Angela Corey is Pro Death Penalty

[Stuart]

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State Attorney Angela Corey blasts judge who 'deprived' death

Posted: February 26, 2011 - 12:00am


WILL DICKEY/The Times-Union
Judge John Skinner presides over the trial of Kenneth Ray McBride
at the Clay County Courthouse on Feb. 17 in Green Cove Springs.
He has ruled against a jury's vote for the death penalty.

By David Hunt

Citing case law and even the Declaration of Independence, State Attorney Angela Corey is lambasting a judge's decision to let a convicted killer and sexual predator live after a jury called for his death.

Corey filed an eight-page written objection Wednesday in Clay County venting prosecutors' frustration with a rare bench ruling from Circuit Judge John Skinner that went against a jury's 8-4 vote in favor of executing Kenneth Ray McBride, 37.

McBride had pleaded guilty to killing 46-year-old Roberta Laws, a woman he'd dated for 12 years. Laws had cerebral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair.

Corey said Friday that Laws was a poor, pitiful and helpless woman who deserved justice for the day in February 2009 that McBride strangled her and buried her near his Middleburg home.

"We have to make sure the community and the public have confidence in the justice system," Corey said. "The people of Florida were deprived of a proper death penalty."

Several people who have seen Skinner work over the decades regard him as a tough jurist, although he has favored defendants in several instances. Last year, Skinner dismissed a murder charge against a Middleburg man who'd successfully argued that he killed a man defending his roommate in 2009.

In 2004, he blocked the death penalty due to a defendant's mental retardation, although he personally described the murder as "unusually vicious and violent." He sentenced the career criminal to life in prison, but he also could have given him as few as 22 years.

Corey said her problem does not go past Skinner's handling of the McBride case. Still, the ruling probed deep into the American psyche, Corey said, as she explained why her objection quoted from the Declaration of Independence.

"It's a historical perspective. People have to trust the process," she said, arguing that Skinner's move was a step backward to the days of oppressive pre-Revolutionary court systems organized under an oppressive British monarchy.

Skinner did not return calls for comment. An aide said he was conducting truancy court Friday afternoon and could not take the phone.

The objection is not an appeal but rather a statement for the record that the State Attorney's Office did not agree with the outcome of the case.

Corey, who did not personally prosecute, said Skinner stopped assistants John Guy and Steve Nelson from arguing case law to support that the jury's verdict would withstand appeals.

She said Skinner overrode the jury's verdict within six minutes of thanking the panel for its service, when normally a judge will follow a jury's sentencing recommendation in a separate hearing several weeks after the penalty deliberations.

What Skinner did is legal. It's just rare. A University of Colorado researcher specializing in capital punishment documented 86 death-to-life overrides in Florida since 1972.

The last 4th Circuit case in recent memory in which a judge overrode a death-sentence recommendation happened in June 1997, when Circuit Judge Henry Davis decided a man convicted as an accomplice in a murder-kidnapping-rape case should not be executed. The judge's order said Darrell L. Davis did not know his accomplice, Robert Thomas, was going to kill Imara Skinner, 23.

In Florida death-penalty cases, juries weigh evidence before making a recommendation as to whether a convicted killer should be executed. The recommendation is based on majority vote.

McBride's jury came back in less than 15 minutes Feb. 17 after hearing testimony from people who believed McBride could be reformed as well as damning evidence that he had been convicted of molesting a young girl in the 1990s.

According to a court transcript, the judge told McBride that he saw evidence of remorse and that he found prison to be the appropriate place for him to die, whether that be by "homicide, suicide or other natural causes."

It was a moment that jolted the courtroom in ways that those present said they had a hard time explaining even a week later.

david.hunt@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4025

Read more at: Jacksonville.com

[Stuart]

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Clay circuit judge files brief response to complaint he went against jury's death recommendation

By David Hunt

A Clay County circuit judge under fire for his rare decision to override a jury’s death sentence recommendation for a man who’d strangled his wheelchair-bound girlfriend has offered a limited response to the criticism.

“The court has reviewed the state’s notice of objection. The court recognizes that reasonable people may disagree as to the facts and the application of those facts to the law,” reads the one-paragraph filing by Circuit Judge John Skinner.

That was the entirety of a response Skinner filed to State Attorney Angela Corey’s eight-page objection to Skinner’s surprise ruling at the end of the Kenneth Ray McBride case.

McBride, 37, stopped his trial last month to plead guilty to first-degree murder. He was charged in the February 2009 death of Roberta Laws, 46, a woman with cerebral palsy who he’d dated for 12 years.

A jury voted 8-4 for McBride’s execution but Skinner almost immediately opted for life in prison. He said he saw some signs of remorse and felt that prison would be the appropriate place for McBride to die whether that be by homicide, suicide or natural causes.

Corey said the decision, although legal, disenfranchised the people of Florida who hold the death penalty as an appropriate punishment for people like McBride.

Years before McBride murdered Laws, he was forced to register as a sexual predator after pleading guilty to molesting a girl younger than 12. Skinner has not returned phone calls about the ruling.

Read more at: Jacksonville.com

[wolfi2]

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Well, I don’t wonder about that she’s pro death penalty!  Who accused a 12 year old child with first degree murder in adult court will also be pro-death penalty.

She’s writing about the “oppressive pre-Revolutionary court systems organized under an oppressive British monarchy”, now, the Brits have a much more human court system without a death penalty, death penalty is in my eyes nothing more than premeditated cold blooded murder.

Death penalty is not justice, its vengeance!

[Bryan]

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It does not shock me one bit about her views on "pushing the plunger", "pulling the trigger" or other eupheminisms for the act of erasing people. She loves to show that to victims and the public that justice is being served. Innocent people are dying in this fashion while the real doers run free to rob and pilllage the public, knowing someone else is paying for their night of meyhem, not really caring.

Real doers who have people serving their punishment for them is not going to make us any safer from their future crimes.

Adam Harvey BTW should be locked up for something someday. He shocks me for the length he has had since Feb. 20, 2009. He should know his days may be numbered if his criminal tendacies get the better of him. The public may not believe Jordan Brown is innocent, but where does that leave the opinions of other convicts? Convicts have long memories of these type of things. Harvey should pray he does not meet a fellow felon with nothing to lose coming accross him, believing the only way to opine to the other guy is with something rhyming with "hurt her". Inmates are not all benign, which is why juveniles should be held away from these hardened grownup convicts. :/

[Stuart]

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Law & Disorder: Judge has short reply to State Attorney Corey criticism

He sentenced a man to life instead of death, as a jury recommended.

Posted: March 3, 2011 - 12:00am

By The Times-Union

A Clay County circuit judge criticized by the state attorney for overriding a jury's death sentence recommendation for a man who'd strangled his wheelchair-bound girlfriend has offered a limited response to the criticism.

"The court has reviewed the state's notice of objection. The court recognizes that reasonable people may disagree as to the facts and the application of those facts to the law," reads the one-paragraph filing by Judge John Skinner.

That was the entirety of a response Skinner filed to State Attorney Angela Corey's eight-page objection to Skinner's sentencing of Kenneth Ray McBride.

McBride, 37, stopped his trial last month to plead guilty to first-degree murder. He was charged in the February 2009 death of Roberta Laws, 46, a woman with cerebral palsy who he'd dated for 12 years.

A jury voted 8-4 for McBride's execution, but the judge almost immediately opted for life in prison. He said he saw some signs of remorse and felt that prison would be the appropriate place for McBride to spend the rest of his life.

Corey said the decision, although legal, disenfranchised the people of Florida.

Skinner has not returned phone calls about the ruling.

David Hunt

[Stuart]

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Rejected plea will be part of penalty phase for Jacksonville Wendy's murder

Man wanted to avoid life sentence in case of 2009 homicide.

Posted: July 5, 2011 - 4:00pm  |  Updated: July 6, 2011 - 10:04am


BOB SELF/The Times-Union
Thomas Theo Brown (left) sits with his attorney Fred Gazaleh
on June 14 during a hearing in Jacksonville. Gazaleh entered
Brown’s rejected plea form and a stack of psychological records
into evidence Tuesday.

By David Hunt

A man facing the death penalty for killing a co-worker at a Jacksonville fast-food restaurant tried to plead guilty before trial to serve a life sentence and avoid execution, but prosecutors would not let him.

The plea form, originally drafted in mid-May, is now a piece of evidence as Thomas Theo Brown's lawyers make their final arguments to spare his life.

Assistant Public Defender Fred Gazaleh entered Brown's rejected plea form and a stack of psychological records into evidence Tuesday as the case approaches a September sentencing. The evidence will be used to argue that Brown, 29, was a troubled man who snapped when he killed Juanese Miller, 22, at a Wendy's restaurant on St. Johns Bluff Road in June 2009 but that he has since accepted responsibility.

State Attorney Angela Corey said the death was a cold-blooded killing that took place while Brown was on parole after a violent robbery in Georgia. Although she appreciated his offer to dispose of the case just before the three-day trial that led to his May conviction, she said she wasn't willing to let the death penalty fall out of sentencing options.

"We couldn't mitigate this case like that," Corey said after Tuesday's hearing.

Trial testimony showed that Brown and Miller had problems working together at the restaurant. His lawyers argued that Brown was unfairly fired after a dispute in which Miller dumped ice down Brown's shirt and muttered a racial slur at him.

Prosecutors stressed that Brown returned with a gun after he'd been sent home. Still wearing his uniform and name tag, he shot Miller three times in the back before saying, "I told you I'd kill you," and putting another round in her head.

The jury voted 7-5 in favor of executing Brown but Circuit Judge Elizabeth Senterfitt has final say over the sentence.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month challenging Florida's method of imposing the death penalty was discussed Tuesday but Gazaleh opted against crafting the case into his argument because it is under appeal.

david.hunt@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4025

Read more at: Jacksonville.com