Mississippi
U.S. judge: Woman on death row gets state appeal
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The only woman on Mississippi death row can go to state court to challenge her conviction and sentence, a federal judge has ruled.
Lisa Jo Chamberlin, 49, intends to argue she has received ineffective legal representation, according to a ruling issued June 1 by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves.
Chamberlin is in the women’s maximum-security unit at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. She was sentenced to death in 2006 after being convicted on two counts of capital murder in the 2004 killing of two people in Hattiesburg.
She appealed the verdict and sentence, and both were affirmed by the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2008.
In 2015, Reeves ordered a new trial for Chamberlin, who is white, after her attorneys argued Black people had been improperly dismissed from the pool of potential jurors. A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals initially agreed with Reeves’ ruling. But in 2018, the full appeals court returned Chamberlin to death row, ruling that allegations of racial bias were insufficient to reverse her sentence. She has remained in prison, including during the appeal of the 2015 ruling.
Evidence showed Linda Heintzelman and her boyfriend, Vernon Hulett were killed after they argued with Chamberlin and her then-boyfriend, Roger Gillett, at a home they all shared.
Hulett was hit in the head with a hammer and his throat was slashed. Heintzelman was abandoned after being strangled and stabbed.
When her assailants returned to find Heintzelman was still breathing, she was suffocated with plastic bags. Hulett was decapitated. The bodies were stuffed in a freezer and taken to Kansas, where Gillett and Chamberlin were arrested after state agents raided an abandoned farm house near the city of Russell.
Gillett, now 48, also was convicted of two counts of capital murder and initially received a death sentence. His sentence also was overturned, and he was later resentenced to life in prison without parole. He is in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
Chamberlin filed the federal appeal in her case in 2011. While her appeal was pending, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in another inmate’s case in 2013 that it would recognize a state right to effective post-conviction legal representation in death penalty cases “even years after the initial post-conviction petition was decided,” Reeves wrote in his June 1 order. That creates the path for Chamberlin’s next appeal in state court.
“Chamberlin’s ineffectiveness claims will be dependent, at least in part, on the facts, and the Mississippi Supreme Court has demonstrated a willingness to review such claims when they return from this Court,” Reeves wrote.
Appeals in death penalty cases typically last several years. Reeves wrote that he is “sympathetic to the State’s frustration” at delays in Chamberlin’s case.
“Much of the reason for the recent delay is the difficulty in conducting an investigation during the pandemic; a situation that has affected almost all of the cases on this Court’s docket,” he wrote.
Reeves wrote that he will monitor Chamberlin’s case to ensure she pursues the new state court appeal in a timely manner.
California
Avenatti says he wants to plead guilty to charges
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — Incarcerated lawyer Michael Avenatti says he plans to plead guilty to charges in a federal court case in Southern California accusing him of cheating clients out of millions of dollars.
Avenatti didn’t specify which charges he wants to plead to in a brief court filing Sunday. He said he hasn’t reached a deal with federal prosecutors but wants to change his plea “in order to be accountable; accept responsibility; avoid his former clients being further burdened; save the Court and the government significant resources; and save his family further embarrassment.”
Federal prosecutors have accused Avenatti of cheating clients out of nearly $10 million by negotiating and collecting settlement payments on their behalf and funneling the money to accounts he controlled. The case is scheduled for trial in July after a mistrial last year when federal prosecutors failed to turn over relevant financial evidence to Avenatti, who has represented himself in the California case with assistance from advisory counsel.
Avenatti, who is suspended from practicing law in California, pleaded not guilty to wire fraud in connection with the allegations spanning from 2015 to 2019, as well as charges including bankruptcy and tax fraud.
A message seeking comment was left for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Avenatti was sentenced this month to four years in prison for stealing book proceeds from Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who catapulted him to fame as he represented her in courtrooms and cable news programs during her legal battles with then-President Donald Trump.
The sentence means Avenatti will spend another 2 1/2 years in prison on top of the 2 1/2 years he is already serving after another conviction for trying to extort Nike if the shoemaker didn’t pay him up to $25 million.
Tennessee
Man convicted of hitting, killing mother and son
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee driver charged in the deaths of a pregnant woman and her toddler has been convicted of reckless homicide and reckless endangerment.
A jury in Jefferson City reached the verdict Saturday against William David Phillips, who was charged in the 2019 deaths of Sierra Cahoon and Nolan Cahoon, news outlets reported.
Investigators said Phillips was driving west on East Main Street in Jefferson City when he swerved and intentionally hit and injured a man and then continued driving before hitting and killing the mother and her 2-year-old son.
During closing arguments in the trial, lawyers argued over Phillips’ mental illness.
“Driving down 80 miles an hour down this tiny little downtown road, jerking the wheel, hitting these people, going through the wall at 89 miles an hour speaks for itself,” the defense lawyer said. “It’s insanity.”
Prosecutors argued he knew exactly what he was doing.
“He hit the brakes when he was slowing down for the stop sign,” the prosecutor said. “He chose not to hit the brakes when he slammed into Sierra and Nolan.”
Prosecutors said Phillips gave several reasons for the crash including a voice in his head and thought there was meth in the stroller that needed to be destroyed.
Sentencing was set for Sept. 19.
Missouri
Jurors deny cough syrup defense in road rage killing
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman has been convicted in a road rage killing after jurors rejected defense arguments that she suffered from cough syrup-induced psychosis.
The Springfield News-Leader reports that jurors found 50-year-old Elizabeth McKeown guilty Friday of first-degree murder in the death of 57-year-old Barbara Foster.
Police say McKeown was on the way to the bank to make a car payment in November 2018 when she rear-ended Foster because Foster wasn’t driving fast enough.
When Foster exited her vehicle and called 911 to report the crash, police say, McKeown backed up, then ran over Foster, dragging her under the vehicle. McKeown attempted to drive away but was blocked off at the next intersection by other witness drivers.
Assistant Greene County Prosecutor Dane Rennier described what happened as a “brutal murder.” The prosecutors said McKeown knowingly took more than the recommended amount of over-the-counter cough syrup.
McKeown’s attorney Jon Van Arkel said McKeown did not purposefully take the cough syrup to “get any sort of high or euphoria, her intent was to suppress her cough.”
McKeown’s liver could not metabolize the dextromethorphan from the cough syrup correctly, which in turn altered her state of mind, Van Arkel said.
Foster’s granddaughters, Emileigh Sahagun, said the verdict was “what I needed to hear.”
Pennsylvania
Appeal filed in new sentence in 2010 torture slaying case
GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — The youngest defendant convicted in the torture death of a mentally disabled woman a dozen years ago is appealing the new sentence of 60 years to life imposed late last month.
Angela Marinucci, now 29, argues in an appeal filed Friday in Westmoreland County Court that the judge ignored evidence that she has matured during the 12 years she has spent in prison since her arrest in the stabbing death of 30-year-old Jennifer Daugherty of Mount Pleasant, The Tribune-Review reported.
Defense attorney Michael DeMatt said Judge Rita Hathaway ignored a psychologist’s testimony that his client’s mental health issues have improved in recent years. He also accused the judge of bias in focusing on the nature of the offense and its effect on the court “even positing that was akin to PTSD.”
During the May 31 sentencing hearing, Hathaway recounted the evidence that led to Marinucci’s 2011 first-degree murder conviction and in later trials and appearances of her five co-defendants. The judge said the case has given her nightmares and has affected her like no other in her more than two decades on the bench.
Hathaway twice sentenced Marinucci to life prison terms without possibility of parole, but appeals courts ruled the sentences unconstitutional because Marinucci was a few months shy of her 18th birthday at the time of her arrest.
Her new sentence calls for her to serve a sentence of 40 years to life for first-degree murder and a consecutive prison term of 20 to 40 years for conspiracy. She was credited for the dozen years already spent behind bars and will be eligible for parole at age 78 in 2070.
Authorities alleged that 17-year-old Marinucci egged on her boyfriend and others to torture Daugherty in the dingy Greensburg apartment most of the group shared in February 2010. Prosecutors said she had been dating one of the men and became jealous upon learning that the victim was interested in him too.
Prosecutors alleged that over nearly three days, the six beat the victim, cut her hair and forced her to drink a mixture of detergent, human waste and other substances that they hoped would kill her, then finally choked her with a string of Christmas lights and stabbed her. Her body was wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a garbage can that was wedged under a truck in a middle school parking lot, where it was found during a snowstorm.
California
Truck driver from Texas charged in 1993 killing
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A retired truck driver from Texas has been charged with killing a woman whose body was found along a freeway onramp in a Southern California desert nearly 30 years ago, prosecutors said.
Cold-case investigators used advances in DNA technology to link Douglas Thomas to the 1993 killing of Sherri Herrera, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Thomas is in custody in Titus County, Texas, awaiting trial for a separate slaying in that state in 1992.
The 67-year-old was charged with Herrera’s murder on Friday in Riverside, California, the DA’s statement said. The murder count was filed with a special circumstance allegation that the killing occurred during the commission of a rape, prosecutors said.
It wasn’t known Sunday if Thomas has an attorney.
When the Texas case concludes, he will be extradited to California to be tried in Herrera’s killing.
Herrera, a 30-year-old mother of four from Tulare, California, was found dead on March 30, 1993 on an eastbound onramp to Interstate 10 near Desert Center in Riverside County.
DNA from the Texas slaying connected Thomas to Herrera’s killing, investigators said.
Thomas traveled extensively throughout the U.S. during a 40-year career as a trucker, according to officials.
