Death Row Inmate

After a week of searching through swampy, bug-swarming river bottoms, law officers hunting death row inmate Martin E. Gurule finally found their man Thursday--dead, beneath a bridge over the Trinity River near Huntsville, with tantalizing hints about how he'd made his way over the prison's two razor-wired security fences. The body of Gurule, 29, was swathed in cardboard and two sets of heavy underwear, according to officials.

Police and death row inmates agree on one thing, a law enforcement group told its members: They both oppose next week's ballot measure to replace the death penalty with life without parole. That statement, in a newsletter from the Los Angeles Police Protective League opposing Proposition 34, highlighted what some California criminal defense lawyers have been saying for months. Many death row inmates who are years away from execution would rather gamble on being executed than lose their state-paid lawyers, a preference that seems to be confirmed by a limited, informal survey of some on California's death row. VOTER GUIDE: 2012 California Propositions "That is a significant sentiment, since the death penalty in California is mostly life without parole anyway," said Don Specter, director of California's Prison Law Office, who personally supports the initiative.

A Texas death row inmate convicted of murdering his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her 7-year-old son in 2005 is seeking a new trial, alleging that his attorney had a "secret deal" with the judge to quickly dispose of his case. Attorneys for Stephen Barbee, 44, plan to argue in a Fort Worth state court this week that his defense in the double murder case was tainted. The proceeding, scheduled to begin Wednesday, was ordered by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after a 2010 Associated Press story showed that presiding Judge Robert Gill had negotiated plea deals in certain cases, many of which were handled by Barbee's court-appointed attorney, William H. "Bill" Ray. Ray gave details about the plea deals, which expedited Gill's docket, during testimony in a 2009 federal court case that a judge subsequently sealed.

A federal appeals court Monday overturned the death sentence of California's longest-serving death row inmate on the grounds that his defense lawyer failed to investigate and present adequate mitigating evidence during the penalty phase of his murder trial. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided 2 to 1 that Douglas R. Stankewitz, convicted of killing Theresa Greybeal in Fresno in 1978, should be re-sentenced to life without possibility of parole unless prosecutors retry the penalty phase of his murder case.

  The Supreme Court, citing a "perfect storm" of missing lawyers and unopened letters, gave an Alabama death row inmate a new chance to appeal his conviction in a case that sharply split the conservatives on the bench. Corey Maples had been "abandoned" by his two New York lawyers who left their law firm without telling him and missed the deadline for filing his appeal. "In these circumstances, no just system would lay the default at Maples' death-cell door," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for a 7-2 majority.

The Supreme Court appeared unusually sympathetic Tuesday to the plight of an Alabama death row inmate who could be executed because two lawyers handling his appeal had left their law firm without telling him. When a court clerk sent a letter to their prominent New York firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, advising the young lawyers that Cory Maples' initial appeal had been denied, it was returned marked: "Return to sender — left firm. " The 42-day deadline to appeal then expired. At that point, Alabama's state prosecutors and judges took a stiff stand.

The Supreme Court gave a Texas death row inmate who came within an hour of being executed a new right to seek DNA evidence from the crime scene that he says could prove him innocent. The 6-3 decision opens a narrow window for prisoners to sue and obtain DNA evidence that went untested at the time of their trials. The Innocence Project in New York says 266 prisoners have been freed because of DNA evidence since 1989, including 17 inmates on death row. Though all states permit prisoners to obtain new tests of evidence under certain circumstances, prosecutors have often resisted.

Convicted killer Justin Merriman will become the 12th man sent to death row from Ventura County since the death penalty was reinstated in California in 1978. Here is a look at the other men and their crimes: * Kenneth McKinzie was convicted in 1999 for strangling 73-year-old Ruth Avril during a botched robbery at her Oxnard apartment building Dec. 21, 1995.

A death row inmate who represented himself during a 1994 hearing to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial should either be reevaluated or receive a new trial, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday. Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, writing for the court, said state law clearly requires defendants to have legal representation during hearings to determine whether they are sane enough to be tried. Legal representation during competency hearings "is consistent with upholding the dignity and autonomy of the defendant and, more importantly, protects not only the fairness of the proceedings but also the appearance of fairness," Werdegar wrote.

Gov. Ted Strickland granted a death row inmate a four-month reprieve to allow more time for DNA testing in a 1982 slaying. His execution had been set for April 17. John Spirko, 60, was convicted of killing Betty Jane Mottinger of Elgin based on witness statements and his comments to investigators. He has said he is not guilty.

SAN QUENTIN - John C. Abel is the first to admit he's led a crook's life. He robbed banks and convenience stores, grocery marts and check-cashing joints. He terrified people with Uzi-style Mac 11s and .22-caliber handguns, Browning pistols and Dirty Harry-style Magnums. His stickup jag dated to the 1960s and sliced through the country from Massachusetts to California. "Even a couple islands up there by Seattle," he adds, in the genial voice of an old ballplayer reminiscing about a far-traveling career.

A Louisiana man was released from death row on Friday after serving 15 years for a crime that DNA evidence shows he did not commit. Damon Thibodeaux, 38, was the 300 th prisoner nationwide to see his conviction overturned based on DNA evidence, according to lawyers who represented him from the New York-based Innocence Project. He was the 18 th death row prisoner freed based on such evidence. “This journey to freedom was a long time coming,” said one of his attorneys, Caroline Tillman of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, in a statement Friday.

Fans of Michael Clarke Duncan will be able to pay their respects to the late actor Sunday, when a public viewing of his closed casket will be held at a Los Angeles cemetery. The memorial will take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sept. 9 at the Hall of Liberty at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, where stars from Bette Davis to Brittany Murphy are buried. A private invitation-only service will be held for Duncan the following day, according to his publicist Joy Fehily. The actor died at age 54 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. on Monday of natural causes . He had suffered a heart attack in July and never recovered.

Michael Clarke Duncan, the tall and massively built actor with the shaved head and deep voice who received an Academy Award nomination for his moving portrayal of a gentle death row inmate in the 1999 prison drama "The Green Mile," died Monday. He was 54. Duncan died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to a statement from his publicist, Joy Fehily. He had suffered a heart attack in July and did not recover. A former ditch digger for a natural gas company in his native Chicago, Duncan began his Hollywood saga as a celebrity bodyguard in the mid-1990s.

Texas executed a man with an IQ of 61 last week for murdering a 21-year-old police drug informant in 1992. Lawyers for Marvin Wilson, 54, had battled his execution for years, building a mountain of appeals that Texas prosecutors demolished again and again until the executioner finally strapped him down. There, Wilson uttered his last words on Earth: “Y'all do understand that I came here a sinner and leaving a saint,” he said. “Take me home, Jesus, take me home, Lord, take me home, Lord.

HOUSTON -- Texas officials Wednesday were preparing for the state's first single-drug lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court  rejected the appeals of death row inmate Yokamon Hearn. The justices refused Hearn's appeals hours before he was scheduled to be executed for the 1998 murder of Frank Meziere, a stockbroker shot after a carjacking at a Dallas car wash. Hearn's execution, which could start any time after 6 p.m. Central time, will be the sixth in Texas this year -- for a total of  482 since the state began executing inmates by lethal injection in December 1982, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman told the Los Angeles Times.

A California death row inmate convicted of killing a Chino Hills couple and two children 26 years ago lost his last appeal Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case. Lawyers for Kevin Cooper, 52, failed to persuade the high court that doubts remain about whether he was the killer and whether authorities tampered with evidence. Cooper was spared execution in 2004, when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals intervened just hours before the lethal injection was to be administered.

A Death Row inmate facing execution Tuesday has asked that no further appeals be made because he has made peace with himself, his attorney said Friday. Henry Martinez Porter, 43, is to die by injection for the Nov. 29, 1975, shooting death of a Fort Worth police officer, attorney A. Deniz Tor said.

A death row inmate who represented himself during a 1994 hearing to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial should either be reevaluated or receive a new trial, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday. Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, writing for the court, said state law clearly requires defendants to have legal representation during hearings to determine whether they are sane enough to be tried. Legal representation during competency hearings "is consistent with upholding the dignity and autonomy of the defendant and, more importantly, protects not only the fairness of the proceedings but also the appearance of fairness," Werdegar wrote.

Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered prison officials to consider a single-drug method of executing condemned inmates as the state appeals a court order that has blocked California from carrying out the death penalty. Mention of the directive came in a notice of appeal filed Thursday by Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris seeking to counter a February ruling that halted a revised three-drug lethal injection method. The filing came just three days after certification of a November ballot measure that would offer voters the chance to repeal California's death penalty.