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The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
late Thursday ruled 1 of 8
women on Texas death row must be retried
or set free.
The appeals court's decision upholds an
earlier lower-court ruling
ordering the state to give Pamela Lynn Perillo
a new trial within 120
days of prosecutors exhausting their appeals.
If not, Perillo must be
released.
The state also has the option of appealing
the 5th Circuit ruling to
the U.S. Supreme Court, a spokeswoman with
the Texas Attorney General's
office said Thursday.
"We'll be making that determination with
the Harris County District
Attorney's office in the near future," spokeswoman
Andrea Horton said.
Perillo's attorney, Maryanne Lyons, could
not be reached for comment
late Thursday.
Perillo was a bartender when she and 2
friends were picked up by Bob
Skeens, 26, and Robert Banks, 30, while
hitchhiking near Houston's
Astrodome on Feb. 24, 1980.
The 3 hitchhikers later robbed Skeens
and Banks, and Perillo and James
Michael Briddle eventually were sentenced
to death for choking the 2
men to death with a rope.
Briddle was executed in December 1995,
and the 3rd person involved,
Linda Fletcher, was sentenced to 5 years'
probation.
Last June, U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein
overturned Perillo's
conviction after finding one of her attorneys
had a personal and
professional relationship with the chief
witness against her.
The judge also found that defense attorney
Jim Skelton failed to
discredit Fletcher's testimony at crucial
points during Perillo's 1984
re-trial.
Skelton represented Fletcher when she,
her then-husband Briddle and
Perillo were charged with the crime.
Perillo later confessed, and all 3 were
charged with capital murder.
But the charge against Fletcher was reduced
to aggravated robbery after
Skelton convinced prosecutors she was not
involved in the killings.
Months after Fletcher was sentenced to
5 years' probation, Skelton
gave her away at her wedding.
Perillo is 1 of 8 women on Texas' death
row. Last week, Texas executed
Betty Lou Beets, who was only the 2nd woman
put to death in the state
since the Civil War. Convicted pickax killer
Karla Faye Tucker became
the 1st when she was executed on Feb. 3,
1998.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Houston
ordered the release of death row
inmate Calvin Jerold Burdine because the
state filed for a new trial 15
days after the deadline. The state has a
motion pending before the 5th
Circuit to block his release.
(source: Associated Press)
TORONTO - Pam Perillo, 43,
has been on Texas' death row for almost 19 years, and while she isn't as well-known
as her one-time best friend and former death row inmate, Karla Faye Tucker,
Perillo is hoping the efforts of a Canadian couple might one day end her
death row horrors.
Perillo, one of eight women on death row in Texas, is also one of 500 death
row inmates with messages on the Web site of the Canadian Coalition Against
the Death Penalty www.ccadp.org
Tracy Lamourie, one of the coalition's
founders, said its efforts to abolish the death penalty and improve conditions
for death row inmates is a human rights issue.
"The perception of what we do is very different inside the United States
than outside. In the U.S., the death penalty is seen as a crime and punishment
issue, and our stand against the death penalty is seen as mean to the victims,"
she said.
"Outside the U.S., it's really seen as more of a human rights issue. We
get a lot of positive response from Europe and Australia. We get a lot of
support in Canada, too, but the average man-in-the-street has misconceptions
about how it is used," she added.
People think of the death penalty being applied to "recognizable killers,
like Ted Bundy," Lamourie explained. But of the 4,000 men and women on death
row in the United States, many have been condemned
for "less heinous crimes than those with long prison
terms."
"There's a 17-year-old on death row who was with someone who killed a person
during a robbery," Lamourie said. "The U.S. is way ahead (of other
nations) in the execution of juveniles. There's been two this year."
Since inmates do not have access to a computer, let alone the Internet,
Lamourie and her partner, Dave Parkinson, spend most of their time transcribing
inmates' letters, opinion pieces and poetry onto the site's Web pages.
Perillo, whose crime is
not detailed on her site, described on the site her routine degradation.
The women on death row are "strip-searched six, sometimes eight times a day,
and most of the time we have never left our cells from one search to another,"
she wrote. Pictures of loved ones are destroyed or damaged during cell searches,
Perillo said, adding that she has seen sick prisoners left in a cell until
they died.
Lamourie said the coalition doesn't concern itself with questions of guilt
or innocence, only the humane treatment of people.
However, relatives of the victims have been enraged enough at the site to
e-mail their condemnations.
A spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections recently deplored
the site as "disgusting, repulsive and offensive to the memory of the victims."
STATE ATTORNEY SEEKS TO PREVENT NEW TRIAL FOR FEMALE DEATH ROW INMATE
BY ED ASHER
Houston Chronicle
A state attorney was in
court Wednesday morning seeking to prevent a new trial for one of the only
eight women on Texas' death row.
The Texas Attorney General's
Office is appealing a federal judge's ruling last summer that overturned
the capital murder conviction of Pamela Perillo, 43.
U.S District Judge Ewing
Werlein said in June that Perillo's right to a fair trial was compromised
because her attorney had a close personal and professional relationship with
the prosecution's chief witness. Werlein said the attorney, Jim Skelton,
failed to discredit the testimony of the witness, Linda Fletcher, on crucial
points during Perillo's 1984 trial and ordered a new trial for Perillo.
In a hearing before a panel
of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Houston Wednesday, Assistant Attorney
General Douglas Danzeiser arguies that Skelton did not have a conflict of
interest when he cross examined Fletcher.
Although Fletcher was a
former client of Skelton's, the attorney no longer had a duty to protect
Fletcher's interests when she testified against Perillo, Danzeiser argued.
Danzeiser also dismissed
Skelton's personal relationship with Fletcher as irrelevant.
Skelton represented Fletcher
when she, her then husband Mike Briddle and Perillo were charged with the
February 1980 strangulations of Robert Banks and Bob Skeens.
Prosecutors alleged that
Perillo, Briddle and Fletcher stole $800 from Skeens and Banks and that Perillo
and Briddle strangled them. Perillo later confessed, and all three
were charged with capital murder.
But Skelton convinced prosecutors
that Fletcher was not involved in the killings. She was reindicted on
an aggravated robbery charge with an agreement to testify against Briddle.
Fletcher was sentenced to
five years probation; Briddle and Perillo were convicted of capital murder
and sentenced to death. Briddle was executed in December 1995.
Perillo's appeal attorneys
also complained of Skelton's relationship with Fletcher.
Months after Fletcher was
sentenced, Skelton went to California to give her away at her 1981 wedding.
Fletcher stayed at Skelton's home when she came to testify against Perillo,
and was his guest when she testified against Briddle during his 1982 capital-
murder trial.
Danzeiser told the three
judge panel that Skelton was not ineffective at Perillo's trial, but instead
"performed at the highest traditions of the (legal) profession."
Maryanne Lyons, one of Perillo's
appeal attorneys, countered that Skelton had a conflict of interest because
of his relationship with Fletcher and failed to mount an aggressive cross-examination
of her.
The 5th Circuit is expected
to rule on the case within the next three months.
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CONTACT US
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The Canadian Coalition
Against The Death Penalty
The CCADP offers free webpages to Death Row Inmates in the
U.S.A.