Michael Morales - Upcoming CA Execution

[CCADP]

Approximately thirteen years ago and at age eighteen, Helen Keeler, a writer from far north of London, zUnited Kingdom, and a member of LifeLines, a penpal organization for condemned prisoners, set forth on a journey which will hopefully be perpetuated after 21 February 2006. She began to correspond with Michael Angelo Morales. What follows is a deeply abbreviated version of an appeal formulated by Ms. Keeler and one of many addenda which are included as exhibits supportive and adjunctive to petition for clemency submitted on Mr. Morales' behalf.

After reading what follows, recommended will be several additional options for advocacy. Beyond boilerplate arguments in favor of clemency are in the case of Mr. Morales specific legal reasons why raised expectations will ideally not terminate in shattered dreams. Let us hope. Let us act.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From: "Helen Keeler" <[e-mail]>


Subject: Mike Morales
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:46:52 -0000

Mike has now given permission for me to speak about him....I have written the
text below which has been cleared by his lawyer, David Senior. Please
use it in whichever ways you see fit in. I am distraught at the thought
that I may lose Mike and hope that this may help people understand what
kind of a person he is and ultimately give him the best chance of
clemency.

Kind regards

Helen Keeler



About Mike


Mike Morales is a reformed man. I have known him for 13 years and he
has a warm and gentle nature. He studies the Bible and is an
accomplished artist. A very private man, he is eager for his loving and
supportive family to be kept out of any media glare.

As a young man, Mike was very misguided and easily led. He is full of
remorse for his actions and describes himself as 'a good guy who made
some very bad mistakes'. His allowing me to speak out on his behalf was
on the condition that it was with sensitivity to the victim's family.

Mike is one of the best friends I have ever had. He is always ready to
listen to me, debate with me and console me when necessary. He offers
me advice (which I have been known to foolishly ignore). He is an
articulate man who is passionate about the environment and animals.

Mike is a prime example of how rehabilitation is possible. He is a very
different person now and has stayed out of trouble in prison.

He has as much of an active role as is possible in the lives of the
people he loves. Mike is well thought of by a great many people and if
executed, they will feel his loss.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

action items:
- please peruse the exhibits attached to the petition for clemency at www.aclunc.org/deathpenalty/morales.html, specifically
- Ms. Keeler's statement appears as exhbit 14; and
- exhibit 27 a statement by Pablo Stewart, M. D., which
elaborates with fastidious attention to accuracy and to detail, the psychobiological effects of substance abuse of a variety of kinds; the information is not only relevant to Mr. Morales but may be referenced vis-a-vis the late Stanley Tookie Williams and others
- please make a schedule for contacting Governor Schwarzenegger - i. e.,
e-mail message
telephone call/facsimile
written message (post card or letter)
tell a friend ((e-mail message, group announcement, church bulletin et cetera)
- please repeat the cycle through resolution of the appeal on or before 21 February 2006
- contact information:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol
Sacramento, California 95814
telephone: [phone]
facsimile: 916-445-4633

e-mail - www.govmail.ca.gov

[Whyspurr]

Ken Starr asks governor to spare condemned killer
- By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 27, 2006


(01-27) 17:20 PST San Francisco (AP) --


Former Whitewater independent counsel and conservative legal scholar Kenneth Starr on Friday formally asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare the life of Michael Morales because the condemned killer was sorry for what he did.


Starr and another of Morales' lawyers, David Senior, told Schwarzenegger that Morales should be spared execution because he's accepted responsibility and repeatedly expressed remorse for the murder. The judge who presided over Morales' trial also asked the governor to commute the death sentence to life in prison because new evidence casts doubt on the testimony of a key witness.


Morales, 46, was sentenced to death for the Jan. 8, 1981, rape and murder of Terri Winchell, 17, near Lodi. He is scheduled to be executed Feb. 21.


"Unlike some who express no remorse for their offenses against humanity, Michael has not fled from his responsibility for the deed committed so many years ago in his reckless and drug-saturated youth," the petition stated.


The petition said Morales was also led astray by a "manipulative crime partner" who got him drunk and high on the drug PCP on the day of the murder. Morales' cousin Rick Ortega was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder.


What's more, the petition includes a plea for clemency from Judge Charles McGrath, the judge who presided over Morales' murder trial in 1983.


McGrath concluded that Morales was "lying in wait" to kill Winchell, a "special circumstance" that prompted the judge to sentence Morales to death, rather than life in prison.


McGrath said he now doesn't believe the testimony of jailhouse informant Bruce Samuelson, who testified that Morales boasted of his assault and made obscene and derogatory references to Winchell.


"New information has emerged to show the evidence upon which I relied in sentencing Mr. Morales to death — Mr. Samuelson's testimony — is false," McGrath wrote in a statement submitted to the governor along with the clemency petition.


McGrath said Samuelson was vital to proving the lying in wait allegation and that he told the jury that Samuelson's testimony "alone could be used to outweigh" all the reasons against sentencing Morales to death.


McGrath said Samuelson told attorney general investigators that he conversed with Morales in Spanish. But Morales and his attorneys say Morales speaks only English, a fact that McGrath said would have persuaded him to sentence Morales to life in prison.


"The governor considers each petition for clemency individually and on a case-by-case basis," said Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman Julie Soderlund.


Starr, who is dean of Pepperdine University law school, didn't return a telephone call Friday. The ACLU, which is working with Starr on the clemency petition, said the former federal judge "is entering the case because Morales immediately took responsibility for his actions, was distraught with remorse and has made impressive and consistent efforts to atone for his crime while in prison."


The victim's mother said Morales should die for strangling, beating and stabbing her daughter to death in a vineyard near Lodi 25 years ago.


"I haven't heard a word from him in 25 years," said Barbara Christian, the victim's mother. "If he's changed, he sure hasn't let me know."


The San Joaquin District Attorney's office, which prosecuted Morales, said it opposes clemency for Morales and will file a formal response to the governor by Feb. 4. Schwarzenegger has never granted clemency to a condemned inmate.


"There is one word for Michael Morales and it's 'evil,'" said San Joaquin prosecutor Chuck Schultz, who said Morales planned the brutal murder and rape in advance.


"I have not seen any remorsefulness on his part," Schultz said. "All I have seen is viscous and awful stuff."


Meanwhile, other lawyers representing Morales made a last-ditch argument in a San Jose federal court Thursday that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment and should be ruled unconstitutional. Judge Jeremy Fogel scheduled a Feb. 9 hearing on whether Morales' execution date should be put on hold pending the outcome of his lawsuit.


California executions are done at San Quentin State Prison with a lethal combination of three chemical substances.


Morales' attorneys sued California officials earlier this month, arguing that the procedure was adopted without medical research to ensure that a prisoner would not suffer a painful death.


The state opposes the challenge, said Nathan Barankin, the chief spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.


URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/01/27/state/n172048S85.DTL

[Whyspurr]

Judge Requests Clemency for a Killer He Condemned
Sat Jan 28, 2006 7:20am


Judge Requests Clemency for a Killer He Condemned

By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times

In a highly unusual development, a judge who condemned a killer to die has
asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency.

Michael A. Morales is to be executed Feb. 21 for the 1981 killing of Terri
Winchell, a Lodi high school student. Ventura County Superior Court Judge
Charles R. McGrath, appointed by Gov. Ronald Reagan, said in a letter to
the governor that he believes the sentence was based on false testimony
from a jailhouse informant.

Bruce Samuelson testified that Morales had callously boasted during a
jailhouse conversation that he had planned to rape and kill the teenager.
The confession supposedly took place in a crowded cellblock that Morales
knew was full of informants.

Samuelson explained away Morales' willingness to talk by saying the two
men spoke in Spanish. A later investigation by the state attorney general,
however, showed that Morales, a fourth-generation Californian, doesn't
speak Spanish, McGrath said.

The false testimony not only persuaded judge and jury that the killing was
egregious, but effectively canceled out Morales' claim that he felt deep
remorse for the crime, McGrath said.

Executing Morales, 46, under the circumstances would be "a grievous and
freakish injustice," McGrath concluded.

His letter was included in Morales' clemency petition, which was filed
with the governor Friday. The petition asks that Morales' death sentence
be commuted to life in prison.

Legal experts said it was the first time since California reinstated
capital punishment in 1977 that a judge had asked a governor for clemency
in one of his own death penalty cases.

Schwarzenegger has rejected all four clemency petitions submitted to him
by death row inmates since he became governor. Three of the four � Donald
Beardslee, Stanley Tookie Williams and Clarence Ray Allen � have been
executed. Kevin Cooper got a last-minute stay of execution from the U.S.
9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Friday, Julie Soderlund, a spokeswoman for the governor, said
Schwarzenegger would have no comment until he reviewed all the papers in
the case.

The San Joaquin district attorney's office, which prosecuted Morales and
is expected to oppose clemency, did not return a call seeking comment.

Winchell, 17, left her Lodi home on Jan. 8, 1981, to get food for her sick
mother and never returned, according to court records. Two days later,
police discovered her partially nude body, with stab wounds in the chest,
a fractured skull and jaw, in a vineyard outside Lodi. Testimony was
presented that she had been hit in the head 23 times, with weapons that
included a claw hammer.

According to court records, Morales' cousin, Ricky Ortega, orchestrated
Winchell's murder because he was jealous of her involvement with his male
lover. He recruited Morales, who was drunk and high on PCP at the time, to
help him "and Morales agreed out of family loyalty," the documents stated.

Morales' case was transferred from San Joaquin County to Ventura County
because of heavy pretrial publicity.

Ortega subsequently received a sentence of life in prison at a separate
trial.

Morales' clemency petition was prepared by attorneys David A. Senior of
Los Angeles and Kenneth W. Starr, dean of the Pepperdine Law School and a
former federal judge who served as a special independent counsel
investigating President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky perjury case.

Their petition describes Morales as "a deeply repentant sorrowful
Christian who has accepted full responsibility for a terrible crime that
will haunt him forever.

"Unlike some who express no remorse for their offenses against humanity,
Michael has not fled from his responsibility for the deed committed so
many years ago in his reckless and drug-saturated youth."

The filing includes a handwritten three-page letter from Morales.

"Leniency can be a difficult thing to come by these days," Morales wrote
to the governor in neat block letters. "It's certainly not the normal way
of dealing with someone who's crimes are as serious as mine. But hopefully
yours is an administration who believes in repentance and reform. Who
believes in exercising restraint motivated by compassion. And who believes
in extending mercy whenever and wherever possible."

If his sentence is carried out, Morales will be the first Latino executed
since California revived the death penalty. Starr and Senior contend that
the decision to bring him up on capital charges was fueled by racial and
ethnic concerns.

The lawyers cited six egregious murders from the same period � including
the beating death of a black teenager by a white male � for which the San
Joaquin district attorney did not seek the death penalty.

McGrath, however, based his recommendation for clemency solely on the
false testimony from informant Samuelson, whom he described as the
cornerstone of the prosecution.

Samuelson's claim that Morales "made obscene, derogatory references to the
victim � and callously boasted of the assault upon her � effectively
demonstrated a heartless lack of remorse by Mr. Morales, and completely
undermined his attorney's presentation � that Mr. Morales immediately felt
deep remorse for his involvement in the incident," McGrath said.

Samuelson's claim of Morales' "confession was the only evidence to support
the single special circumstance � lying in wait � that made Mr. Morales
eligible for the death penalty," the judge added.

In exchange for Samuelson's testimony, prosecutors dropped four of six
felony charges against him. He pleaded guilty to one count of forgery and
one count of auto theft and was sentenced to a year in county jail.

McGrath told Schwarzenegger that California law requires judges to review
the death verdicts of jurors to protect "the integrity of the judicial
system, public confidence in the administration of the state's power to
impose death and the rights of defendants to individualized sentencing
decisions."

Had he learned of Samuelson's falsehoods, "I would not have let the death
sentence stand; and the awesome decision to spare his life would not be
before you at this time. Under such circumstances, executing Mr. Morales
would frustrate the design of our sentencing laws."

---

Source : Los Angeles Times

www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/scotus/la-me-judge28jan28,0,2498803.story?coll=la-news-politics-supreme_court

[onetwobomb]

deleted....this is a support area.

[yvonnes]

The last time i saw Micky was when he was around or close to 10 years old when he and his family lived next door to my family in Stockton. My heart broke for him and his family and the victims family when I heard the news. I remember his family as very religious and Christian people. I don't know what happened except for the news after I last saw him. I did see his parents when they came to visit my parents in San Jose shortly after the crime. Remembering his family I truely believe them. My heart stills hurts for them. I've been trying to locate his mom, Josie and I know that people are skeptical to help me,. My mom passed away in 1998 and her address book became lost fom me. I would like to reconnect with Mikey and his family again but don't know how. At that time I was going through my own growing up issues and don't know too much about the visit except that josie was trying to sell his art work to help support his children. I'm willing to take the risk to send out a way that either mikey or his family to contact me so they will know that I am sincere. I was known as Bonnie Nevarez back then and my parents were Pete and Ana. My dad is still alive and in his 80's. My brother died in Vietnam in 67 and my sis has cerebral palsy. we moved to San Jose in 69 i think a few years after the Morales family moved to Lodi. Please if anyone can help me reconnect with them, I would be so greatful. i want to let Josie know that i've never forgotten her and that I have always had her and all her family in my prayers. they made such an impact in my young life that i will always remeber them. please help. ys