Jodi Arias met Travis Alexander in 2006 in Las Vegas. They started a romantic relationship that lasted one year. They continued to have some sort of sexual relationship after their 2007 break up. In 2008, Arias brutally killed Alexander in his Mesa, Arizona residence. She claimed she did so in self-defense. That was a hard sell since Alexander had been shot in the face, stabbed at least 20 or more times, and had his throat slit. Arias was indicted for first degree murder. In one of those “trial of the century” deals, Arias’ trial began on January 2, 2013 and garnered the same kind of perverse media coverage and fanatical public interest as the O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony “trials of the century” in California and Florida. She was found guilty as charged on May 8th. The jury is still deliberating about whether she should be sentenced to life in prison or given the death penalty. It is a process of futility. Arias will die in prison, either in Arizona’s death chamber or in general population in one of the state’s female penal facilities—unless some future court decides she should be released or retried for some constitutional violation. Both unlikely. It would be difficult ...

Last week the State of Texas executed Richard Cobb. Nothing really unusual about that. Executions have actually become rather bland in the Texas death house. But Cobb’s execution did provide the nation’s media with a few moments of levity. Media reports said that after the condemned inmate expressed his final statement and just as the lethal cocktail took effect, he turned his head toward the warden and exclaimed: “Wow! This great. That is awesome! Thank you, warden! Thank you (expletive) warden!” This was generally interpreted by the media as Cobb getting some kind of “thrill” out either the drugs or impending death. It could have been either – Cobb’s final statement was clear evidence that he did not have a full deck. A collateral note of interest was the victims’ reaction to the execution. One of Cobb’s victims, Nikki Daniels, who was raped and shot by Cobbs during a violent 2002 abduction near Dallas, was upset that Cobb went into “wow” heaven without expressing any remorse or apology for his horrible crime, or worst yet, not personally addressing her. She commented to the media afterwards: “I saw the same evil person I saw 11 years ago … He definitely showed his ...

Dark shades notwithstanding, Damien Echols is one narcissistic, self-indulgent sonuvabitch! A startup business conference called Elsewhereelse.co: The Startup Conference secured FedEx as a sponsor for its three-day shindig for entrepreneurs held at the Memphis Cook Convention Center this past February. Forbes Magazine called it a “must attend” event, according to The Commercial Appeal. It started out as a great idea offering opportunities for entrepreneurs to network, shop their small business models, and engage in panel discussions with some of the nation’s most prominent and successful entrepreneurs like AOL co-founder Steve Case and representatives of FedEx. Then some dingbat associated with the conference decided to invite the child-killer Damien Echols of West Memphis Three fame to participate in a “fireside chat” about how technology changed the world during his 18-year imprisonment in Arkansas jails and the state’s death row. Who in this world, which admittedly has its fair share of insanity, could possibly give a fuck about Damien Echols’s views on any kind of technology, much less the technologies that “changed the world” while he was on death row for the torture/murder of three innocent 8-year-old Cub Scouts in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. Thankfully, and fortunately, FedEx did not. The shipping giant informed ...

Individuals convicted of brutal crimes despite protestations of innocence have a difficult row to hoe. The State will rarely admit that it made a mistake; that the wrong person was convicted of a terrible crime. The case of Timothy Baldwin is a prime example. Baldwin was put to death in Louisiana’s electric chair on September 10, 1984. He was convicted of the brutal 1978 murder of a former neighbor: an 85-year-old blind woman named Mary Jane Peters. The victim was bludgeoned to death in her home in West Monroe, Louisiana. The killer used an iron skillet, a telephone, a stool, and a television set in the fatal assault. The primary witness against Baldwin was a girlfriend named Marilyn Hampton who received a life sentence for her role in the Peters murder. Following his conviction, attorneys and investigators discovered a motel receipt that placed Baldwin several hundred miles away at the time of the murder. These supporters claimed the receipt proved Baldwin’s claim of innocence. Prosecutors responded that Baldwin drove to the motel to establish an alibi. Still, the claim of innocence was troubling, even to former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards because people close to the governor advocated Baldwin’s innocence. Edwards resolved his personal ...

According to CBS News, that’s what Carl Henry Blue said before the 48-year-old killer was put to death last night in the Texas death chamber. Blue was convicted for the 1994 murder of an estranged girlfriend. He killed her, and seriously injured her male companion, by pouring gasoline on them and setting it ablaze. He claimed from the outset, and up until the final moments of his life, that the gasoline pouring was a prank; that he never intended to hurt anyone. That Texas executed Blue is not surprising. The death penalty has become another lucrative industry for the state, reaping it millions of dollars of free publicity to law-and-order conservatives across the country—the people who come to Texas in their SUVs and RVs to “cowboy up.” Texans love that term “cowboy up,” and it wouldn’t surprise me if someone, or even the state itself, has not put a trademark on it. So it wasn’t surprising that hundreds of Texans in “comments” to news media outlets and websites posted some really derogatory remarks about Blue invoking the term in his “last words.” One individual lamented the fact that condemned inmates are even offered the opportunity to express their “last words” for public ...

This past Saturday night my wife and I watched a 48 Hours Mystery broadcast about the bizarre case of Ryan Ferguson who is serving a 40-year sentence in a Missouri prison. There are a number of indisputable facts about the case. Kent Heitholt was murdered in the parking lot of the Columbia Daily News where he worked as the paper’s sports editor. The murder occurred on Halloween night in 2001. The victim had been horribly beaten to death. More than one killer participated in the crime. They left behind hair, fingerprints, and bloody shoeprints. Jeff Trump, a janitor in the building and who was on parole for molesting a teenager at the time, told the police the day after the murder he saw two men in the parking lot but could not identify them. The murder remained unsolved for two years. In 2003, Charles Erickson began telling friends that he believed he and Ferguson killed Heitholt. This belief was based on a dream he had. The police received a tip about Erickson’s admissions. They took him into custody for questioning. A recording of the interrogation reveals the police used coercive tactics to secure convoluted admissions of guilt from Erickson who also implicated ...

Over the past several months weeks individuals submitting comments to this site have referenced the “three witnesses” who placed the West Memphis Three victims with Terry Hobbs in the early evening hours of May 5, 1993—the day the three 8-yerar-old Cub Scouts went missing. WM3 supporters have used these three “witnesses” as evidence that Hobbs killed his stepson, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers while in a rage about Stevie’s “misbehavior.” This bizarre, unbelievable theory says Hobbs accidently killed Stevie and was forced to kill Michael and Christopher to silence them. This theory originates from the fact that a single hair was found in the evidence file in 2007 which belongs to a population group of which there is a 97% chance that Hobbs is in that group. WM3 supporters have recklessly used the inconclusive evidence as the basis for pointing an accusatory finger at Hobbs as the killer of the three boys. Hobbs has always been, and will forever remain, among WM3 supporters as the elusive killer in this case—a tactic designed to deflect guilt from the WM3. In 2009 three female family members stepped forward and provided the WM 3 defense team with affidavits that they saw Hobbs ...

Over the past several months this site has received a number of “comments” critical of my conclusion that the West Memphis Three—Echols, Baldwin and Misskelly—are guilty of killing three eight-year-old Cub Scouts in West Memphis, Arkansas in May 1993. A general theme emerged from these comments; namely, that three “dumbass teenagers” could not have committed such a heinous crime without leaving some evidence of involvement. These WM3 apologists proceed on the erroneous presumption that the State of Arkansas prosecuted, and convicted, the three teenagers without any evidence of guilt. Police investigators gathered substantial evidence in the case. Some of it was direct evidence based on witness accounts while most of it was circumstantial from which an inference of guilt could be reasonably drawn. I will list some of this evidence to refute the assertion that there was “no evidence” against the three teenagers. While some of this evidence has been discredited in various ways, much of it remains open for each person’s own determination of its credibility. The evidence is: Misskelly’s confessions. Before the arrest of Echols and Baldwin, Misskelly gave a series of detailed and explicit confessions to the police. Some of the information provided in the confessions has been legitimately ...

(This article, co-authored by attorney John T. Floyd and myself, was originally posted on Mr. Floyd’s website. It is presented here because such incidents of mass murders/shootings always triggers debate about the greater use of the death penalty. Mr. Floyd and I examined this tragic Newtown massacre and offered a solution much more rational than the death penalty. While it is difficult to argue that the death penalty is not a rational response to the William Petit family murders that occurred in Cheshire, Connecticut in 2007, the national debate about the death penalty should not be driven by the emotions of the moment but whether the penalty serves legitimate penological objectives. Mr. Floyd and I do not think it does, and the information presented in this article explains why.) In the wake of the December 14, 2012 shooting massacre in Newtown, the national news media has presented Connecticut as an idyllic place to live with a minimum crime rate. Newtown itself was called one of the safest places in America to live. There is some merit in this reporting. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2006 Connecticut ranked 37th in violent crimes in America. Compared to Southern states, where ...

The State of Ohio finds itself locked in a horrible human drama: whether to, and how to, execute 450 lb. Ronald Post next month. States in the 1890s, including Ohio, moved away from hanging to the electric chair as the preferred method of execution because hangings frequently resulted in tortuous strangulation or ugly decapitation of condemned persons. But the first electrocution death in the electric chair in New York’s Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890 was horribly botched as well, resulting in the agonizing death of convicted murderer named William Kemmler. The electric chair would continue over the next one hundred years to develop an ugly history of botched executions before "lethal injection" was introduced as a "humane alternative." But if the State of Ohio persists in its determination to put Ronald Post to death by lethal injection through any other means than intravenous injection, the “lethal injection” method of execution will ultimately experience the same fate as hanging, electric chair, and gas chamber. That’s because Ohio prison officials are considering a “backup” method of injecting the lethal dose of barbiturate pentobarbital directly into Post’s muscles. Lawyers for Post, and lethal injection experts, say this method could take up to sixteen ...