Only one this month...
December 16, John David Duty of Oklahoma.
WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Supreme Court opened its new term, justices on Monday declined to hear appeals from an Oklahoma death row inmate who killed a fellow prisoner and from the alleged ringleader of a drug smuggling ring in Oklahoma City.
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Without comment, the court upheld the death sentence of John David Duty, who strangled inmate Curtis Wise in 2001 at the state penitentiary in McAlester. The court also rejected the appeal of Dennis Emerson Gonzalez, one of the Los Angeles gang members convicted in 2005 of running a methamphetamine operation in Oklahoma City.
Duty was in prison for armed robbery, first-degree rape and shooting with intent to kill when he strangled Wise.
Duty pleaded guilty to the murder, waived the presentation of mitigating evidence during his sentencing and even said he wanted the death sentence.
However, he later appealed, first to state appeals courts and then to federal courts, claiming his defense attorney was ineffective. His appeals failed in all of the courts.
Gonzalez is serving a 30-year federal sentence for his role in setting up a methamphetamine smuggling and distribution ring in Oklahoma City. According to prosecutors, Gonzalez was the leader of a group from which 12 people were indicted. Gonzalez was convicted on 63 counts and got multiple sentences that ran concurrently, so he is effectively serving a 30-year sentence.
On a day when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected hundreds of cases, justices also declined to hear the appeal of Jesil Abraham Wilson, who was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for the death of a Tulsa man that occurred in 1997, when Wilson was 13.
Chris Casteel, Washington Bureau