the
trigger 2 or 3 times. Both Bousserhan and Zamzam were hit in the chest.
The bodies were found the next day by two of Zamzam's employees, who went
to his home after he failed to show up at work.
Zamzam was found lying on his side. Bousserhan had been laid out carefully
on her back.
"Her clothes were not ruffled," Seminole County Sheriff's Investigator
Robert Jaynes said in a sworn statement.
Evidence suggests Rahmani then tried to flee the country. He's suspected
of driving to Fayetteville, N.C., where authorities found Zamzam's silver
BMW with the shotgun inside.
Next, he showed up in Puerto Rico, where he stayed a few days, using
Zamzam's credit cards, according to court records.
He then returned to Orlando. 4 days after the slayings, he was captured at
Value Rent A Car, his 2nd job.
He'd come back, he said, because he wanted to explain his actions. One of
the first people he talked to was a TV reporter.
With Rahmani sitting in the back of a patrol car and a camera running,
reporter Ted Schouten, then with WFTV-Channel 9, asked him, "Did you kill
those two people?"
"Yes," Rahmani said. "I have my reputation."
"Do you feel bad that you did that?" Schouten asked.
"No, because she left me," Rahmani said.
What's the proper penalty for such a crime?
That depends on where you live. In Morocco, a Muslim country, it could be
as little as 4 years, according to Mohammed Karmoune, former deputy consul
general to the Moroccan Consulate in New York.
In Morocco, a man can have four wives, but what Bousserhan did - take up
with another man - is a grave dishonor.
"If your wife does something like that, that means you are not a man. You
are nothing, dead," Bahija Douney, a Moroccan lawyer living in the United
States, said in a sworn statement. He's listed as a defense witness.
"I'm not a criminal. I'm not a killer. It's just the situation," Rahmani
said in his 2nd confession the night of his arrest.
In 1998, on Day 2 of what was to be his trial, Rahmani pleaded no contest
to both murders. But a few weeks later he reversed course, saying that, in
Morocco, there is no such plea, that he didn't understand what he had done
and wanted to withdraw it.
After 4 years of legal wrangling, that has finally happened, setting up
his trial this week.
Testimony is expected to begin Tuesday.
(source: Orlando Sentinel)
KANSAS:
D.A. files capital charges in Wichita beheading
In Wichita, prosecutors have filed new capital murder charges and will
seek the death penalty against a truck driver accused of decapitating a
Wichita woman last June.
The Sedgwick County District Attorney's Office on Friday dropped a
first-degree murder charge against Douglas S. Belt and filed capital
murder and attempted rape charges in its place.
Asst. Dist. Atty. Marc Bennett cited newly discovered evidence for the new
charges, but would not elaborate on what the evidence was.
Belt has pleaded innocent to the murder of housekeeper Lucille Gallegos at
a west Wichita apartment complex. Gallegos, 43, was found dead in a
vacant, partially-burned apartment on June 25, 2002.
The attempted rape charge, combined with the murder charge, allows
prosecutors to seek the death penalty under Kansas law.
Topeka lawyer Ron Evans, who represented Cornelius Oliver and Jonathan
Carr in two previous Wichita capital murder trials, said he planned to
meet with Belt for the 1st time Monday. Oliver was sentenced to life in
prison and Carr received the death penalty.
Last Wednesday, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation apologized for an error
which it said delayed identifying Belt as a suspect in an October 1991
rape in McPherson County. The KBI said a blood sample from Belt was
mislabeled.
Belt, in Sedgwick County Jail on $2.5 million bond, faces 7 counts of rape
from 4 Kansas counties and 3 counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault
in Madison County, Ill.
(source: Associated Press)
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