Governor Commutes Gaile Owens TN DR to Life

[Kitten Resq]

I'm not surprised about this decision, disappointed but not surprised.

Seems as though every person facing a death sentence has used the argument that they had ineffective counsel.  WFT is up with that?  If all these defense attorneys are so ineffective with EVERY client they have, how in the hell did they ever graduate law school and pass the bar?

I heard something a long time ago and it makes me this of all these attorneys.....

What do you call the person who graduates last in med school?

Answer:







Doctor

 

[heidi salazar]

The ineffective counsel in this case comes from the prosecution not turning over the love letters her husband wrote to a hussy and the fact that the judge would not budge and let the jury know she wanted a plea agreement (plead guilty to a life sentence) but  her cohort would not take the plea so the offer was withdrawn.

Anyhoo here is Governor Bredesen's statement.

As you know, Gaile Owens was convicted in 1986 for arranging the murder of her husband and sentenced to death. Last summer, she asked for clemency through a group of attorneys, and I met with one of them—George Barrett—in February of this year. This is a complex and emotional case, and I've considered it carefully. Earlier this morning, I signed a commutation of her sentence to life in prison with the meaning in terms as they existed in 1986. While I don't normally explain myself in these matters, this case has generated an enormous amount of interest and I felt the need to talk a little more about it. I feel that I should describe at least the two considerations that seemed to me to be the most important.

First, there's at least the possibility of her being in an abusive marriage. While that in no way excuses arranging for murder, that possibility of abuse and the psychological conditions that can result from that abuse seems to me at least a factor affecting the severity of the punishment.

Second, Ms. Owens was offered a plea bargain prior to her trial of life imprisonment in exchange for her guilty plea. She accepted that plea bargain, the responsibility and the punishment, and the district attorney clearly considered it an appropriate resolution in this matter. Nearly all of the similar cases that we have looked at have been handled in this way. We reviewed 33 cases of a woman arranging and being charged and convicted of first-degree murder of her husband. Some of them involved abuse. Some of them did not. Some of them had a co-conspirator and some of them did not. In two of those cases, the person was sentenced to death. One of them Lamar Alexander commuted. The second one I'm commuting today. One of them is serving life in prison without parole. The other 30 are serving life in prison sentences. So nearly all of the similar cases that we have looked at resulted in life in prison sentences.

The plea bargain she entered into had an unusual condition attached, that the man accused of actually committing the murder also accept a similar plea bargain. When he didn't, the agreement became ineffective and Ms. Owens went to trial with the result that we know about.

What I've done here is to go back and to the extent possible now honor the concept of that plea bargain. Had she received a life sentence she would have been eligible to earn sentence credits in various ways. As a prisoner under sentence of death, this is of course not possible. To make some adjustment for that fact and to provide some clarity, the commutation also grants her a thousand days of sentence credit and the right to participate in normal sentence credit process in the future. This credit is considerably less than she would likely have earned had the life sentence been in effect for the past 25 years.

So Ms. Owens is guilty of first degree murder. She accepted responsibility for that prior to her trial. Nearly all the similar cases in Tennessee over the years have resulted in life sentences. And based on these considerations, I consider this a case in which the death penalty is inappropriate and in which a sentence of life in prison is appropriate.

http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2010/07/14/governors-statement-on-owens-commutation

[Anne]

I have found this article...

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100715/NEWS02/7150324/-1/WORKAROUND01

Gaile Owens could be freed next year

Bredesen: Abused wife didn't deserve death sentence

By Clay Carey • THE TENNESSEAN • July 15, 2010

Gaile Owens was 77 days away from a lethal injection when she woke up on death row Wednesday morning. Today, she is looking at the possibility of walking out of prison — a free woman — as early as next year.

Gov. Phil Bredesen changed Owens' death sentence to life in prison on Wednesday, granting a rare reprieve to one of only two women on Tennessee's death row. Bredesen said Owens could be eligible for parole by spring 2012, though her attorneys said credit for good behavior during her 25 years in prison could push her date with the parole board to 2011.

"As I stand here today, the healing power of God's forgiveness is evident. God is at work here," said Owens' son, Stephen, after the governor's announcement. He was 12 when his mother hired another man to kill his father, Ron. He and his 8-year-old brother discovered Ron Owens' bloody body inside their West Tennessee home.

"I look forward to the day when my mother will be home with my family," Stephen Owens said.

The 57-year-old Gaile Owens was to be executed Sept. 28.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal, and the state Supreme Court in April ruled that it couldn't overturn her death sentence. After that, the governor was the only one with the power to save her.

Owens' supporters pointed to several holes in the case that they say made her life worth sparing. Her attorneys said Owens suffered from battered woman syndrome after years of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her husband.

The abuse was never brought up during her trial because Owens would not discuss it in front of her children.

They also pointed to the fact that she agreed to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison, only to see the offer pulled off the table before her trial began.

The governor said his decision was based on the abuse and the fact that Owens had agreed to the plea bargain.

"Nearly all the similar cases we looked at resulted in life-in-prison sentences," Bredesen said.

Nashville attorney George Barrett, who has been representing Owens in her bid for clemency, said Bredesen's mercy was "a just and right solution" for a woman who admitted her guilt.

"Gaile's case was an extreme instance of injustice. The system failed her at every turn, except here," Barrett said.

Owens learned of her reprieve Wednesday from Kelley Henry, an assistant federal public defender who has represented her during her appeals.

"Gaile is absolutely overwhelmed," Henry said. "She couldn't speak at first."

Prison officials said Owens will be reclassified within the next two days and moved off death row into another cell.

Henry said she believed Owens would have "an excellent chance of making parole the first time she goes up."
Plea deal falls through

Ron Owens was beaten to death inside his Shelby County home on Feb. 17, 1985. Gaile Owens and Sidney Porterfield, the man she hired to commit the murder, were tried together the next year and both were sentenced to death.

Porterfield is still appealing his sentence.

Before her trial began, Owens tried to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. But Porterfield would not enter a plea. To get convictions, court records show, prosecutors believed they had to try Owens and Porterfield together. So when Porterfield insisted on a trial, prosecutors decided to pull Owens' plea deal off the table.

"The fact that the state offered life indicated to us that in their eyes it wasn't among the worst (murders). Her inability to accept the plea was through no fault of hers. She attempted to accept responsibility but was prevented from doing so," said Jerry Black, president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a law professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. "This was indeed a case where death wasn't deserved," Black said.

When Fulya Sobczak, one of the 12 jurors who sentenced Owens to death, learned about the abuse Owens endured, she decided the death penalty was a mistake.

Six months ago, she wrote a letter to Bredesen asking him to have mercy on Owens.

"I'm so relieved, and I'm so thankful," Sobczak said. "I feel like something has been lifted off my shoulders."

Owens' death sentence is the second Bredesen has commuted. In 2007, he changed convicted killer Michael Joe Boyd's sentence from death to life in prison. He cited "grossly inadequate legal representation" during a post-conviction hearing.

Since Bredesen took office in 2003, five men have been executed.

Current Shelby County prosecutor Bill Gibbons said in a statement that he defers to the governor's power under the state constitution to commute sentences. "I respect the fact that it is his decision based upon his review of the circumstances," he said.

Appeal had backing

Several high-profile organizations and Tennesseans aided Owens' campaign for mercy. The well-connected public relations firm McNeely Pigott & Fox worked on her case. The National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and the Nashville YWCA were among the agencies that wrote to Bredesen on Owens' behalf. More than 11,000 people signed an online petition in support of a lighter sentence for Owens.

She also garnered support from singer/songwriter Marshall Chapman and John Seigenthaler Sr., former Tennessean newspaper publisher and chairman emeritus of the newspaper.

"As heinous as the crime was, the record of how Tennessee has dealt with similar cases over the last century makes it clear that her death would have been a terrible miscarriage of justice," Seigenthaler said.

"I was on the golf course when I found out" about the commuted sentence,
Seigenthaler said. "It was like hitting a hole in one."

(Tennessean staff writers Chas Sisk and Brian Haas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.)









No comment...







Anne

[heidi salazar]

Victims' Advocates Divided on Gaile Owens' Commutation

The governor's commutation Wednesday of convicted killer Gaile Owens' death sentence made her supporters jubilant; gave others renewed hope, perhaps, that the justice system is fair; and divided two local victims' advocates, who'd normally see eye to eye.

"We are so excited," said Liz Todaro, community educator with the YWCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee.

Todaro has more than 10 years of firsthand experience dealing with victims of domestic violence. Todaro and her colleagues at the YW applaud the 1994 federal passage of the Violence Against Women Act, a defining moment for victims of domestic violence and a for those who champion the cause of spreading awareness.

But victims' advocate Verna Wyatt argued Gaile Owens is not to be pitied.

"She's not the victim in this case," Wyatt told NewsChannel 5 Wednesday afternoon. Wyatt typically represents the group You Have the Power, but shared solely her own, personal feelings in the wake of Wednesday's significant development in the Gaile Owens case.

"She created lots of victims, including her own children," Wyatt said. "I mean, when she murdered their father and then, effectively, abandoned her children because she's been in prison the last, what, 20-some years?"

Wyatt actually wrote a personal letter to Governor Phil Bredesen, asking him to commute Owens's death sentence. She does, however, think Owens should spend the remainder of her days in the Tennesssee Department of Correction.

"I mean, regardless of what kind of husband he was, he had people that loved him and cared about him," Wyatt said. "No one deserves to die like that."

Wyatt blamed, in part, Owens herself for botching her own defense back in the mid-80s. The advocate questioned why Owens never brought up, or allowed her defense team to talk about, the years of serious, alleged abuse at the hands of her now deceased husband, the victim of Owens's murder-for-hire plot.

But isolation is often predictable, according to experts at the YWCA.

"And unfortunately, that isolation can extend and create silence in a number of ways," said Liz Todaro. "There were jurors that said that they did not know about, anything about the allegations of abuse that she had suffered."

Owens was convicted in 1986 of hiring someone to kill her husband. Governor Phil Bredesen has commuted Gaile Owens' death penalty sentence on Wednesday.

Defense attorneys had asked the court to either commute her sentence or issue a recommendation to the governor to do so. They argued her sentence was disproportionate to similar cases and that she tried to plead guilty but was not allowed to.

Stephen Owens, Gaile's son, spoke to the media for the first time about the case in April 2010.

"My statement to the public is a plea to the Governor to spare my mother's life," said Stephen.

Stephen was 12-years-old when Gaile hired a stranger to kill her husband.

"Last year I saw her for the first time in 20 years. I looked her in the eyes, and told her I forgive her," said Stephen.

Gaile had expressed remorse for soliciting the murder of Ronald Owens, but the crime itself was not in question. What is in question is whether or not the entire story came out in court.

Bredesen said he decided to commute her sentence to life in prison because she had a plea deal with prosecutors but then was put on trial when her co-defendant refused to accept the bargain.

http://www.newschannel5.com/global/story.asp?s=12805132

[Anne]

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100718/COLUMNIST0101/7180352/Gail+Kerr++Behind+Bredesen+s+decision+to+spare+Gaile+Owens

Behind Bredesen's decision to spare Gaile Owens

COMMENTARY BY GAIL KERR • The Tennessean • July 18, 2010

Gov. Phil Bredesen made several specific promises to those pushing to save convicted murderer Gaile Owens' life.

He vowed not to make a decision during the legislative session, but also said he would not be so cruel as to announce a decision moments before the first drug was injected in her arm.

And Bredesen was emphatic that he would not allow any one of her vast number of supporters to argue her case personally before him, no matter how well-connected or powerful they are. And they really are.

Bredesen was true to his word.

In the end, he decided to spare Owens' life the same way Bredesen makes most decisions, with a methodical process.

Over the years, Owens has been a model prisoner. She's a hard worker and a sympathetic figure, despite the hideous crime she confessed orchestrating.

The 57-year-old woman served 25 years on death row for hiring a hit man to kill her husband. Prosecutors at the time offered her a deal: life in prison for pleading guilty. She accepted. But they backed out when the hit man would not accept the same deal. They were tried together, and both sentenced to die.

Owens has told counselors since then that she was badly abused. She says she did not allow any hint of domestic violence to be introduced at trial in order to spare her sons further pain. (Although it should be pointed out that her children already bore the pain of finding their fathers' body.)

Her case landed on the desk of a man who had allowed the execution of five men — that's five more than the state has killed since 1960. Bredesen also had already granted clemency to one man on death row, Michael Joe Boyd, in 2007. That story barely made the news. But the governor used exactly the same process in making that decision as he made with Owens.

He would not consider the case until all other court appeals were complete. He met only with attorneys. He read the file. He made a decision based on law and his judgment that the clemency petition had merit.

Well-known supporters

Owens' case has drawn enormous publicity. She has had well-known supporters, such as singer/songwriter Marshall Chapman, Tennessee Titans Coach Jeff Fisher, attorney George Barrett, Tennessean Chairman Emeritus John Seigenthaler and Katy Varney, a powerful public relations executive who is married to Dave Goetz, the governor's finance commissioner.

The story got bigger when one of Owens' sons came forward and publicly forgave his mother. Verna Wyatt, head of the You Have the Power victims rights group started by Bredesen's wife, Andrea Conte, came forward in supporting Owens' petition.

A group of her supporters requested an audience with the governor shortly after the first of the year. They wanted to deliver her clemency petition and make an emotional appeal for her life. Gov. Bredesen would have none of it. Barrett was quietly informed that such a move would not be their best course of action.

Barrett went to the governor's office alone. The governor questioned him for an hour.

True to his word, the governor waited until every court appeal was exhausted. He waited until a state budget passed and the legislature adjourned. He traveled to China and Germany.

When he turned his full attention to the Owens case, he requested a proportionality chart — a data-based look at how the same or differing sentences have been given for the same crime. He asked legal experts, "What would happen if she were tried today?"

Owens' publicity machine pushed on. That very nearly backfired.

Numerous sources confirm that Gov. Bredesen grew increasingly livid over the effort to sway his opinion through a petition drive with 11,000 names, website, videos, national television coverage and an organized public relations campaign. He politely declined requests to meet with Fisher, who visited Owens regularly and supports her, and with a group of female legislators.

In fact, sources inside his office and among Owens' backers say Bredesen almost dug in his heels and allowed Owens' execution to go forward because of the intense pushing. In the end, he changed his mind.

No one on Owens' team knew the governor would announce his decision last Wednesday. The governor called Barrett 30 minutes before his 10:30 a.m. news conference.

The timing was partly because he'd reached a decision in his way and was ready to move on. It also was partly because of the governor's race — he didn't want the Owens case to become a campaign issue, although there has been little or no blowback.

The decision: Death commuted to life. The reality of that means Owens could be freed next year on parole.
Dignity returned

In handling Owens' case the way he did, Bredesen has returned dignity to a process that was nearly destroyed in 1979 by the late Gov. Ray Blanton. Before he left office, Blanton sold pardons, letting 52 people buy their way out of prison. It was a scandal that led to a hastily called swearing-in service of Gov. Lamar Alexander in the middle of the night.










Anne

[v1976ra]

The article was from the folks at the Tennessean, who are amongst Gaile's biggest supporters, It's only natural that they would 'spin' the story to make it appear as if commutation was the right move. Just a bit surprising that someone can go from being on the row and having an execution date to possibly being free by next year. Yep, Phil must have scored some major points with this one. 

[heidi salazar]

pfft....Her original plea was wanting LWOP ....Bredesen made an appropriate decision. Sometimes Anne is extremely over zealous in her post. 

[Anne]

I think that I don't appreciate you, Governor Bredesen

Hey, Owens and her supporters...





Anne

[Michael]

I second Heidi! 

Michael