Oregon
Murder sentence tossed over judge’s sentencing ‘conundrum’
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The Maine supreme court overturned a murder sentence because a judge spoke about whether the defendant’s decision to go to trial reflected on whether he held remorse.
Superior Court Justice William Anderson’s comments about his sentencing “conundrum” represented a snag because defendants are not supposed to be punished for exercising their constitutional right to a trial, the supreme court said.
The judge imposed a sentence of 32 years — beyond the basic sentence of 25 years — based on aggravating factors, including lack of remorse.
The defendant in the case, Rayshaun Moore, was convicted of fatally stabbing a man outside a nightclub in Bangor in 2020.
Anderson said he intended to be conservative about using remorse as a factor, but “this is of no import because any increase in Moore’s sentence for that reason is improper,” Justice Catherine Connors wrote in the unanimous decision released last week.
“A fair reading of these remarks suggests that the sentencing court was — or might have been — influenced by Moore’s decision to stand trial,” she wrote.
In legal circles, the scenario of a judge punishing a defendant for failure to express remorse or accept responsibility by opting for a trial instead of pleading guilty is known as the “trial penalty.”
But judges rarely speak openly about it the way this judge did, said attorney Rory McNamara, who brought the appeal.
“I think it’s a common practice. The problem is it’s very easy for a judge to hide the fact that they’re penalizing a defendant for a trial,” he said.
McNamara said it’s easy to envision that the trial penalty might be even greater for current defendants because judges are dealing with extensive backlogs because of the pandemic.
Moore’s conviction remains in place, and he will remain in prison while awaiting a new sentence hearing.
New York
Jury mulls death penalty or life for man in bike path attack
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York jury began deliberating Wednesday whether to impose the death penalty or grant life in prison to a man convicted of killing eight individuals on a Manhattan bike path five years ago in a terrorist attack.
The same jury of 12 that convicted Sayfullo Saipov in late January in the Halloween 2017 rampage began considering his fate after U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick read them the legal rules they must follow to reach a decision. After about 2 1/2 hours of deliberations, jurors were sent home and told to return Thursday.
They had deliberated only 10 minutes Wednesday when the jury foreperson sent a note to the judge asking whether the panel can discuss that lethal injection is the current U.S. death penalty method and that there’s currently a moratorium on federal executions.
Broderick told jurors that neither subject was proper for discussion during deliberations and told them not to consider either issue.
Jurors will have to agree unanimously that Saipov should be put to death or the 35-year-old former Paterson, New Jersey, resident will spend the rest of his life in a high-security prison.
Lawyers for Saipov, a Uzbekistan citizen, never contested that he killed eight people by speeding a rented truck across a bike path in lower Manhattan that is popular with tourists. Killed were a woman visiting from Belgium with her family, five friends from Argentina and two Americans. Eighteen others were seriously injured.
Saipov’s attorneys asked jurors to spare him the death penalty, noting how several members of his family including his father and sisters expressed hope that someday he would realize how wrong he was to carry out a terrorist attack hoping to win favor with the Islamic State group.
And they emphasized that he would spend the rest of his life in seclusion, likely confined to a small cell for at least 22 hours a day with two 15-minute phone calls allowed each month to his family and a few showers permitted each week.
Prosecutors urged death, saying Saipov never showed compassion for any of his victims as he sought to kill as many people as he could, even confessing that he had hoped to go to the Brooklyn Bridge after the bike path assault so he could kill more people there.
Afterward, they said, he smiled proudly as he told FBI agents about his attack, even requesting that they hang the flag of the Islamic State organization in his hospital room, where he was recovering from a gunshot wound after a police officer ended his attack.
A day after the attack, then-President Donald Trump tweeted that Saipov “SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!”
President Joe Biden subsequently imposed a moratorium on executions for federal crimes, but his attorney general, Merrick Garland, has allowed U.S. prosecutors to continue advocating for capital punishment in cases inherited from previous administrations.
A federal jury in New York has not rendered a death sentence that has withstood legal appeals in decades, with the last execution in 1954. New York state, which no longer has the death penalty, has not executed anyone since 1963.
New York
Man convicted for killing NYC emergency medical technician
NEW YORK (AP) — A man has been convicted of killing a New York City emergency medical technician when he ran over her with her own ambulance in 2017.
The Bronx jury on Wednesday convicted Jose Gonzalez of murder in the death of Yadira Arroyo, a 14-year veteran of the Fire Department of New York and mother of five.
Authorities said Gonzalez, now 31, jumped into the driver’s seat of the ambulance on the evening of March 16, 2017, when Arroyo got out of the vehicle after being flagged down by a pedestrian on a Bronx street. She and her partner had been on their way to respond to a distress call about a pregnant woman.
Prosecutors said Gonzalez ran over Arroyo before crashing into cars.
At a news conference after the conviction, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said, “We finally, finally get justice for her,” The New York Times reported.
At the time, police said Gonzalez, who has a history of arrests and violence, was high on drugs. His legal representation said he was mentally ill.
His trial — delayed for several years as he underwent psychiatric evaluations to determine his mental fitness — started last month.
Attorney Richard Barton told The Associated Press he didn’t understand how the jury decided to convict his client and that he plans to appeal. He said jurors disregarded the results of drug tests and the “delusional state of mind” Gonzalez was in at the time.
