The Freedom Bulletin

Today was the first day of a series of hearings in the case of Gary Sampson, a convicted triple-murderer who was sentenced to death back in 2004. Sampson, from Abington, MA, pleaded guilty to murdering three random, completely innocent people in a 2001 crime spree: Philip McCloskey, Jonathan Rizzo, and Robert “Eli” Whitney.

Two of the murders took place in Massachusetts and one in New Hampshire. Although Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, federal law allowed Sampson to be tried in federal court, where he received a death sentence.  

Now, Sampson and his defense team have filed a habeas corpus petition, or 2255 petition, an attempt to get a new trial because he claims his constitutional rights were violated. In this particular petition, Sampson’s lawyers claim that his trial lawyers, including Robert Sheketoff and Stephanie Page (who represented Neil Entwistle) were ineffective.

I attended today’s hearing on the 2255 petition, which lasted for most of the day at the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston. Family members of the victims were in the courtroom, as well as five lawyers representing Sampson and four federal prosecutors. Sampson is spending his time on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, and was not at the hearing.

The prosecutors have filed a motion for summary dismissal, a request to have Sampson’s petition thrown out without discovery or detailed arguments. At the hearing, Judge Mark Wolf ruled tentatively that he would deny the government’s motion and allow the 2255 petition to go forward, at least with respect to most of the issues the lawyers argued about today.

Sampson’s main complaint is that his trial lawyers failed to introduce adequate evidence of his history of mental illness during the penalty phase of the trial, which was essentially the only part, because he pled guilty. If it weren’t for their incompetence, Sampson’s team claims, at least one juror might have voted for life in prison.

According to defense attorney William McDaniels, Sampson fell ten feet down a flight of stairs when he was 4, was physically and emotionally abused, injured his head in about a dozen fights over the years, was in a car accident at age 20, jumped off a roof, was beaten in prison, and compounded these problems with drug and alcohol use. McDaniels says that Sampson is in the bottom 1% of the population in terms of mental functioning, and that he has bipolar disorder, as well as damage to the frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes of his brain, which combined to cause his recklessness, arrogance, and lack of remorse. However, little evidence was introduced at trial to corroborate these claims.

Sampson’s lawyers claimed that his trial attorneys failed to contact his family and friends in a timely fashion and did not try hard enough to get them to testify about his background and childhood. The prosecutors, on the other hand, defended the defense lawyers from the trial. They claimed that they tried all available means to contact Sampson’s family short of issuing subpoenas, but they refused to talk. Also, according to prosecutors, Sampson’s trial lawyers delayed contacting his family to give them time to get over the shock of learning of their son’s crimes, or decided against calling them to the witness stand because they would hurt Sampson’s case.

Additionally, both sides agreed that Sampson’s trial lawyers failed to introduce records from the Brockton Hospital of Sampson’s childhood head injury. Prosecutors downplayed this omission, arguing that it would not have changed the verdict.

The lawyers also argued about the credibility of a witness who downplayed the abuse Sampson suffered as a child. Sampson’s attorneys said that the trial lawyers should have impeached this witness, while the prosecutors, as they did throughout today’s hearing, maintained that the trial attorneys were competent and did a more than adequate job.

The arguments will continue tomorrow and most likely the day after. I’ll probably continue stopping by and will be sure to blog back with whatever I observe of the proceedings.

Read more at the Globe, Herald, and AP.

According to the Associated Press, Thomas J. Mortimer IV has been indicted on four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his two children, wife, and mother in law. His arraignment in Middlesex Superior Court is scheduled for September 2.

Mortimer, of course, pleaded not guilty to these charges at his arraignment at Woburn District Court in June. A hearing was scheduled in the district court for his case on September 8, but this hearing is now canceled.

Photo courtesy of Jon Markoff via Facebook.

Alleged Craigslist Killer Philip Markoff committed suicide a little over a week ago, on August 15. Although I never knew him personally, and although he is an accused murderer, I am still a little sad about his death.

I went to both of Markoff’s arraignments and was planning to attend his trial in March. It is disappointing that he won’t have a trial, but of course that is not the only reason why his death is sad. No matter what crimes he may have committed, he is a human being and a unique individual.

The way Markoff died must have been extremely painful. From what I pieced together from various news reports, it seems that he killed himself sometime between 1:59 a.m. when he turned out his light and 10:06 a.m. when jail staff found his body. He cut his wrists, arms, ankles, and throat with a makeshift scalpel made of a pen and a sharpened piece of metal, severing his carotid artery and several veins. At some point, he wrote two words on the wall above the door, presumably in his own blood: “Megan,” his ex-fiancee’s name, and “pocket,” which seems to be a word he and Megan used for each other. He stuffed toilet paper down his throat to prevent attempts to revive him. He used gauze to tie a clear plastic bag over his head to suffocate himself and another one around his feet to hide the blood. Then he lay down and covered himself with a blanket.

Many people say that suicide is the coward’s way out, but what Markoff did takes a strange kind of courage. Clearly, he wanted to die, and he used his medical training to ensure that this would happen. Markoff’s life belongs to him, and I believe that he had the right to do what he wanted with his own life, including ending it. I don’t believe in encouraging inmates to kill themselves, as some people have suggested, but neither do I support taking away their freedom and privacy to keep them alive against their wishes.

The other day I was reading the comments on the Facebook group supporting Markoff, and it was interesting to read the positive comments about him. Some people expressed sadness at his death and condolences to his family, some emphasized that he was never proven guilty and the world never got to know what evidence his defense team might have presented, and others criticized Suffolk County D.A. Dan Conley for promising to present evidence to the public without Markoff having any opportunity to defend himself. Despite the seemingly strong evidence against Markoff, I admire his family and friends for sticking by him. His brother Jon wrote:

“He was a great guy, and a lot of people are really going to miss him. Thanks for everyone’s support through this difficult time. RIP Phil I will always love you.”

His Facebook picture is the one above of him and Phil together.

Questions still remain, such as:

• Why did Markoff commit suicide? Was it out of guilt, to avoid a trial, or simply because there would be nothing to look forward to if he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison?
• Why did he write Megan’s name on the wall, display her pictures on the table in his cell, and choose to die on the day after his would-be wedding anniversary? Did he love and miss her, or did he feel angry and betrayed? Or both?
• How exactly is Conley going to present his evidence against Markoff? Could his family sue to stop this? Will they sue the Nashua Street Jail for wrongful death? Can Julissa Brisman’s family sue anyone for her death?

We will eventually learn the answers to some of these, but others we may never know the answers to.

He will forever be 24 years old, unmarried, and the alleged Craigslist Killer.

Rest in peace, Phil Markoff.

Craig Wilson of USA Today recently wrote a column about full-body scanners, or as I like to call them, strip search machines. Not only do I disagree with his opinion, but I find his tone offensive and disrespectful to people who believe in liberty.

Wilson writes…

“Personally, I don’t care who looks at what just as long as we’re all safe and we get to our destination without any more drama than a frazzled flight attendant telling us to sit down for takeoff.

I’m not quite sure what all the fuss is about. A momentary loss of modesty is a small price to pay to gain safety.”

First of all, being seen naked by TSA agents is arguably more than a momentary loss of modesty. To people who believe it is immoral for others to see one’s naked body, undergoing a virtual strip search may only last a few moments, but it permanently deprives you of some amount of modesty. Arguably, having your naked body exposed, even if the image is not stored or saved, is something that can never be reversed.

For me, such a permanent loss of modesty is a very high price to pay for safety. More importantly, by forcing their preferences on everyone else, people like Wilson deprive us all of our freedom – an unacceptable price to pay for anything. Wilson might not care who sees what, but I do, and as long as there is one person who does not believe in sacrificing modesty for safety, it violates that person’s rights to force them to do so.

Mr. Wilson, the fuss is about our government’s steady erosion of our liberties and our dignity. The fuss is about the fact that full-body scanners violate everyone’s rights and are blatantly contrary to the Fourth Amendment.

Then he goes on to make jokes about the saying (that I never quite understood) that you should always wear clean underwear in case you get in a car accident.

“I think the new full-body scanners work better since it looks at our underwear before something bad happens.”

I have an idea: How about people never look at our underwear? How about actually having some respect for privacy and liberty? How about making America the land of the free once more?

In yet another small but significant encroachment on our liberty, TSA agents at Boston’s Logan Airport are using a new, worse pat down procedure. Instead of using the backs of their hands when patting down people’s private parts, agents are going to use their palms over people’s entire bodies (over their clothes, but still, this is not a good thing).

Pat downs will only happen to passengers who decline full-body scanners, where they exist. At checkpoints without full-body scanners, only people who set off metal detectors or are randomly selected will undergo pat downs. The worse pat down technique is being used only in Boston and Las Vegas until a “planned national rollout.” Great.

Christopher Ott, a spokesman for the Massachusetts ACLU, says:

“We’re concerned about this seemingly constant erosion of privacy…Accepting these kinds of searches may keep people safer in some situations, but not in every situation, and we’re encouraging people to stop and think about what is the right balance between privacy and security.”

But one air traveler actually said she supports the increased violation of privacy because “security trumps niceties.” Excuse me, but since when is freedom a nicety? Freedom is the most important thing in the world and is why the United States of America were founded. Anyone who calls liberty a nicety really does not understand right and wrong or what America is all about.

Ott, of the ACLU, is completely right. When will people wake up and stop accepting the erosion of their freedom just because it increases their safety and security?