Execution warrants may be signed Monday
Orleans judge promises two death warrants on Monday
by Gwen Filosa, The Times-Picayune
Monday June 16, 2008, 3:05 PM
Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Frank Marullo today said he will sign two execution warrants in separate capital cases on Monday, including the convicted accomplice in the 1995 Kim Anh triple murders that left a police officer and two siblings dead.
Marullo, the most senior judge at the Tulane Avenue courthouse, said he didn’t plan on ordering two convicted murderers to die by lethal injection on one day, but scheduling conflicts left him no choice.
The judge announced his plans today at a hearing scheduled for Rogers LaCaze, who remains on death row at the Angola state prison after an Orleans jury condemned him to die for the armed robbery turned triple killing at the eastern New Orleans restaurant. …
LaCaze was convicted, along with former police officer Antoinette Frank, in the gunshot deaths of Officer Ronald Williams,25, and siblings Cuong Vu, 21, and Ha Vu, 17, at the Kim Anh restaurant where all of them, including Frank, had worked. The separate juries heard graphic eyewitness testimony from one of the Vu children who recounted how she hid in a freezer and helplessly watched Frank and LaCaze storm through the family-owned restaurant flashing guns between sounds of gunfire. …
Frank, 37, remains on death row at the women’s prison at St. Gabriel, awaiting the state’s lethal injection needle for the shooting deaths of New Orleans police officer Ronald Williams, 25, and siblings Cuong Vu, 21, and Ha Vu, 17, at the Kim Anh restaurant where all of them, including Frank, had worked.
If Marullo indeed signs a pair of execution warrants Monday - the second is for convicted murderer Juan Smith of New Orleans - it will be the judge’s third death warrant of the year, in a parish that in recent history has been relcutant to condemn convicts to die by lethal injection.
Orleans Parish juries have sent 38 convicts to death row in the past 30 years, the state Supreme Court has said.
Smith, 33, awaits the lethal injeciton needle for a triple murder in eastern New Orleans on Feb. 5, 1995. The Kim Anh murders took place before 2 a.m. on March 4, 1995.
Smith was condemned to die after a trial in 1996 for the nightmare that police found on Morrison Avenue: Andre Smith and Tangie Thompson were found face down in their own blood inside a den of the New Orleans home. Beneath Thompson was her son, Devyn Thompson, 12, also shot to death. Prosecutors called it an attempted robbery turned bloodbath and a jury unanimously agreed that the death penalty was the proper punishment. …
Prosecutors haven’t asked for any death warrants in the Kim Anh case. Instead, Marullo has been acting on his own, coupling requests for post-conviction relief with execution orders. Marullo’s first such death warrant this year, issued for Antoinette Frank, was canceled by the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Marullo signed Frank’s death warrant April 22 as the Williams family watched in court. Marullo said then that the 13-year-old case has been “well-litigated” and that he was following the law, which requires that a capital case be “handled expeditiously.”
The state prison at Angola, where all executions take place, didn’t expect the July 15 date for Frank to hold. Officials there said in April that they haven’t updated the “media witness” list for executions since the last time the prison held a lethal injection six years ago.
Attorney Gary Clements, of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, appealed for more time, arguing the Marullo was ignoring the state law that allows a convicted murderer time to file a post-conviction appeal before receiving an execution date. Instead of a July execution, the state Supreme Court granted Frank an additional 90 days in which to file her appeals.
Clements can only represent Frank in this case, since to represent co-defendants in any criminal case is a classic conflict of interest.
The 90-day clock began on June 10 — the deadline that Marullo in April had given Frank to file her appeal at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, while signing her death warrant at the same time.
Louisiana last executed a convicted killer on May 10, 2002, at Angola. Leslie Dale Martin died by lethal injection for the rape and strangulation of Christina Burgin in Calcasieu Parish.
Louisiana has 85 convicts remain on death row. Frank is one of two women. They are housed at the state’s only women’s prison at St. Gabriel.
Clements has said that Frank is among 66 condemned inmates who have yet to exhaust their state appeals, which take place before a death row inmate may ask the federal system for a review.
An Orleans Parish jury hasn’t sent a convict to death row since 1997, when Phillip Anthony was condemned for the triple killing at the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen in the French Quarter.
On Sept. 12, 1995, the Frank jury unanimously returned a guilty-as-charged verdict on three counts of capital murder and then recommended she be put to death. Marullo formally sentenced her to die Oct. 20, 1995 - seven months after the triple killing at Kim Anh.
The Williams family has been steadfast in advocating for the death penalty for both Frank and LaCaze.
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