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Federal Death Penalty Trial in San Francisco

By Jeralyn

There are 680 California inmates on death row, but since 1991, only one has been from San Francisco. The last two district attorneys, Kamala Harris and Terrence Hallinan, did not seek the death penalty for any defendants.

Federally, there are two death penalty prosecutions underway in San Francisco. In one case, the U.S. Attorney had agreed to a 40 year plea deal, but the Bush Justice Department, under Michael Mukasey, overruled the prosecutor. Trial began last week.

The capital trial of the other defendant, Dennis Cyrus, age 24, for gang-related murders, also began Wednesday, before a different jury. On Friday, the judge in Cyrus' case canceled court. [More...]

Is the Obama Justice Department having second thoughts about Ashcroft, Gonzales and Mukasey's policies of overruling local U.S. Attorneys' decisions not to seek death?

It's a possibility. The Judge said only that "a legal issue" had arisen. Attorney General Holder may be reviewing the case.

Holder said in 2000 that he was "personally and professionally disturbed" by a Justice Department report showing that racial minorities were defendants in 80 percent of the death penalty prosecutions sought by local U.S. attorneys.

As to the other defendant,

Emile Fort, 27, is accused of taking part in three murders in 2004 as a leader of a Visitacion Valley gang. Then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey approved a 40-year sentence in November for another Visitacion Valley gang member who could have faced capital charges. But Mukasey rejected a similar plea agreement that federal prosecutors in San Francisco had accepted for Fort.

Fort's case has previously been appealed to the Supreme Court. The prosecutors refused to release the names of its witnesses to the defense until the witness testified at trial.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the prosecution to disclose the names before trial, saying the witnesses would be protected by orders prohibiting defense lawyers from sharing the names with their clients or outsiders. But Alsup was overruled in January in a 2-1 decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The Supreme Court let that decision stand.

After that, Mukasey agreed to sign off on the plea deal for Fort's codefendant, Edgar Diaz, but not for Fort.

Fort's attorneys are attempting to use a PTSD defense for him:

Using the testimony of psychiatric and gang experts, attorneys Michael Satris and Michael Thorman will argue that a violent upbringing in Bayview–Hunters Point left Fort with cognitive defects and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which positioned him to commit and attempt murder in self-defense. (The PTSD defense will not be used for the count involving the baby, who was killed by a bullet apparently intended for a parent.)

Satris and Thorman will attempt to convince the jury that when Fort fired fatal shots at 19-year-old Jovani Banks and 18-year-old Michael Hill and injured another man, he believed — based on unwritten laws of the projects — that he was defending his own life.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 01, 2009 (boomark / email).