Death Sentence

Victim's mother testifies in Abeokuto sentencing trial Jennifer McMenamin [sun reporter] On the day that would have been her daughter's 13th birthday, Milagro White took the witness stand in a Baltimore County courtroom yesterday to describe the terrible guilt and loss she feels to the jury deciding whether her former boyfriend should be sentenced to death or life in prison for killing the girl. "I can't even tell you how many days go by when I wish I never met him, when I wish I never brought him into our home," White told the jurors deciding the fate of Jamaal K. Abeokuto.

Apart from one urban cliffhanger set in a parking garage - it should have an afterlife as an action sequence long after the rest of this sorry celluloid has turned to soup - the grandiose, grimly silly revenge thriller Death Sentence will mostly benefit free-form players of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." Bacon can now readily be linked to nonpareil macho movie star Charles Bronson, because Death Sentence is based on novelist Brian Garfield's 1975 sequel to Death Wish, which Bronson and director Michael Winner turned into a hit vigilante film in 1974.

Convicted killer's death investigated Maryland's death row population has shrunk to five men with the death of convicted killer Lawrence M. Borchardt Sr. in prison. The 55-year-old inmate was taken Sunday evening to Mercy Medical Center after being found unresponsive in his cell and was pronounced dead a short time later, said Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. The department's Internal Investigative Unit is investigating Borchardt's death, although there were no signs of trauma or foul play, Vernarelli said.

As a candidate for the top prosecutor's job in Baltimore County - a jurisdiction that has sent more men to death row than any in Maryland - Scott D. Shellenberger repeatedly told voters that he would bring a new approach to capital prosecutions. And, since his election a year ago, he has created a protocol for deciding which crimes should be punished by death, and he has formed a panel of advisers to debate each eligible case. But capital-defense attorneys say that Shellenberger's approach has, at times, been even less open than that of his predecessor and former boss, longtime county State's Attorney Sandra A. O'Connor.

A 24-year-old Baltimore man was convicted of first-degree murder yesterday by a Harford County jury in the shooting death of a friend in June 2005. He could be the first person in three years sentenced to death in Maryland. Travis Davon Terry, who shot and killed longtime friend Edwin Lee Potillo and wounded Potillo's girlfriend after a night of drinking and drug use in a Dundalk apartment, leaned forward and smiled as the jury read the verdict after more than five hours of deliberations.

WASHINGTON -- In another reversal of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court restored a death sentence yesterday for a two-time Arizona murderer who told his trial judge, "If you want to give me the death penalty, just bring it right on." The judge accepted the invitation and in 1990 sentenced Jeff Landrigan to die for the murder and robbery of Chester Dyer. Landrigan was in Arizona after escaping from a prison in Oklahoma where he was serving time for murder. During his sentencing hearing, Landrigan said he did not want his mother or his former wife to testify in his behalf.

The fathers of two murder victims wept on the witness stand yesterday as they told an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court jury that will decide whether to execute their daughters' murderer how his crimes shattered their families.On Monday, the same jury convicted former Navy seaman Darris A. Ware, 28, of first-degree murder in the fatal shootings of his ex-fiancee Betina "Kristi" Gentry, 18, and her friend, Cynthia V. Allen, 22, in the Gentry home in Severn.The same 10 men and two women turned their attention to sentencing yesterday.

The fathers of two murder victims wept on the witness stand yesterday as they told an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court jury that will decide whether to execute their daughters' murderer how his crimes shattered their families.On Monday, the same jury convicted former Navy seaman Darris A. Ware, 28, of first-degree murder in the fatal shootings of his ex-fiancee Betina "Kristi" Gentry, 18, and her friend, Cynthia V. Allen, 22, in the Gentry home in Severn.The same 10 men and two women turned their attention to sentencing yesterday.

ABDULLAH Ocalan, who led the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for 21 years and its violent rebellion for 15, would be convicted in any country, under any legal system. As it happened, he was condemned to death for treason in an extraordinary trial in his own country, Turkey, to which he was kidnapped from exile.That Ocalan is a mass terrorist is beyond dispute. So is his standing as a freedom fighter for oppressed people.Almost immediately, yesterday, foreign governments protested his death sentence.

WHEN John F. Kennedy ran for president way back in 1960, one of the biggest obstacles he faced was his religion: He was a Roman Catholic, and no Catholic had ever been elected president of the United States.At one point during his campaign for the Democratic nomination, Kennedy decided that he needed to address the religious issue, and he did so by pledging that if elected he would owe his allegiance to the Constitution and the American people, not to the Catholic Church and the pope.The voters took Kennedy at his word, and he went on to win the White House in a close election over Richard Nixon.

A federal jury on Wednesday failed to agree on a death sentence, sparing the lives of two convicted killers and showing them the mercy that they denied their victims. Melvin Gilbert, 34, and James Dinkins, 36, were each sentenced to multiple life terms. They were convicted last month of running a vast drug operation known as "Special" in Northeast Baltimore and murdering three men, including two people they thought were law enforcement cooperators - "rats," according to Gilbert. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz promised that the co-defendants and "the poison that they brought" would never again "be anywhere close to Baltimore."

Since his death sentence was overturned, John A. Miller IV has accused his attorneys of coercion, deceit and of tricking him into pleading guilty to the murder of a 17-year-old girl. Most recently, he attacked the very foundation of the legal argument that won him the right to a new trial and the plea agreement that spared him a return to death row. Yesterday, a Baltimore County judge postponed Miller's sentencing again - but warned him against using complaints about his lawyers simply to delay the case.

A judge rejected the death penalty for a prison inmate convicted in the shooting death of a Western Maryland correctional officer, calling him "an evil man" but saying yesterday that he wanted to spare the victim's family from the repeated appeals that accompany a death sentence. Circuit Judge Joseph P. Manck instead sentenced Brandon T. Morris to life in prison with no chance of parole. The judge, who recalled his experience with the murder of his mother, said he was persuaded by testimony about Morris' neglectful and abusive childhood, along with concerns that correctional officer Jeffery A. Wroten's family would be dragged into courtrooms for years to come.

As a candidate for the top prosecutor's job in Baltimore County - a jurisdiction that has sent more men to death row than any in Maryland - Scott D. Shellenberger repeatedly told voters that he would bring a new approach to capital prosecutions. And, since his election a year ago, he has created a protocol for deciding which crimes should be punished by death, and he has formed a panel of advisers to debate each eligible case. But capital-defense attorneys say that Shellenberger's approach has, at times, been even less open than that of his predecessor and former boss, longtime county State's Attorney Sandra A. O'Connor.

WASHINGTON -- Can a murderer escape a death sentence because he rejected a plea deal after receiving bad advice from his lawyer? The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide that issue in the case of an Idaho man who slit the throat of a police informant 20 years ago. The case is the latest effort by the justices to decide whether a defense lawyer's mistakes warrant overturning a criminal's conviction or sentence. It is also the latest move by the high court to reconsider a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco.

Prosecutors seek death sentence in bar shooting Baltimore County prosecutors filed notice yesterday of their intent to seek a death sentence against a 25-year-old man accused of robbing and fatally shooting a man outside a Woodlawn-area bar in July. Juvon C. Harris is charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery, attempted armed robbery, first-degree assault and several gun crimes. Taavon Chambers, 23, of the 3400 block of Piedmont Ave. in West Baltimore died of a single gunshot to the head after he and a friend refused a gunman's demand that they get down on the ground, according to charging documents The shooting occurred about 2:15 a.m. July 1 in the parking lot of the Windsor Inn. Harris was arrested less than an hour later by Baltimore police officers responding to a complaint of a gunshot in the area of the 4300 block of Labrynth Road.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld yesterday a death sentence from a jury that had consulted the Bible's teachings on capital punishment. In a second decision on the role of religion in the criminal justice system, the same court ruled Friday that requiring a former prisoner on parole to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous violated the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion. In the case decided yesterday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals split 9-6 on the question of whether notes, including Bible verses prepared by the jury's foreman and used during sentencing deliberations, required the reversal of the death sentence imposed on Stevie L. Fields in 1979.

Apart from one urban cliffhanger set in a parking garage - it should have an afterlife as an action sequence long after the rest of this sorry celluloid has turned to soup - the grandiose, grimly silly revenge thriller Death Sentence will mostly benefit free-form players of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." Bacon can now readily be linked to nonpareil macho movie star Charles Bronson, because Death Sentence is based on novelist Brian Garfield's 1975 sequel to Death Wish, which Bronson and director Michael Winner turned into a hit vigilante film in 1974.

HOUSTON -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry spared the life of death row inmate Kenneth Foster Jr. yesterday, just hours before he was to be executed for a murder he did not personally commit. Perry's decision to commute the death sentence of Foster, the getaway driver in a 1996 botched robbery that ended in a fatal shooting, came after the governor received a rare recommendation to do so from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. "After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendations from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster's sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment," Perry said in a statement.

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS Left out in the cold Lots of people are feeling out of the loop when it comes to picking Baltimore's top cop. Among those feeling left out: the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement. Maryland baltimoresun.com/vozzella Playing to earn a job The Ravens' final exhibition game tonight in Atlanta is all about long-shot players trying to earn a job. Key decisions have to be made regarding backups at several positions. Sports baltimoresun.