Latest news with #publicdefense
The Sun
3 days ago
- The Sun
I defended female serial killer Aileen Wuornos who slaughtered six – chilling encounter PROVED why she was so dangerous
STARING into the eyes of a serial killer is not for the faint-hearted - but for one lawyer that was his daily reality. Christopher Quarles, 71, defended 48 people on Death Row - including notorious female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. 5 The mum-of-one, killed by lethal injection in 2002, brutally murdered six men after claiming she was raped while working as a prostitute. Her callous murder spree - between 1989 and 1990 - was the subject of the Oscar-winning 2003 film Monster. Wuornos was the only female client who Quarles, a public defence lawyer in Florida from 1980 to 2015, represented who was sentenced to death. Her famous final words were: 'I'd just like to say, I'm sailing with the rock and I'll be back like Independence Day, with Jesus, June 6th. 'Like the movie, big mothership and all. I'll be back.' Quarles recalled how he was regularly threatened by volatile Wuronos, whose mood would flip at the drop of a hat. "Aileen was a very sick girl," he told The Sun. "It was during the pendency of my representation, I would go see her on Death Row, and half the time she would thank me for doing what I was doing. 'The other half, she would accuse me of taking money under the table from the state and storm out of the interview. 'I think her diagnosis was borderline personality disorder. She perceived danger in her encounters with strange men applying her trade as a prostitute. 'Angel of Mercy' serial killer butchered OAPs weeks after release for another murder & modelled himself on Raoul Moat 'She perceived danger where maybe there was no danger, but it's a dangerous occupation, and I'm sure she got beat up and threatened on many occasions. 'You could tell she was having mental issues.' Quarles - a staunch critic of capital punishment - met Wuornos for the first time after she had already been sentenced to death. The dangerous killer was arrested in 1991 and went to trial the following year, when she was convicted and handed the death penalty. Quarles said: "Most of the time we'd just talk about the issues of the case and what I thought was going to win, and what wasn't going to win. "We didn't really get to know each other that way, we were talking law in her case. Aileen Wournos' killing spree IN November 1989, Wuornos shot dead convicted rapist Richard Mallory, 51, in what she claimed was an act of self defense. His body was found in woods several miles away from his abandoned car. Construction worker David Spears, 43, was Wuornos' next victim. He was shot six times and his naked body was found by a Florida roadside on 1 June 1990. Peter Siems, 65, was next on Wornos' hit list. The retired merchant seaman and devoted Christian was last seen alive in June 1990 when he left Florida for Arkansas. His car was discovered weeks later in Orange Springs, Florida, but his body was never discovered. Troy Burress, 50, was a sausage salesman whose body was found with two fatal bullet wounds by the road in August 1990. The most high-profile victim, 56-year-old Charles "Dick" Humphreys, was a former Chief of Police and retired US Air Force Major and child abuse investigator. His body was found in September 1990 with having been shot six times. Finally, Walter Jeno Antonio, 62, was a trucker whose half-naked body was found on a remote path in November 1990. Wuornos was arrested on an outstanding warrant in January 1991, and her girlfriend,d Tyria Moore, agreed with police to help get a confession to the murders, which she did on 16 January. She claimed all the men had tried to rape her and she was acting in self defense — but she was found guilty and executed on 9 October 2002. "She seemed mentally ill. Half the time she would thank me and half the time she would accuse me of working for the state. "There were elements of bipolar and borderline personality disorder, which was her diagnosis. "Half the time she loved me because she thought I was representing her, and half the time she hated me because she thought I was throwing her under the bus." Death row killers As well as Wuornos, Quarles also defended Emilia Carr - at one point the youngest woman on Death Row in the US. And in 2004, he watched the execution of Johnny Robinson, convicted of the murder of Beverly St George 19 years earlier. Despite the sick crimes of his clients, he insists it hurts to see them die. "Some I was closer to than others," he added. 'Some I have developed relationships with and those hurt. Those hurt a lot. Some make me sad, I think it's not right. We shouldn't kill our citizens.' Carr was originally sentenced to death in 2010 for her role in the murder of Heather Strong, but was later resentenced to life in prison. She was just 26 years old at the time and would have faced death by lethal injection. Carr gave birth to her fourth child behind bars. They have all been placed into foster care since then. Quarles said she actually 'blossomed' while she was on Death Row. He added: 'Emilia really blossomed in prison, especially on Death Row, because she's pretty much left to her own devices. 'She started reading a lot, she was corresponding with people in Europe and she was learning a language. 'As she was mostly pregnant her whole adult life, with four kids by the age of 26, she never really had a chance to blossom. And that's what being locked up gave her. 'Her children were all dispersed into the foster care systems in the state of Florida, lost in the system forever.' He added: 'She was telling me more about how she was really enjoying life for change and who her most recent correspondent might be. 'That's what she would talk about, not death. Pen Pal programs that they have access to a lot of Europe. 'I'm against anybody being executed. It's not something that civilised societies do, but in addition to that, she was way less culpable than her co-defendant who basically got a life sentence on the first go around because he had better lawyers than she did at the trial.' Chilling final words Quarles only watched one execution after his client Robinson personally asked him to attend. Robinson was killed by lethal injection in 2004 over the murder of Beverly St George. He was on parole for a rape conviction in August 1985 when he came across St George's car in Florida after it broke down. She was abducted at gunpoint by Robinson and an accomplice and taken to a nearby cemetery, where she was raped by bother men and shot in the head. Robinson was arrested five days after for robbing four people in a disabled car and raping one of them. He requested Quarles watch him be executed - and the lawyer will never forget his final words. Quarles said: 'We were in a witness room and we didn't know what was happening. 'They escort you in and you sit there in chairs facing this panel of glass with a ratty curtain closed. "They had a tiny little speaker up in the corner of the room which provided sound between the execution chamber and where the witnesses were seated. 'And we sat there for a long time, we didn't know what was happening. We found out later that the US Supreme Court was considering whether to grant a stay or not. 'Eventually they opened the curtains and it was just surreal. "They read the death warrant and asked Johnny if he had any last words. He had told me he wasn't going to look at the witnesses. He was just going to stare at the ceiling. 'When they asked if he had any last words, he said, 'Later', and I smiled." Quarles told how Robinson's "chest heaved" as it took him up to ten minutes to die. 'The atmosphere was just surreal. I can't believe we're here doing this," he said. "We had got to know each other better, especially since I got him a new trial and I represented him during that retrial. 'So I got to see him a lot more in the days leading up to his execution.' Quarles, now retired, insisted he never felt conflicted when representing people who had committed heinous crimes. He added: 'I'm philosophically opposed to the death penalty, so I don't have a problem no matter how heinous the crime. 'There are so many reasons it's wrong. Economicall,y it makes no sense and there's evidence that this does not serve as a deterrent at all. 'There is no deterrence and it's very expensive. We get it wrong a lot. I guarantee this country has executed at least one, two or three innocent people over the years.'
CBS News
4 days ago
- CBS News
Detroit criminal justice group receives grant from NFL
Down the road from Eastern Market is Neighborhood Defender Services, a nonprofit organization that takes a holistic approach to public defense. Managing director Kristine Longstreet guides her teams as they provide criminal legal representation for nearly 35% of all indigent felony defendants in Wayne County. "You want to defend what brings them there, but you want to really, really provide representation, and you want to deal with all the collateral consequences that occur," said Longstreet. "You're asking someone that you just met to trust you. You're asking someone you just met to really understand that you understand what's going on." Longstreet says the organization engages with its low-income clients from the moment they contact it—a wraparound process that can be difficult to achieve in the traditional public defender's office. "Everybody who shows up every day that shows up for our clients feels supported and are able to do this work in a meaningful way, and are able to do the work even when it's tough," said Longstreet. That work did not go unnoticed, even reaching the NFL. As part of the league's Inspire Change initiative, the nonprofit received a grant renewal to continue supporting the community and training the next generation of public defenders. "They learned how to build client relationships and confidentiality, but they also learned case brainstorming and how to start to develop case theories and how to go through every part of our job," said training director Lauren Anderson. Anderson leads the charge, walking their interns and current law students through mock hearings to prepare them for real-world situations. She says this funding allows them to grow their programs and help as many people as they can. "We want to be able to get the education, the training, the knowledge that our attorneys, our investigators, our client advocates all have, and filter it out to the community so that they can best advocate for themselves," said Anderson.
Associated Press
5 days ago
- General
- Associated Press
California is failing to provide a vital safeguard against wrongful convictions
A CalMatters investigation has found that poor people accused of crimes, who account for at least 80% of criminal defendants, are routinely convicted in California without anyone investigating the charges against them. Close to half of California's 58 counties do not employ any full-time public defense investigators. Among the remaining counties, defendants' access to investigators fluctuates wildly, but it's almost always inadequate. The cost of this failure is steep, for individual defendants and for the integrity of California's criminal justice system. Defense investigators interview witnesses, visit crime scenes, review police reports and retrieve video surveillance footage that might prove the defendant was on the other side of town when a crime was committed, or that an assault was an act of self-defense. They do work that most lawyers are not trained to do. Without them, police and prosecutorial misconduct — among the most common causes of wrongful convictions — remain unchecked, significantly increasing the likelihood that people will go to prison for crimes they did not commit. In our new investigation, we examine the consequences of this pervasive issue through a reopened kidnapping and murder case in Northern California's Siskiyou County. Here are the takeaways: 1. Of the 10 California counties with the highest prison incarceration rates, eight have no defense investigators on staff. The lack of investigators affects counties throughout the state, from poor, rural areas like Siskiyou to the state's largest and most well-funded public defense offices. Los Angeles employed just 1 investigator for every 10 public defenders — one of the state's worst ratios, according to 2023 data from the California Department of Justice. Only seven California counties met the widely accepted minimum standard of 1 investigator for every 3 attorneys. 2. The situation is most alarming in the 25 California counties that don't have dedicated public defender offices and pay private attorneys. Most of these private attorneys receive a flat fee for their services, and the cost of an investigator would eat away at their profits. Some counties allow contracted attorneys to ask the court for additional funds for investigations, but court records show the attorneys rarely make those requests. In Kings County, which has one of the highest prison incarceration rates in California, contracted attorneys asked the court for permission to hire an investigator in 7% of criminal cases from 2018 to 2022. In Lake County, attorneys made those requests in just 2% of criminal cases over a three-year period; in Mono County, it was less than 1%. To earn a living from meager county contracts, research shows, private attorneys and firms must persuade defendants to accept plea deals as quickly as possible. An investigation is an expensive delay. 3. Prosecutors have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to investigator staffing. In Riverside, the district attorney has 30% more lawyers than the public defender but 500% more investigators, state data shows, in addition to the support of the county sheriff and various municipal police departments. This pattern repeats throughout the state. In what is supposed to be an adversarial legal system, indigent defendants and their attorneys are often on their own, facing an army of investigators who are working to secure a conviction. 4. Hidden in the data is the greatest tragedy of failing to investigate cases: wrongful convictions. The National Registry of Exonerations is filled with cases in which convictions were overturned when someone finally looked into the prisoner's claims, years or even decades after they were imprisoned. Hundreds of those cases are in California. In one exoneration out of Fresno, Innocence Project investigators found nine witnesses who corroborated their client's alibi: He was more than 25 miles away at a birthday party at the time of the crime. In a recent case out of Los Angeles, investigators found evidence of their client's innocence in a police detective's handwritten notes, material that had been included in a file turned over to the defense before trial. If their cases had been investigated on the front end, these men might have been spared a combined 30 years in prison. Maurice Possley, the exoneration registry's senior researcher, said that a failure to investigate is at the heart of most of the registry's 3,681 cases. When he looks at the evidence that overturned these convictions, he's astounded the defense didn't find it when the case was being prosecuted. 'If someone had just made the effort,' he said. 'This was all sitting there.' 5. California, once a leader in public defense, has fallen far behind. The nation's first public defender office opened in Los Angeles in 1913. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court established in 1963 that defendants have the right to an attorney in state criminal proceedings, more than a dozen California counties were already providing free representation to poor people accused of crimes. As the nation caught up, California slipped behind. The state kept its defender system entirely in the hands of its counties. Today, it is one of just two states — alongside Arizona — that don't contribute any funding to trial-level public defense, according to the Sixth Amendment Center. The state does not monitor or evaluate the counties' systems. There are no minimum standards and, for many defendants, no investigations — even in the most serious cases. Investigations affect every part of the criminal justice process. They're not just about figuring out whether a client is innocent. Even if a case is moving toward a plea deal, an investigation can turn up information that forces a prosecutor to reduce the charge or compels a judge to grant bond or shorten a prison sentence. Lawyers are discouraged from interviewing witnesses on their own. If a witness later changed their story or disappeared before trial, the attorney could have to testify on their client's behalf and recuse themself from the case. 6. This is a national problem. In 2007, the Bureau of Justice Statistics conducted a census of the nation's public defender offices. It found that 40% had no investigators on staff and that 93% failed to meet the National Association for Public Defense's industry standard of at least 1 investigator for every 3 attorneys. The study made it clear that, across the country, investigators were seen as a luxury, not a necessity. CalMatters interviews with top public defenders in several states, along with recent reports examining indigent defense systems, suggest that's still the case. In Mississippi, only eight of the state's 82 counties have public defender offices. The rest rely on private attorneys who are paid a flat fee — one that rarely covers the cost of an investigator. A 2018 report found that, in many Mississippi counties, with the exception of murder cases, the attorneys 'never hire investigators and have no time to investigate cases themselves.' Appointed attorneys told researchers they would 'get laughed out of court' for requesting additional funds for an investigator. Public defender systems that are funded and controlled by state legislatures also have severe investigator shortages. The head public defender in Arkansas, Greg Parrish, said he has only 12 staff investigators, responsible for assisting in felony cases, including capital cases, in all of the state's 75 counties. Minnesota's top public defender, William Ward, said he is trying to maintain a ratio of at least 1 investigator for every 7 public defenders but knows that's not enough. 'I would rather have a great investigator and an average lawyer than an average investigator and a great lawyer,' he said. 'Investigators make all the difference on a case.' 7. New York stands as a model of how to reform the system. New York was once very similar to California. Its counties managed their own public defender systems, without much input or funding from the state, until a class-action lawsuit, settled in 2015, led to statewide changes. New York created an office tasked with improving public defense, eventually giving it some $250 million to dole out each year. Counties that take the money must prioritize certain aspects of public defense, including investigations. In a recent report to the agency overseeing the effort, these counties consistently said the ability to investigate cases was among the most profound impacts of the new funding. Some described specific cases that ended in acquittal or significantly reduced charges as a result. California was also sued over claims it failed to provide competent defense. To settle the lawsuit, filed in Fresno County, Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 expanded the scope of the Office of the State Public Defender, which had previously handled death penalty appeals, to include support and training for county-based public defender systems. But the governor committed only $10 million in one-time grants to the effort, and that money has since run out. ___ This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
