Accused Army killer pleads with USSC again

[Guns Guns Guns]

(Michael Graczyk/ Associated Press ) - In this Aug. 29, 2012, photo, convicted killer Cleve Foster speaks from a visiting cage at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit outside Livingston, Texas. Foster has received three reprieves from the U.S. Supreme Court, including two last year when he was within hours of execution for the slaying of a 30-year-old woman near Fort Worth in 2000. He is scheduled to die Sept. 25, 2012.

Former Army recruiter Cleve Foster went to the U.S. Supreme Court a fourth time, hoping they’d again postpone his execution that’s scheduled for Tuesday evening for his role the 2002 shooting death of a Fort Worth woman he and a buddy met at a bar.


Attorneys for Foster, 48, argued he was innocent of the slaying of 30-year-old Nyaneur Pal, a Sudanese immigrant shot in the head and dumped in a ditch on Valentine’s Day 2002.


“No court has ever found that his underlying arguments have any merit despite Foster’s repeated entreaties and trips through the criminal justice system,” Stephen Hoffman, an assistant Texas attorney general, told the Supreme Court.



Foster and a companion, Sheldon Ward, were sentenced to die for killing Pal, who was seen talking with the men at a Fort Worth bar hours before her body was found in a ditch off a Tarrant County road.



“I am as certain of Foster’s guilt as I can be without having seen him do it,” Ben Leonard, who prosecuted Foster in 2004, said last week. “He lost his innocence claim and the point of law he appeals on now is as arcane as it is unfounded.”



A gun in the motel room where Foster and Ward lived was identified as the murder weapon and was matched to an earlier fatal shooting of 22-year-old Rachel Urnosky at her Fort Worth apartment. Foster and Ward were charged but never tried.



Foster blamed Pal’s death on Ward, one of his recruits who became a close friend. Prosecutors said evidence showed Foster actively participated in Pal’s killing, offered no credible explanations, lied and gave contradictory stories about his sexual activities with her.



The two were convicted separately, Ward as the triggerman and Foster under Texas’ law of parties, which makes participants equally culpable.


Pal’s blood and tissue were found on the weapon and DNA evidence showed both men had sex with her.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...cc9a26-0727-11e2-9eea-333857f6a7bd_story.html

 

[Haiku]

Some of Palins Pals....

Coleman Barney, Alaska Militia member and convicted domestic terrorist, receives five year prison sentence.

An Alaska militia group member found guilty of weapons charges was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison in a case involving others convicted of conspiring to kill government officials.

Coleman Barney of North Pole held his head in his hands and sniffled loudly while he waited for U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan to impose the sentence Monday in Anchorage.

"I think you got into some real bad stuff here, and this sentence reflects it," Bryan said.

Barney, 38, and two other defendants have been in custody since their March 2011 arrests. The judge said Barney's time already served will count toward his term.

Before he was sentenced, Barney apologized for making poor choices and decisions. A member of the Mormon church, he said he loved his country and that the militia started out as a group of "wonderful Christian men" who wanted to protect their families in case of a collapse. He said he got caught up in the hype and said things he didn't mean.

Barney asked the judge to let him go back to his family.

"There won't ever be any problems with me," he said. "I'm not a violent man."

Yeah I actually don't think that Barney is a particularly violent man either, but that does NOT mean he would not have injured, or possibly killed someone if Schaeffer Cox had convinced him that they were in danger. These men were living off paranoia and fear, and there is no telling what they might have been capable of if the Feds, or Alaska law enforcement, had shown up at the wrong time.

By they way is anybody else struck by how easily it seems that "wonderful Christian men" can embrace violence under the right circumstances?
http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/