Costs for New California Death Row Soar to $400 Million

A recent audit of the construction costs for a new death row facility at California’s San Quentin prison revealed that estimates have soared over 80% from previous projections.

Ground still has not been broken for the project, but the new death row is likely to require nearly $400 million, instead of the $220 million originally quoted, and it will provide even fewer cells than planned.

As an average of 12 new condemned inmates arrive at San Quentin annually, the new facility will be full only three years after it opens. The lethal injection chamber at San Quentin has already been renovated at a cost of $750,000. The new construction is projected to cost over half a million dollars per cell (more than double the original estimate).

“I think this report is a bombshell,” said Assemblyman Jared Huffman. “They simply want to build a massive monolith to house all our condemned inmates on the most expensive piece of real estate in Northern California.” Assemblyman Juan Arambula called the costs "alarming."

A joint Assembly and Senate committee is still considering the prison agency’s funding request for an additional $136 million to start the construction.

California has the largest death row in the country with approximately 670 inmates.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center

Texas Inmate Says Judge and Prosecutor Had Affair

HOUSTON — Lawyers for a Texas inmate facing execution next week filed court papers on Thursday accusing the judge at his double-murder trial of having an affair with the prosecutor.

The papers, filed in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, argue that the relationship between the judge, Verla Sue Holland, and the man who was district attorney of Collin County, Tom O’Connell, should nullify the conviction of the inmate, Charles Hood, in 1990.

The filing says that Judge Holland had a “personal and direct interest in the outcome of the case” and that “the wall of silence that has long protected Judge Holland must now come down.”

“Under these circumstances,” Gregory Wiercioch, Mr. Hood’s lead lawyer, said in an interview, “Judge Holland had a clear duty to let the parties know about her relationship and to recuse herself, because anybody knowing these facts would be shocked that she presided over this capital murder trial.”

Neither Mr. O’Connell, 66, who has practiced law in Plano after retiring as a prosecutor in 2001, nor Ms. Holland, also 66, responded to phone messages.

The petitions include an affidavit from a former assistant district attorney, Matthew Goeller, who said that the six-year relationship between Judge Holland and Mr. O’Connell was “common knowledge” and that it raised “reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially.”

The relationship was reported by Salon.com in 2005.

Mr. Goeller was past president of the Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association in Collin County, near Dallas, and a former director of the Collin County Bar Association. He is currently out of the country, Mr. Hood’s other lawyers said.

The relationship between the judge and prosecutor, Mr. Hood’s lawyers said, violated his right to a fair trial under the United States and Texas Constitutions. The Texas Constitution says that the “judiciary must be extremely diligent in avoiding any appearance of impropriety and must hold itself to exacting standards lest it lose its legitimacy and suffer a loss of public confidence.”

Mr. Hood’s lawyers also filed an amendment on Thursday to a reprieve request with Gov. Rick Perry.

Judge Holland was on the Criminal Court of Appeals from 1997 to 2001, not completing her full six-year term. At least seven of the nine current judges who will decide Mr. Hood’s case served with her.

Mr. Hood was convicted in the murders in 1989 of his supervisor, Ronald Williamson, and Mr. Williamson’s girlfriend, Traci L. Wallace. They were found shot to death in Mr. Williamson’s house in Plano.

Shortly after the killings, Mr. Hood was arrested with some belongings of Mr. Williamson. He pleaded not guilty and continues to maintain his innocence.

His execution is scheduled for Tuesday.

Source: The New York Times

IRAN. KURDISH BOY EXECUTED

June 10, 2008: A Kurdish boy, believed to be 16 or 17 years old at the time of execution, was executed in Iran. Mohammad Hassanzadeh was hanged in Sanandaj prison following his conviction for the murder, when aged about 15, of another boy, then aged 10.

A 60-year-old man, Rahim Pashabadi, also convicted of murder, was executed alongside him. Concerning Hassanzadeh’s case, the Kargozaran newspaper said Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi had advised the local court to "settle the issue through reconciliation".

"None of our efforts to reach an agreement with the victim's family was successful and therefore the sentence was carried out," an unnamed judicial official was quoted as saying. Under Islamic law, a victim's relatives can spare a murderer from execution by accepting blood money.

Source : AI, BBC, 11/06/2008

TEXAS CONDUCTS FIRST EXECUTION SINCE END OF MORATORIUM

June 11, 2008: Texas executed a rapist and murderer, the US state's first execution since a death penalty moratorium ended after the Supreme Court found the lethal injection constitutional.

Karl Chamberlain, 37, was pronounced dead at 6:30 pm, nine minutes after being injected with the deadly dose at the Huntsville prison.

The Supreme Court had agreed to examine the constitutionality of the lethal injection in September 2007, resulting in a seven-month moratorium on executions. Texas, however, conducted one execution the evening of the court's decision.

The top US court ruled in April that the procedure, the most commonly used to end the life of death row inmates, was constitutional, allowing the death penalty to resume.
Georgia was the first state to execute a prisoner following the ruling.

Chamberlain became the 406th inmate to be executed in Texas, which is by far the state that has conducted the most executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976.

In August 1991, Chamberlain entered his neighbor Felicia Prechtl's apartment and forced her into a bedroom, where he taped the 29-year-old woman's hands and feet before raping her.

He then took her into the bathroom and shot her in the head with a .30 caliber rifle.
While he was questioned by police on the night of the murder, he was only arrested in July 1996. Chamberlain gave investigators a written confession and provided DNA samples that matched samples from the victim's body.

He was sentenced to death for the rape and murder in 1997. (

Source : Afp, 11/06/2008

IRAN HANGS EIGHT CONVICTS

June 11, 2008: Iran hanged eight men for murder or rape, the Fars news agency reported.

The five murderers and three rapists were hanged in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
Three other men who were scheduled to be executed -- Mohammad Fadaie, Behnoud Shojaie and Davoud Mahdour -- won a one-month reprieve to reach an agreement with the victims' families, it said.

Fadaie and Shojaie were due to go on the gallows for crimes committed before they reached the age of 18 but Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi ordered a one-month stay of execution for the two.

The hanged men were only identified by their first names:
Kiarash, 32, who was sentenced to death for stabbing to death another man, Nader, in a fight in 2005; Ali Reza, 28, who had beaten up and strangled a man, Ruhollah, in a burglary in the victim's house; Abdolhamid, 34, who had raped a young girl; Ali Akbar was hanged after serving a few years of jail term for the beating to death of a young man in 2005; Mohammad, 27, stabbed to death the 21-year-old Mohammad Hossein in a fight in 2001; The sixth and seven executions were of two cousins both identified as Ali, who together kidnapped and raped a young girl in 2005; Farhad, 31, killed a man in a group fight.

Source : AFP, 11/06/2008

IRAN. MAN HANGED FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING

June 9, 2008: Iran hanged a man convicted of drug trafficking in the northeastern province of North Khorasan, the Jomhouri Eslami newspaper reported. The unidentified man was executed in the prison of Bojnourd city for buying and trafficking four kgs of crystal methamphetamine.

Source : Agence France Presse, 09/06/2008

Virginia: Death Sentence Commuted

The life of a man who killed three people in November 1996 was spared by Gov. Tim Kaine, a day before the scheduled execution, on grounds that the inmate was mentally incompetent to understand his situation. In commuting the death sentence of Percy L. Walton, Governor Kaine said a new sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole “is now the only constitutionally appropriate court of action” in view of Mr. Walton’s continuing mental defectiveness. The defendant had just turned 18 when he shot three of his neighbors to death in Danville.

Source: The New York Times

SAUDI ARABIA BEHEADS MAN CONVICTED OF MURDER

June 8, 2008: Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry said it beheaded a man convicted of murdering a fellow citizen after a dispute. A ministry statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency says Khalid Assouni was executed in Jiddah for stabbing Abdou al-Duweiri to death. The statement did not explain the nature of the dispute.

Sources: International Herald Tribune, 08/06/2008

CHINA. CHILD-TRAFFICKING GANG LEADER EXECUTED

June 5, 2008: The leader of a 10-member gang who abducted and trafficked in 38 children was executed in south China's Guangdong Province.
According to the investigation by the Dongguan City Intermediate People's Court, Liu Jianqiu, 44, abducted 38 children, all boys, from March 2001 to May 2004, together with nine others.
The gang members usually coaxed the children playing outside with snacks and then abducted them. They then sold the boys, ranging in ages from four to seven years, for 13,000 yuan (1,857 U.S. dollars) each.
The court said 12 of the 38 abducted boys had not been found.
Liu's personal property was also confiscated.
The other nine gang members were given jail terms ranging from six years to suspended death sentences.

Sources: Xinhua, 06/06/2008

BAHRAIN. BANGLADESHI EXECUTED FOR MURDER

June 4, 2008: a Bangladeshi murderer was executed by firing squad in Bahrain early in the morning, the Public Prosecution announced in a statement. Mizan Noor Al Rahman Ayoub Mia was convicted of the brutal slaying of Bahraini fashion designer Sana Al Jalahma in August 2006. He was shot at 5am in the presence of the judge who sentenced him to death, Chief Public Prosecutor Ahmed Bucheeri and a prison doctor in the Safra area.

Source: Gulf Daily News, 05/06/2008

South Carolina: Mark David Hill executed

June 6, 2008 11:09 PM

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Twelve years finally came to a head Friday for David Mark Hill, as he was the 269th South Carolinian executed.

It all happened on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1996 at a Department of Social Services office in North Augusta. That was the day three department workers were gunned down by Hill.

His victims were 30-year-old Michael Gregory, 33-year-old Josie Curry and 52-year-old Jimmy Riddle.

Hill was angry that DSS took away custody of his quadriplegic daughter and twin sons.

In his 1999 trial, Hill's defense team tried to point out his depressed mental state, saying Hill wasn't on his medication the day of the shootings. Witness testimony would ultimately sway the jury to hand down a death sentence.

Hill's mental state was under question. During the tragic afternoon, Hill turned the gun on himself. His wound damaged part of his brain's frontal lobe.

Hill could not make any facial expressions, but he was able to read a statement of apology during his trial.

Ultimately, he dropped all of his appeals and told the Supreme Court he deserved to die.

Source: WIS News 10

Georgia executes Curtis Osborne

Georgia executed a convicted murderer by lethal injection, despite an appeal by former US President Jimmy Carter that authorities commute the sentence.

Curtis Osborne was sentenced to death for the murder of a couple in Spalding County, central Georgia, in 1991, and died at 9:05 pm (0105 GMT) at a state prison in Jackson, said prisons spokeswoman Mallie McCord.

His death was due to have taken place at 7 pm (1100 GMT) but was delayed because of a final, unsuccessful appeal to the US Supreme Court.

The execution was the second in the state since the high court ended an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty in April and it followed executions in Virginia and Mississippi.

That moratorium had been in effect since last September when the court agreed to decide an appeal from two Kentucky death row inmates who argued the commonly used lethal injection method inflicted unnecessary pain and suffering.

After the Supreme Court's April ruling rejecting a challenge to the lethal three-drug cocktail, Georgia became the first to execute an inmate on May 6, followed by Mississippi on May 21.

The Death Penalty Information Center had argued that Osborne's defense lawyer at trial failed to conduct a basic investigation that could have spared Osborne's life by exposing a family history of mental illness.

"The attorney (now dead) repeatedly referred to Osborne with a racial epithet, saying, 'That little ... (epithet) deserves the chair,'" the centre said on its website. It said Carter, the former president who lives in Georgia, had argued in a public statement for the commutation of Osborne's sentence.

"Law enforcement officials and religious leaders who have come to know Curtis Osborne have noted his complete remorse for the crime and the dramatic changes in his life while on death row," it said.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, which can grant clemency, heard arguments last week about the behaviour of Osborne's original lawyer and rejected them, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Georgia has executed 42 men since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, and Osborne, born in 1970, was the 19th to die by lethal injection. He declined a last meal.


Source: Reuters

IRAN. QUR'AN CRITIC TO BE EXECUTED WITHIN DAYS

May 31, 2008: the Mullahs' regime in Iran is set to execute scholar on the history of Iran and Islam, Dr Foroud Fouladvand.

A confirmed report sent to the office of Dr Fouladvand in London from inside Iran suggests that Dr Fouladvand and two of his compatriots are going to be executed [soon]. The two other men men are Nazem Schm[dtt, an Iranian/American citizen, aka Simorgh, and AlexanderValizadeh, an Iranian/ German citizen, aka Koroush Lor.
Dr Fouladvand, a British citizen, was known throughout the Iranian community for his open criticism of Islam and the Mullah's tyranny.
Dr. Fouladvand, an expert on Islam, openly challenged the Qur'an in his daily television broadcasts for listeners both inside and outside Iran. Dr Fouladvand was convinced by an Iranian agent to return to Iran to meet with supporters. In January 2007, the agents of the Mullahs' secret police arrested the men near the Iraqi border and smuggled men into Iran, where they were imprisoned and subjected to torture.

Source: Canada Free Press, 31/05/2008

Derrick Sonnier: Execution is put on hold

HUNTSVILLE -- A Texas Death Row inmate received a stay of execution Tuesday afternoon after his lawyers questioned whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has resolved whether the state's lethal-injection procedures are constitutional.

Derrick Sonnier, convicted of killing a suburban Houston woman and her 2-year-old son in 1991, would have been the first Texas inmate put to death in nearly nine months.

Executions had been on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considered a challenge to injection procedures in a Kentucky case.

In October, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution of Arlington killer Heliberto Chi on the same issues -- that lethal injection procedures were unconstitutionally cruel. Although the Supreme Court ruled six weeks ago that the Kentucky injection method was constitutional and cleared the way for executions to resume nationally, Texas' highest criminal court hasn't ruled in the Chi case, one of two Texas capital cases case with similar claims.

"If they've got these cases up there, it really just kind of violates basic legal principles" to hold executions, said David Dow, one of the attorneys who filed the late appeal in Sonnier's case. "My hat's off to the [appeals court]," Dow said of the stay. "I didn't think they would" grant the stay.

Sonnier, 40, declined to comment from a small holding cell just a few feet from the death chamber. He was told of the stay by a senior warden and was allowed to call family and friends to let them know before he was returned to Death Row, about 45 miles to the east at a prison near Livingston.

"I respect the court's decision," said Roe Wilson, a Harris County assistant district attorney who was handling Sonnier's case and sought the execution. "This is a terrible offense. I feel for the victims' relatives, and I hope this is an issue that is resolved soon."

It is not clear how Tuesday's outcome will affect 13 executions scheduled in Texas in coming months, including two more in the next two weeks. Three condemned prisoners in other states have been put to death since the Supreme Court ruled on the Kentucky case.

Source: star-telegram.com

China lists Olympic rules for foreigners

Foreigners Warning

BEIJING, China (AP) -- Foreigners attending the Beijing Olympics better behave -- or else.

The Beijing Olympic organizing committee issued a stern, nine-page document Monday that covers 57 topics. Written in Chinese only and posted on the official Web site, the guide covers everything from a ban on sleeping outdoors to the need for government permission to stage a protest.

Visitors also should know this:

- Those with "mental diseases" or contagious conditions will be barred.
- Some parts of the country are closed to visitors -- one of them Tibet.
- Olympic tickets are no guarantee of a visa to enter China.

Fearing protests during the August 8-24 Olympics, China's government has tightened controls on visas and residence permits for foreigners. It has also promised a massive security presence at the games, which may include undercover agents dressed as volunteers.

The guide said Olympic ticket holders "still need to visit China embassies and consulates and apply for visas according to the related rules."

The government hopes to keep out activists and students who might stage pro-Tibet rallies that would be broadcast around the world. It also fears protests over China's oil and arms trade with Sudan, and any disquiet from predominantly Muslim regions in western China.

In order to hold any public gathering, parade or protest the organizer must apply with the local police authorities. No such activity can be held unless a permit is given. ... Any illegal gatherings, parades and protests and refusal to comply are subject to administrative punishments or criminal prosecution."

The document also warns against the display of insulting slogans or banners at any sports venue. It also forbids any religious or political banner at an Olympic venue that "disturbs the public order."

The guidelines seem to clash with a pledge made two month ago by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, who said athletes could exercise freedom of speech in China. He asked only that athletes refrain from making political statements at certain official Olympics venues.

"Freedom of expression is something that is absolute," Rogge said in Beijing in April. "It's a human right. Athletes have it."

The detailed document is titled: "A guide to Chinese law for Foreigners coming to, leaving or staying in China during the Olympics." This appears under the slogan of the Beijing Olympics: "One World, One Dream."

For months Chinese authorities denied there had been any change to visa regulations, but recently acknowledged that rules had been amended. The changes may have little affect on some of the 500,000 foreigners expected to visit for the Olympics, many of whom will come on package tours with visas already arranged.

The rules published Monday say entry will be denied to those "who might conduct acts of terrorism, violence and government subversion ... and those who might engage in activities endangering China's national security and national interest."

The rules also bar entry to smugglers, drug traffickers, prostitutes and those with "mental diseases" or contagious conditions.

The document also warns foreigners that not all areas of the country are open to visitors. One such area is Tibet, which is also off limits to journalists.

"Not all of China is open to foreigners, and they shall not go to any venue not open to them," the statement said.

The guide also spells out a long list of items that cannot be brought into the country, including weapons, imitation weapons, ammunition, explosives, counterfeit currency, drugs and poisons. It also prohibits the entry of materials "that are harmful to China's politics, economics, culture and morals".

Foreigners staying with Chinese residents in urban areas must register at a local police station within 24 hours of arriving. The limit in rural areas is 72 hours.

The guide also threatens criminal prosecution against anyone "who burns, defaces ... insults or tramps on the national flag or insignia."

For those planning on sleeping outdoors to save a little money -- forget it. This is banned to "maintain public hygiene and the cultured image of the cities."

Source: CNN.com

Texas to resume executions

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - The nation's busiest death chamber reopens this week after a nearly 9-month hiatus with the scheduled lethal injection of a former part-time car-wash worker for killing a suburban Houston woman and her young son 17 years ago.

The execution Tuesday of Derrick Sonnier, 40, would make him the fourth prisoner put to death in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court in April upheld lethal injection as a proper method of capital punishment but the first in Texas since last Sept. 25. That's when convicted killer Michael Richard was executed in Huntsville the same day the high court decided to consider a challenge from two condemned inmates in Kentucky who contended lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel.

The Kentucky case effectively stalled all executions around the nation. For Texas, where 405 convicted killers have received lethal injection since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982, the execution lull has been the lengthiest in two decades.

``I pretty much figured ... it was just a delay,'' said convicted murderer Karl Chamberlain, set to die a week after Sonnier for a slaying in Dallas County. ``So after they (the Supreme Court) made that ruling, I was expecting a date any time.''

``It's going to be a bloodbath with the state of Texas, like old day lynchings,'' said Kevin Watts, who has an execution date of Oct. 16 for a triple killing in San Antonio.

He and Sonnier are among at least 14 Texas inmates with execution dates as Texas is poised to quickly reassume its notoriety as the country's most active state in carrying out the death penalty. Of the 42 executions in the United States last year, 26 were in Texas. The next busiest states were Alabama and Oklahoma, each with three.

Statistics kept by the Death Penalty Information Center list only nine other inmates from elsewhere in the nation with active execution dates. Sonnier is the first of three Texas prisoners scheduled to be taken to the death chamber over 14 days in June.

Sonnier, taken to court in Houston to hear a state district judge deliver the news, declined to speak with reporters in the weeks preceding his death date.

The U.S. Supreme Court last October refused to review Sonnier's case and his attorney had no plans to raise additional appeals.

``There's just not a lot to work with,'' lawyer Jani Maselli said. ``It's horribly frustrating.''

Sonnier, born in Sulphur, La., and raised in Houston, was condemned for the slayings of a neighbor, Melody Flowers, 27, and her 2-year-old son, Patrick, at their apartment in Humble, a northeast Houston suburb. Flowers had been stabbed, beaten with a hammer until the tool's handle broke, and strangled. Her child was stabbed eight times. Both victims were found floating in a bathtub.

Evidence showed he had been obsessed with the woman and had stalked her. Witnesses testified how they repeatedly chased him away from her place where he peered through her windows and even hid in her apartment.

Sonnier's defense was that someone else was responsible for the murders. Neighbors pointed him out to police shortly after the bodies were discovered. Flowers' blouse and a towel belonging to her were found in a trash can in Sonnier's apartment and his DNA was identified on hair and blood found in her apartment.

``To this day, it still hurts,'' Sebrina Flowers, 23, who was 7 when her mother was killed, told the Houston Chronicle. She and an older sister and younger brother returned from school to find their home a crime scene.

Sonnier initially was scheduled to die in February. His execution date, however, was withdrawn by Harris County prosecutors because of the Supreme Court's pending review of lethal injection procedures, subsequently upheld by the justices in a 7-2 vote.

Chamberlain is set to die on June 11 for the rape-slaying of a Dallas woman, Felicia Prechtl, at the apartment complex where they both lived. Her death occurred in August 1991, one month before Sonnier's crime. Chamberlain acknowledges the killing, blaming drugs and alcohol for his violence.

Then the following week, Charles Hood is to die June 17 for a double slaying in the Dallas suburb of Plano in 1989. He insists he is innocent of the deaths of Ronald Williamson and Traci Lynn Wallace.

At least three executions already are on the Texas schedule for July, four more for August, three for September and Watts in October.

Among the inmates with dates is Michael Rodriguez, who has ordered his appeals dropped and is volunteering to die for his role in the murder of a suburban Dallas police officer on Christmas Eve 2000. Rodriguez was one of the infamous ``Texas 7'' convicts who escaped from a prison south of San Antonio and were caught five weeks later in Colorado, but not before fatally shooting Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins during the robbery of a sporting goods store. His date is Aug. 14.

Source: The Monitor

ARAB LEGISLATIONS GO FAR BEYOND ISLAMIC LAW

May 29, 2008: Tahar Boumedra, the Penal Reform International (PRI) Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, explained that Sharia'a law isn't the only legal instrument regulating the death penalty in Arab and Muslim countries.
He participated in a three day regional conference on the death penalty, which ended in Alexandria on May 14. "Some delegates, they came from nine Arab countries, tried to use Islamic law to argue against the abolition of the death penalty," says Boumedra. "But actually death penalty laws go far beyond anything Sharia'a law ever sought to impose."
The conference, co-organised by PRI and the Swedish Institute in Alexandria, issued the "Alexandria Declaration" calling for a moratorium on executions as a step towards abolishing the death penalty in the Arab region to comply with the UN General Assembly's resolution on the death penalty.
"At the end of our discussions we agreed to state in the Declaration that the death penalty was a "violation of the most fundamental human right, the right to life". We also agreed that this sanction had not succeeded anywhere in deterring criminality or preventing it."

Source: IPS, 29/05/2008

Inmate off death row thanks to 1940 ruling

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (AP) -- Arkansas' highest court ordered an inmate off of death row on Thursday, citing a 1940 court decision that gave an escape clause from an aggravated-robbery conviction to people trying to recover gambling losses.

Justices ordered a new sentencing hearing for Michael B. Daniels, who said he was attempting to recover $20 he lost in a game of three-card monte when he stabbed and killed James Williams, 52, on January 8, 2006. Daniels claimed during the trial that Williams had cheated in the game.

Justices cited a 68-year-old ruling that said someone couldn't be convicted of aggravated robbery while trying to recover gambling losses. Aggravated robbery was the underlying circumstance when a jury ordered Daniels to die for Williams' death.

The split court reversed Daniels' aggravated robbery conviction and the capital murder charge linked to it, but upheld his conviction for premeditated and deliberate capital murder.

In the majority opinion, Associate Justice Robert L. Brown acknowledged that some could argue the 1940 case was not in the public's interest, but said, "it is nonetheless still good law in Arkansas."

Daniels' attorney, Teri Chambers, said Thursday's ruling "makes sense because you have to be able to commit a theft in order to commit a robbery. You have to be taking someone else's property to commit a theft."

It was unclear whether the ruling had been used to get anyone else off of Arkansas death row.

During the trial, Daniels' attorney admitted that his client stabbed Williams in the head, chest and stomach with a Bowie knife. The attack was recorded on surveillance video.

Prosecutors said there was no evidence that Williams cheated during the card game.

Source: CNN.com