Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Governor Commutes Gaile Owens' Death Penalty Sentence

Governor Commutes Gaile Owens' Death Penalty Sentence

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Governor Phil Bredesen has commuted Gaile Owens' death penalty sentence. Owens was convicted in 1986 of hiring someone to kill her husband.

Bredesen made the announcement Wednesday morning at a 10:30 a.m. news conference on the first floor of the State Capitol in the Old Supreme Court Chambers. The news conference was carried live on NewsChannel 5 PLUS and NewsChannel5.com.

Defense attorneys had asked the court to either commute her sentence or issue a recommendation to the governor to do so. They argued her sentence was disproportionate to similar cases and that she tried to plead guilty but was not allowed to.

Stephen Owens, Gaile's son, spoke to the media for the first time about the case in April 2010.

"My statement to the public is a plea to the Governor to spare my mother's life," said Stephen.

Stephen was 12 years old when Gaile hired a stranger to kill her husband.

"Last year I saw her for the first time in 20 years. I looked her in the eyes, and told her I forgive her," said Stephen.

Gaile had expressed remorse for soliciting the murder of Ronald Owens, but the crime itself was not in question. What is in question is whether or not the entire story came out in court.

Bredesen said he decided to commute her sentence to life in prison because she had a plea deal with prosecutors but then was put on trial when her co-defendant refused to accept the bargain.

Gaile Owens' legal team planned a news conference for 2 p.m. Wednesday to address Bredesen's announcement. Stephen Owens was expected to attend.

Stay with the NewsChannel 5 Network for more information as it becomes available.

Bredesen Commutes Death Sentence of Gaile Owens


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Bredesen Commutes Death Sentence of Gaile Owens

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010, by Blake Farmer

For the second time as governor, Phil Bredesen has commuted the death sentence of a convicted murderer – this time a woman.

Gaile Owens would have been the first woman executed since record keeping began in Tennessee. She had exhausted her legal appeals and was set to die by lethal injection in September. Governor Bredesen says he made two considerations. For one, it appears she was abused by her husband before she hired someone to kill him in 1985.

“While that in no way excuses arranging for murder, that possibility of abuse and the psychological conditions that can result from that abuse seems me at least a factor effecting the severity of the punishment.”

Also, Owens accepted a plea bargain for life in prison in exchange for her guilty plea. But that deal hinged on the man she hired to do the job also pleading guilty, which he refused to do.

With good behavior, Owens could be eligible for parole in less than two years.

Owens has already served nearly 25 years, and under a life sentence she would have been eligible parole after 30. Being on death row, she wasn’t able to build up credit for good behavior, so beyond commuting her sentence, Governor Bredesen is giving her a thousand days of so-called “prisoner sentence reduction credits.”

“She has lost the opportunity for a great deal of sentence credits she might have earned, but we’re trying to adjust for that a little bit.”

While allowing five executions to be carried out, this is the second time Bredesen has commuted a death sentence. He says he studied 33 cases of wives hiring someone to kill their husbands. Only one other had been sentenced to death, and her sentence was commuted by then-governor Lamar Alexander.

Bredesen commutes death sentence of convicted murderer Gaile Owens of Bartlett

Gaile Owens

Gaile Owens


NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen today commuted Gaile Owens’s 1986 Shelby County death sentence to life in prison.

Her execution was scheduled for Sept. 28.

With sentence credits, she could be eligible to ask the state Board of Paroles to consider her release from prison as soon as late 2011, although there is no guarantee the board would grant release at that time.

Owens, now 57, was convicted in Shelby County Criminal Court of hiring Sidney Porterfield of Memphis to kill her husband, Ronald Owens, who was beaten to death with a tire iron at the couple’s Bartlett home in 1985.

Porterfield, now 67, was also sentenced to death, but he has a hearing set for Sept. 30 to determine if he is mentally fit under the law for execution. Today’s commutation has no direct bearing on his case.

Gaile and Ronald Owens's son, Stephen Owens, had joined with his mother's lawyers in an April press conference to publicly plead for his mother's life. He said he had been estranged from his mother for more than 20 years until he met with her in prison last summer.

"I am asking for your mercy. I am the face of the victim in this tragedy," Stephen Owens said April 20. "Last year I walked into the Tennessee Prison for Women and saw my mother for the first time in more than 20 years. I looked my mother in the eyes and told her I forgive her."

He could not be reached immediately today for reaction to the governor's action.

Bredesen cited two major considerations in his decision:

— “First, there’s at least a possibility that she was in an abusive marriage. While that in no way excuses arranging for murder, that possibility of abuse and the psychological conditions that can result from that abuse seems to me at least a factor affecting the severity of the punishment.

— “Second, Mrs. Owens was offered a plea bargain prior to her trial, of life imprisonment in exchange for her guilty plea. She accepted that plea bargain, the responsibility and the punishment, and the district attorney clearly considered that an appropriate resolution as well.”

However, the governor said, that plea bargain offer was contingent on Porterfield accepting it as well. When he refused, the offer was withdrawn by prosecutors and she went to trial with Porterfield as a co-defendant.

Bredesen also said that his office reviewed 33 similar Tennessee cases of women arranging and being charged with the murder of their husbands, some involving domestic abuse and some not. He said that only two of the cases resulted in the women being sentenced to death.

“One of them, (former governor) Lamar Alexander commuted,” the governor said. “The second one I’m commuting today.”

He said that of the 31 other cases, one of the women is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole while the other 30 are serving life sentences with parole possible.

“So nearly all the similar cases we looked at resulted in prison life in prison sentences,” he said.

Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Bill Gibbons, who was not in office when the Owens case occurred, issued a statement saying, “The governor is given the power under our state constitution to commute sentences. Governor Bredesen has decided to use that power in the case of Gaile Owens. I respect the fact that it is his decision based upon his review of the circumstances.”

Although numerous groups, including the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church, had called on the governor to spare Owens’s life, Bredesen said he spoke only with one of her lawyers, George Barrett, and purposely avoided others who sought to meet with him about the case.

“I didn’t think it was appropriate,” he said. “This is not to be decided on who’s for it and who’s against it or on political pressure.”

Her attorneys filed the commutation request a year ago, citing among other issues sexual and physical abuse they said Owens suffered at the hands of her husband. Her attorneys cited a “battered spouse syndrome” defense that her trial attorneys did not pursue, but which has been used successfully in similar cases since then.

Bredesen said he met with Barrett in February. He said he turned his focus to the case in late June, after a busy winter and spring in which his work was centered on his legislative agenda. He said he made his decision now because there was no reason to force Owens — by all accounts, a model prisoner who helps other young women in prison — wait for an answer while her scheduled execution date neared.

Bredesen’s commutation order also grants Owens 1,000 days of sentence credits, which he said is less than she could have earned had the plea bargain she agreed to been accepted. With those credits alone, she would be eligible for parole consideration in spring 2012, but credits that she may begin earning starting today could push parole eligibility up to the end of 2011.

“What I’ve done here is go back and to the extent possible now, honor the concept of that plea bargain,” the governor said. “Had she received a life sentence, she would have been eligible to earn sentence credits in various ways. As a prisoner sentenced to death, this was, of course, not possible. To make some adjustment for that fact, and to provide some clarity, the commutation also grants her 1,000 days of sentence credit and the right to participate in the normal sentence credit process in the future.

“This credit is considerably less than she would likely have earned had the life sentence been in effect the last 25 years.”

In summation, Bredesen said, “Mrs. Owens is guilty of first-degree murder. She has accepted that responsibility. Nearly all the similar cases in Tennessee over the years have resulted in life sentences, and based on these considerations, I consider this a case in which the death penalty is inappropriate and a sentence of life in prison is appropriate.”

Gaile Owens Sentenced Commuted

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Gaile Owens Sentenced Commuted

Posted by Mary Cashiola on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:01 PM

Gaile Owens

  • Gaile Owens
Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen has commuted the death sentence of former Bartlett housewife Gaile Owens to life in prison.

Owens was convicted in 1986 of hiring a Memphis man to kill her husband.

Owens' defense team argued the fact that Owens agreed to a plea bargain that was later rescinded —Â because the co-defendant in her case did not agree — and that Owens was a victim of domestic violence.

Gov. Commutes Death Row Inmate's Sentence


Gov. Commutes Death Row Inmate's Sentence
Gaile Owens Has Been On Death Row Since 1986

POSTED: 10:45 am CDT July 14, 2010
UPDATED: 12:35 pm CDT July 14, 2010

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Gov. Phil Bredesen on Wednesday commuted the death sentence of a woman convicted of paying a man to kill her husband, meaning she could be released as soon as 2012.

Related: Noon Report

Gaile Owens, 57, has been on death row since 1986. Bredesen said he decided to commute her sentence to life in prison because she had a plea deal with prosecutors but then was put on trial when her co-defendant refused to accept the bargain.

The state had set a Sept. 28 execution date. Under the terms of the arrangement Bredesen announced Wednesday, she'll be eligible for parole in 2012.

It has been nearly 200 years since Tennessee executed a woman. One other woman, Christa Gail Pike, is in prison with a death sentence but she is continuing to appeal.

"I'm very pleased with the governor's thoughtful decision in regards to Gaile Owens. He gave a great deal of deliberation to this based on the evidence and circumstances and, I believe, arrived at an appropriate decision," said Owens' attorney George Barrett.

Owens was convicted in Shelby County in 1986 of hiring Sidney Porterfield to kill her husband, Ron Owens. The victim was beaten to death with a tire iron at the suburban Memphis home the couple shared with their two sons. Witnesses testified that Owens had solicited several men over a period of a few months to kill her husband.

She initially told police that she had a bad marriage but that there was little physical violence. Shortly thereafter, she told attorneys a different story: claiming her husband had repeatedly raped and denigrated her. He cheated on her and threatened to take the children when she asked for a divorce, according to defense claims.

"Ms. Owens is guilty of first-degree murder; she accepted responsibility for that," Bredesen said. "Life in prison is appropriate."

Owens agreed to a conditional guilty plea before her trial, but that agreement was rescinded after her co-defendant refused to also plead guilty, Bredesen said.

"This case also raises unresolved allegations of domestic violence and emotional abuse that, while inclusive, raise the possibility that the defendant suffered from the form of post-traumatic stress disorder then known as battered woman syndrome," the commutation statement says.

Defense attorneys claimed Owens' death sentence was out of line with others convicted of similar crimes. Attorneys found records of at least 20 women convicted in Tennessee of first-degree murder for either killing their husbands, or hiring or conspiring with someone else to have their husbands killed. None of those women were sentenced to death. Many other women were convicted of lesser charges.

It is the second time Bredesen has commuted a death sentence. In 2007, Bredesen commuted the sentence of Michael Joe Boyd to life without the possibility of parole, citing "grossly inadequate legal representation."

Good news! Death sentence commuted in Gaile Owens case

Good news! Death sentence commuted in Gaile Owens case
Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen today commuted the death sentence of Gaile Owens who had been scheduled for execution on September 28. She was sentenced to death for soliciting the murder of her husband, but her case garnered widespread publicity because of severe abuse she had endured at his hands.

Governor Bredesen cited similar cases as his reason for granting clemency, stating:
As heinous as the crime was, the record of how Tennessee has dealt with similar cases over the last century makes it clear that her death would have been a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Gaile Owens could be eligible for parole as early as 2012.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Tenn. woman on death row seeks reprieve

By Clay Carey, USA TODAY
May 3, 2010

Ron Owens lay bleeding on the floor of his suburban Memphis home on Feb. 17, 1985, when his two young sons walked in and found him, court records show.
He had been beaten with a tire iron, prosecutors said, by hit man Sidney Porterfield, who had been recruited by Owens' wife, Gaile.

Gaile Owens admitted to police that she spent months driving through seedy Memphis neighborhoods looking for someone to kill her husband for a few thousand dollars. She was arrested, tried and sentenced to death the next year.

Unless Owens, now 57, wins a reprieve from Democratic Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen before Sept. 28, she will be the first woman put to death by the state since 1820 — by lethal injection, the state's current method, or electrocution, the method when she was convicted.

With the execution date set, Owens' family, friends, supporters and legal team have stepped up their efforts to get her sentence commuted. They have been updating supporters on a Facebook page dedicated to the cause with nearly 1,500 fans. Owens' son, Stephen, 37, who was 12 when he discovered his father's beaten body, spoke publicly about his mother for the first time April 20, asking the governor for forgiveness.

The other son, Brian, 8 at the time of the murder, has not spoken publicly.

Owens' attorneys argue that she was unfairly denied an opportunity to plead guilty in 1986 to arranging the murder in exchange for life in prison. They say the jury that sentenced her to die never heard a crucial piece of evidence: that she suffered from battered wife syndrome after years of physical and mental abuse by her husband.

Because those arguments weren't part of her original trial, her attorneys said, they couldn't be considered by state appeals courts. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case.

Owens has turned down interview requests. In a letter to the governor last year, she said she was responsible for setting into motion the events that led to her husband's death. "There is not a sentence or any amount of time that would be enough to end the pain, guilt and shame that I feel," she wrote.

On the day she was arrested, court records show, Owens told police that she and her husband had a bad marriage for years and that he had been cruel to her. She said there was "very little physical violence."

Later, court documents say, she told her lawyers she had been coerced into sexual acts that made her vomit and sex so rough it injured her. There was no proof, they said, because Owens didn't seek medical treatment.

Court documents say Owens hamstrung her defense by refusing to testify or let her attorneys interview family members who might have known. Kelley Henry, an assistant federal public defender working with Owens, said Owens didn't want her family to hear the details of her abuse.

Prosecutors offered her life in prison in exchange for a guilty plea, records show. But it came with the caveat that Porterfield had to plead guilty, too. Owens took the deal, Porterfield refused, and it was withdrawn.

The last woman executed in the USA was Frances Newton, who was put to death in Texas by lethal injection in September 2005, said Richard Dieter, director of the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center. Newton was convicted of killing her husband and two children in 1987.

Owens has exhausted her legal appeals, Henry said, and her last hope lies with Bredesen. Lydia Lenker, a spokeswoman for Bredesen, said the governor is considering her request.

Don Strother, the assistant Shelby County district attorney who prosecuted Owens 24 years ago, still believes the death penalty is appropriate for her.

"This woman went for months shopping and looking for someone to kill her husband," Strother said. "It was prosecuted fairly. Everything was done by the book."

Fulya Sobczak, 50, was on the Memphis jury that convicted Owens in 1986. At the time, she said, Owens put up little defense and the jury was left with little besides the gory details of the crime.

At the request of Owens' attorneys, she said, she recently wrote a letter to the governor asking for mercy. She did it, she said, to clear her conscience.

"I really wish I'd had more information" at the time of the trial, she said. "She had abuse issues from her husband. ... I feel like she should be given another chance."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-02-death-row-woman_N.htm

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Influential Nashvillians, juror fight Gaile Owens' execution

Fulya Sobczak, a juror who voted for Gaile Owens to be put to death for killing her husband 25 years ago, now says she made the wrong decision.

Today, faced with new information that Gaile Owens may have been a battered woman trapped in a marriage of physical and sexual abuse, Sobczak believes Owens should not be executed.
"I really wish I'd had more information," Sobczak said. "She had abuse issues from her husband. … I feel like she should be given another chance."

The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the jury's death sentence, turned down Owens' appeals and set the 57-year-old woman's execution date for Sept. 28. The governor is the only one who can save her now, by commuting her death sentence to life in prison.
Owens' case has drawn together a team of influential, well-connected Nashvillians, including the high-powered public relations firm of McNeely Pigott & Fox, former Tennessean newspaper publisher John Seigenthaler Sr., Americana singer-songwriter Marshall Chapman and noted civil rights attorney George Barrett. They are joined by national and statewide women's organizations in the crusade to save her life.
They have taken up her case and her cause without charging the death row inmate one penny. They are motivated for different reasons: Some are against the death penalty and others are convinced Owens is a victim of a legal system that unfairly ignored the abuse she suffered during her 13-year marriage to Ron Owens.



Attorney George Barrett, who opposes capital punishment, is representing Owens for free.

Justice is not dispensed equally in Tennessee, they say, citing other cases in which Tennessee women killed their husbands and received lesser sentences.
Chief among their examples is the case of Mary Winkler, the West Tennessee woman who shot her preacher husband while he slept, then fled the state with their three young daughters. Winkler also claimed she was a battered woman, forced to watch pornography, wear clothing she considered inappropriate and perform what she said were unnatural sexual acts.
Winkler was sentenced to 67 days in a mental health facility for voluntary manslaughter.
The difference between the Winkler case and Owens' case is that Winkler told jurors about her abuse, but Owens would not testify, and the jury never heard about any abuse from other defense witnesses.
No one is suggesting Owens is innocent. She has admitted her guilt, both to police in 1985 and in a letter she sent to Gov. Phil Bredesen in 2009.
"Gaile has accepted responsibility," said Kelley Henry, an assistant federal public defender working with Owens.
The campaign to spare Owens' life is about evenhanded justice, Henry says.
"I've pled people guilty to murder for life in prison who did things much worse than this," Henry said. "She's not a monster. Anyone who knows her knows in their heart that executing her would be the greatest injustice."



Ron Owens was associate director of nursing at a Memphis hospital before his murder.

Ron Owens, 37, was a hospital nurse who worked through the ranks to become associate director of nursing at Baptist Hospital in Memphis. After Sunday services at Abundant Life Fellowship Church, he often stayed late to play basketball. He coached teenagers.
He stayed behind on Feb. 17, 1985, to play ball while his wife and two sons, ages 12 and 8, went to her sister's house to play board games and eat tacos.
Gaile Owens and her children arrived home after 11 p.m. and found a bloodied Ron Owens dying on the living room floor. He had suffered a savage beating and died a few hours later at the hospital.

During the earliest stages of the investigation, police thought robbery was the motive. That changed a few days later, when a man called a federal agent with a tip.
Detectives learned Owens had spent months cruising crime-ridden neighborhoods in Memphis offering $5,000 to $10,000 to just about anyone who would talk with her about killing her husband.
"I told them we were having problems," she said in a police statement, "and that it had been going on for years, and I wanted it taken care of."
She handed out keys to their home, photos of Ron Owens and outlines of his daily schedule.
Her bizarre pitch drew laughs from strangers.



“She was the laughingstock of the corner," testified George Sykes, one of the men Owens approached. "All the fellows on the corner was talking about how she's giving up money, and they would just promise her anything."
Court records show Owens gave money to men who promised to do the job but never followed through with it.
But she was persistent. She found a mechanic and ex-con named Sidney Porterfield who ran a garage at Second and Marble in Memphis.
They discussed fees for the killing ranging from $5,000 to $15,000, but they never agreed on an actual amount. They didn't discuss the manner of death. That was left up to the killer.
She and Porterfield met again on Feb. 17, 1985. They discussed the murder, but Owens told police she left thinking it wasn't going to happen.
But that night, while the woman and her children were at her sister's house, Porterfield went to the Owenses' home on Scepter Drive and pummeled Ron Owens 21 times with a tire iron.

Police arrested Owens five days after the murder.
She admitted she had been looking for a hit man, though she said she didn't know on Feb. 17 that her husband was going to die that day, records show. "I just didn't want anything done in front of the kids," she said. "I'm sorry. I wish I'd never done it."
When detectives asked her why she wanted him killed, Owens said, "I really don't know, except that I felt like I had had all I could take over the years, just the mental abuse I felt like I had been through."
But she said there was "very little physical violence."

Later, attorneys and psychological examiners pulled details out of Owens that cast the couple's relationship in a different light. Her lawyers said she had been coerced into sexual acts that actually made her throw up, and sex so rough it injured her. There was no proof, they said, because Owens did not seek medical treatment.
During a hearing three months before her trial, Owens' court-appointed attorneys asked a judge for money to pay for a psychological exam because they believed she had been abused. He agreed to appoint a psychiatrist to examine her but did not let her defense team choose its own specialist
Lynne Zager, a psychiatrist who talked to Owens later that month, said in court paperwork that Owens talked of her husband's affairs, sexual humiliation and "overall mistreatment of her." Though Owens never told her she was physically or sexually abused, Zager said she believed Owens had been battered.



But none of the details about her abuse ever came out during her trial. Court documents say Owens hamstrung her defense by refusing to testify or let her attorneys interview family members who might have known. Zager was never called to testify during her trial.
Owens' current defense team has said her lawyers should have found a way to get those details into her trial.

Leslie Ballin, the criminal defense attorney who represented Mary Winkler, agreed. "Certainly, hindsight is 20/20. But it seems like it should have been presented to the jury," Ballin said.
Brett Stein, one of Owens' lawyers in 1986, did not return calls for comment about the case. Her other attorney, James Marty, could not be reached.
But if Owens wouldn't talk, legal experts say, there may have been little they could do.
"The way that I approach a defense is, this is the client's vessel, and I am the captain of that vessel," Ballin said. If the case seems headed toward dangerous water, he said, he'll advise the client to consider another option.
"At the end of the day, it is still the client's case."
If Winkler hadn't talked about the abuse, Ballin said, the jury would have been left with the cold facts of the shooting.
"What's a jury going to do? Convict as charged," he said.

At trial, Assistant District Attorney Don Strother told the jury Owens had her husband killed over money. She had been caught embezzling money from employers, he said, and owed thousands. She hid the debts from her husband, Strother said, for fear he would leave her and take the children.
There "was one way and one way only … to salvage her way of life," Strother told the jury, "and that was to have her husband killed and collect the insurance money." In all, court records show, Ron Owens had about $115,000 in life insurance coverage.
Plea deal fell through
Early on, her attorneys said, Owens expressed a desire to plead guilty so that her family wouldn't have to live through a trial.

On Jan. 3, 1986, prosecutors offered her life in prison in exchange for a guilty plea. But it came with a big caveat: Porterfield had to plead guilty, too. Though defense attorneys asked for separate trials for Owens and Porterfield, the district attorney's office wanted to try them together because they conspired to kill Ron Owens.
Owens took the deal the day it was offered. But Porterfield refused, and the bargain was taken off the table. Later, she tried to plead guilty in court but the judge would not separate her case from Porterfield's — they had to go to trial together or plead together.
Today, her attorneys say she should have been allowed to take the deal and avoid death row.

"I don't think it's reasonable for them to make (the deal) contingent on somebody she had no control over," assistant federal public defender Henry said.
It isn't uncommon in criminal cases for pleas to fall apart that way, said University of Tennessee law professor Jerry Black, president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. What makes this one unusual is the fact that the death penalty was in play.

Black's legal association has filed a court brief supporting Owens on the plea issue. He and others say that Porterfield was mentally ill, and that his refusal to plea forced the woman to trial.
"She has no control over" Porterfield, Black said.
"The death penalty is for the worst of the worst," he said. "If you are going to offer her a life sentence, there is some indication the state didn't think she was one of those people."
Because of the abuse issues raised in her later appeals, Owens' supporters are convinced she does not deserve the ultimate punishment.
The National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, the Tennessee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and the Nashville YWCA, which runs the largest domestic violence shelter in Nashville, are pleading for her life.
Others who have met with her say they are captivated by the woman they describe as demure, friendly and a typical grandmother.



Stephen Owens speaks at a news conference for his mother, Gaile Owens. Joining Owens are attorney George Barrett, left, Pamela Sessions of the YWCA, and three friends of Gaile Owens: singer Marshall Chapman and Gene and Pat Williams

Katy Varney, a partner in the public relations firm McNeely Pigott & Fox, learned about Owens' case through an attorney friend. Varney read Owens' case file and decided she wanted to meet her.
"I entered into the relationship simply as a friend," Varney said. Seeing firsthand Owens' determination to shelter her children, even at the cost of her own life, and her ability to create a life with purpose and meaning on death row has been inspiring.

Eventually, Varney told others at the PR firm about the case, and a group of volunteers at the firm started working on her behalf for free. She said the firm's work is not meant to be a statement on capital punishment.
"We see our work in this case as supporting an individual who, through the twists and turns of our court system, has suffered disproportionably," Varney said.
Before joining the firm, Varney worked on the White House advance staffs of then-first lady Rosalyn Carter and later Vice President Walter Mondale. She was Gov. Ned McWherter's chief lobbyist. Her husband, Dave Goetz, is commissioner of the state Department of Finance and Administration.

Nashville attorney George Barrett got involved in the case after public defenders asked for his help and he found the evidence in Owens' favor appealing.
He opposes capital punishment and has worked on other death penalty cases, including the executions of Robert Glen Coe in 2000 and Phillip Workman in 2007.
Last year, Owens' defense team and supporters approached John Seigenthaler Sr., former editor and publisher of The Tennessean, and asked him to help. Seigenthaler, the newspaper's chairman emeritus, opposes the death penalty.
As he met with Owens and learned more about her, he said, he developed an emotional attachment and became an advocate for mercy.

"It's hard for me to figure out why (execution) makes sense in her case," he said. "I just have, in my gut, a sense that everything that happened in her case and everything that has happened since offends equal justice under the law."
Singer Marshall Chapman met Owens in 1993, when Chapman was getting ready to perform a concert at the Tennessee Prison for Women. She said Owens had helped prepare a fruit plate and offered her a snack. The two became pen pals and stayed in touch.

"I've grown to love her as a friend," Chapman said during a recent meeting with reporters. "She made a horrible mistake many years ago, but I feel like she's paid the price. Forget commutation. She should be pardoned."

Owens' attorneys have exhausted every legal maneuver at their disposal, with no success.
Now, their race against time pushes them to look elsewhere for relief.
Part of their strategy involves contacting the jurors in the trial who sentenced Owens to death.
About six months ago, they called the juror Sobczak, who is now 50 years old and still living in the Memphis area.
At their request, Sobczak wrote a letter to the governor asking for mercy. She did it, she said, to clear her conscience.

Sobczak said the experience of sitting on a capital case jury gave her nightmares and forced her into therapy. Thomas Bateman, another juror on the case, said he developed bleeding ulcers after the trial that still plague him today.

"I think it was a big deal for the whole jury," said Bateman, 65. "I remember a lot of people in the jury room actually crying when we had to rule on life or death for those people."
Bateman said he doesn't dwell on the verdict today. He's unsure what weight Owens' recent arguments would have carried in 1986.
"You don't reach those decisions without evidence. It would have been another part of the evidence to be considered," he said.

For Stephen Owens, who walked in and found his father 25 years ago, the case is about forgiveness. He said last week that he forgave his mother last year after spending two decades trying to find peace. "The harsh reality is that both of my parents have been absent from my life," said Stephen Owens, 37, who lives in Franklin. "Sparing my mother's life can change that reality."

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100502/NEWS03/5020370/2066/news03

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Owens' Case Cries Out For Mercy


Owens' Case Cries Out For Mercy

The Tennessean

APRIL 21, 2010

Our View

The Tennessee Supreme Court issued a disappointing decision Monday
when it set a Sept. 28 execution date for Gaile Owens, rejecting
attorneys' argument that her death sentence should be changed to life
in prison.

Now the ball is in Gov. Phil Bredesen's hands. While the governor has
allowed the death sentence to be carried out five times since he took
office in January 2003, Owens' case clearly merits a commutation to
life in prison.

"I'm very hopeful that the governor will look at the fact that Gaile
Owens' jury did not know domestic violence was involved in her case,
nor did it know that she had agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a
life sentence,'' said Stacy Rector, executive director of Tennesseans
for an Alternative to the Death Penalty. "She has been remorseful
since coming to prison 23 years ago, a model inmate, from everything
I've heard, and her sentence is disproportionate to similar crimes.

"It doesn't seem that anyone would be served by putting her to death.''

No, it doesn't. And while members of the state's highest court said
Monday that it cannot consider facts outside the court record, it
noted that Bredesen is not constrained by those limitations.

A request for Owens' clemency is said to already have been sent to
Bredesen. Those familiar with the case of the 57-year-old Memphis
woman who was convicted of soliciting the 1985 murder of her husband,
Ronald, say she suffered severe physical, sexual and emotional abuse
from her spouse.

At the time of her trial, Owens did not take the witness stand to
testify in her own defense because, her attorneys said, she wanted to
protect her young sons, both of whom are now grown, from details of
abuse she suffered at the hands of their father.

She did, however, agree to plead guilty to the murder charges, but
the original offer of a life sentence from prosecutors was taken back
because her co-defendant, Sidney Porterfield, also on death row,
wanted to go to trial.

If convicted, Owens would become the first woman to be put to death
by the state of Tennessee since Eve Martin was hanged for murder in
1820.

But a number of people and organizations have come to her aid, urging
Bredesen not to allow the execution.

"The YWCA supports thousands of Middle Tennessee victims of domestic
violence each year, and we never advocate violence as an appropriate
response to an abusive relationship,'' Nancy S. Jones, chairwoman of
the Advocacy Committee of the YWCA Board of Directors in Nashville,
wrote in this newspaper in February. "Instead, we provide counseling,
shelter, support groups, resources — all things that were unavailable
to Gaile in Memphis 26 years ago, when many cities were in the early
stages of recognizing and addressing domestic violence.
"I firmly believe that if Gaile had had access to resources like
these, she wouldn't be on death row.''

Gov. Bredesen should listen to such comments as he considers Owens'
clemency appeal. He should also consider the fact that there have
been several other cases in Tennessee, most recently that of Mary
Winkler, where women killed their husbands because of alleged
domestic violence, but they are not on Tennessee's death row.

In fact, two of these women are now on parole. Owens is not asking
for parole, only that her death sentence be commuted to life in
prison. As a battered wife, she deserves at least that — not to be
put to death.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100421/OPINION01/4210349/1007/OPINION/Editorial%20%20Owens%20%20case%20cries%20out%20for%20mercy?GID=2+yshK3F6ITPrMtOsC8EPtPWCQUMn90K5RyyL1293HY%3D

Gaile Owens' son asks Bredesen to spare DR inmate's life


Gaile Owens' son asks Bredesen to spare death row inmate's life
Stephen Owens says she is remorseful
BY CLAY CAREY • THE TENNESSEAN • APRIL 21, 2010

Stephen Owens walked into the Tennessee Prison for Women last year
and saw his mother for the first time in more than two decades.
She had spent almost 25 years behind bars, awaiting execution for the
murder of her husband, Ronald Owens. She had killed his father, but
Stephen Owens still found the strength to tell her, "I forgive you.''



Tuesday, the 37-year-old Franklin man made a public plea for Gov.
Phil Bredesen to do the same by commuting Gaile K. Owens' death
sentence.

"Mom is extremely remorseful and regretful. She has spent the past 25
years suffering her consequences. She has also spent the past 25
years reforming her life," Stephen Owens said, reading from a
prepared statement at the offices of his mother's attorneys.

Owens, 57, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 28 for hiring another
man, Sidney Porterfield, to kill her husband in Shelby County in
1985. Her attorneys and supporters have said she was unfairly
sentenced to death because the jury never knew she was a battered
woman looking for a way to escape her abusive marriage. Owens could
not bring herself to tell jurors about the abuse because she wanted
to protect her children from the details, her defenders have said.
Tennessee's Supreme Court ruled Monday that it could not commute her
sentence, and the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear her case.

The state Supreme Court said it could intervene only under
extraordinary, extenuating circumstances, and the new evidence did
not meet that test. The court made it clear that the governor has
more leeway.

"I'm confident after the legislature adjourns he'll turn his
attention to this issue,'' said Owens' attorney George Barrett. "I
think he'll do what he thinks is the right thing."

Lydia Lenker, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Bredesen had
received Owens' clemency petition.

"As he does in each of these situations, the Governor is reviewing
the document but hasn't made a decision on the matter," she said.

Owens would be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820.

Since 1980, Barrett said, more than 25 women have been convicted of
killing their husbands or having them killed. "Not a single one of
them except Gaile Owens has received the death sentence," he said.

Assistant Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry, who is working on
Owens' case, said her defense attorneys could have found others to
testify about the abuse, but that did not happen.

Stephen B. Shankman, Owens' first defense attorney, said in a 1991
affidavit that Owens "was extraordinarily remorseful for hiring
someone to kill her husband." Ultimately, Owens wasn't able to pay
Shankman's legal fees, he said, so the court appointed other lawyers
to represent her.

Plea Deal Was Offered

Owens' "most immediate and profound concern was the well-being of her
children," Shankman said. "Ms. Owens was clear. She wanted to plead
guilty and avoid a trial because she didn't want to put her children
and the rest of her family through any more pain."

In a letter dated Jan. 3, 1986, prosecutors offered Owens life in
prison in exchange for a plea of guilty. The offer came with two
stipulations: It had to be accepted that day, and Porterfield had to
agree to a similar offer.
Owens took the offer, but Porterfield insisted on going to trial, so
prosecutors threw out the deal.

"That's an extraordinary injustice," Henry said.

Don Strother, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Owens 25
years ago, said he couldn't remember the plea agreement. His
signature appears at the bottom of the letter to Owens.

Strother said he had never heard about Owens' abuse.

"It was prosecuted fairly. Everything was done by the book," Strother
said Tuesday. "Hugh Stanton (the district attorney in Memphis at the
time) didn't put up with people in his office engaging in chicanery.
I wouldn't put up with people engaging in chicanery."

Strother said he believed, then and now, that Owens deserved the
death penalty. He said she was tried as a spendthrift whose husband
was preparing to divorce her over financial issues.

This woman went for months shopping around and looking for someone to
kill her husband," Strother said.

Prosecutors told jurors that Owens killed her husband to collect an
insurance policy because she was in financial trouble.

Owens Admits Her Guilt

In a handwritten letter to Bredesen last summer, Owens admitted to
"putting the wheels in motion that resulted in Ron's death."

"The weight of being responsible for the pain of my sons and their
life without a father can choke the breath out of me," she wrote.
"There is not a sentence or any amount of time that would be enough
to end the pain, guilt and shame that I feel."

Bredesen has commuted one death sentence as governor. In 2007, he
changed convicted robber and killer Michael Joe Boyd's sentence from
death to life in prison, citing "grossly inadequate legal
representation" during his post-conviction hearing. Five men have
been executed during Bredesen's time as governor. Four of them asked
for reprieves.

Barrett said he hoped Boyd's case set a precedent that could help Owens.

"The harsh reality is that both of my parents have been absent from
my life," said Stephen Owens. "Sparing my mother's life can change
that reality. … Please do not allow a death sentence to be the legacy
of my family.

"It has taken me more than 20 years to reconcile and find peace," he
said. "I understand it is difficult to comprehend forgiveness on this
level. The only explanation I can offer is through my faith in God.

"There is no justice in taking her life," Stephen Owens said. "There
is no justice in denying the healing power of forgiveness."

Contact Clay Carey at 615-726-5933 or mcarey@tennessean.com

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100421/NEWS03/4210368/-1/RSS05

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Gaile Owens supporters begin pitch to get her off Tennessee's death row

Gaile Owens supporters begin pitch to get her off Tennessee's death row

By Richard Locker
Posted April 20, 2010

NASHVILLE – Supporters of Gaile Owens – who faces execution Sept. 28
for the contract murder of her husband -- turned their hopes toward
Gov. Phil Bredesen today with a request to commute her death sentence
to life in prison or release.

Her son spoke publicly for the first time in a press conference held
by his mother’s attorneys and supporters. “My statement today is a
public plea to Gov. Bredesen to spare my mother’s life,” said Stephen
Owens, 37, of Franklin, who visited her last year for the first time
in more than 20 years.

“I looked my mother in the eyes and told her I forgive her. Mom is
extremely remorseful and regretful. She has spent the past 25 years
suffering her consequences. She has also spent the past 25 years
reforming her life.”

The Tennessee Supreme Court on Monday denied Gaile Owens’ request to
vacate her Shelby County death sentence and modify it to life in
imprison, saying that it is lacked the authority to do so and is
bound by evidentiary limitations. It scheduled her execution for 10
p.m. Sept. 28.

But the 2 1/2-page order noted that “The governor is not constrained
by the same evidentiary limitations that guide our decisions,” and
that “accordingly, our decision to decline to issue a certificate of
commutation does not foreclose or affect the governor’s exercise of
his clemency power” under the Tennessee Constitution.

Owens was convicted of hiring Sydney Porterfield to kill her husband,
Ronald Owens, who was beaten to death with a tire iron in their
Bartlett home in 1985.

The press conference at the law office of high-profile Nashville
attorney George Barrett is part of a combined legal and public
relations campaign aimed at saving Owens’ life. Nashville singer-
songwriter Marshall Chapman, and others who have befriended Owens on
weekly volunteer visits at the Tennessee Prison for Women were
present, along with Asst. Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry and
the defendant’s son. Husband and wife volunteers Gene and Pat
Williams have created a website, www.friendsofgaile.com, to help
build support for a gubernatorial commutation.

“We’re here for two reasons. One, the unfairness of the treatment of
Ms. Owens by the judicial system in this state, and two, the
unfairness of the sentence given to her,” Barrett said.

“There have been 26 women tried and convicted in Tennessee for either
killing or arranging the killing of their spouse and not a single one
of them until Gaile Owens received the death penalty. She agreed to
plead guilty prior to her trial in Memphis and was forbid from doing
so by a quirk in the judicial system because her co-defendant Mr.
Porterfield would not plead guilty. Mr. Porterfield is now on death
row claiming mental retardation since birth.

“Secondly we’re here because of proportionality of the sentence given
to her,” Barrett continued. “She’s a battered woman. She has battered
woman syndrome. That issue has never been tried before any court
despite an abundance of evidence. We think this is an ideal situation
for the governor to use his constitutional powers to grant commutation.”

Henry, who is Owens’ post conviction attorney, told reporters that
she’s been doing death penalty work for 20 years “and the Gaile Owens
case stands apart from every other case I’ve been involved in as an
attorney. Ms. Owens is the only inmate in this country that I’ve been
able to find who accepted a plea offer of life in prison and yet
ended up sentenced to death.

“That’s an extraordinary injustice in this case and one that does not
apply to any other inmate in this country, male or female.”

Barrett said he has not discussed the case directly with Bredesen but
with the governor’s legal counsel. Barrett said he expects the
governor to turn his attention to the commutation request after the
state legislature adjourns, probably next month.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/apr/20/gaile-owens-supporters-begin-pitch-get-her-tenness/

Son fighting for Mom Gaile Owens

Stephan is fighting for his mother. http://www.wsmv.com/news/23208856/detail.html

Monday, April 19, 2010

Supreme Court sets execution date for death row inmate Gaile Owens


Supreme Court sets
execution date for death row
inmate Gaile Owens

By Clay Carey • THE TENNESSEAN • April 19,
2010

The Tennessee Supreme Court has set an execution
date for Gaile K. Owens, one of two women on the
state’s Death Row.

Owens, 57, will be put to death at 10 p.m. on Sept.
28, according to an order issued by the court today.

She was given the death penalty for soliciting the
1985 murder of husband Ronald Owens.

Owens’ attorneys had filed paperwork asking that
her sentence be commuted to life in prison. If she is
put to death later this year, she will be the first
woman executed by the state since 1820.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100419/NEWS03/100419065/-1/WORKAROUND01

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Hasn't Death Row Inmate Gaile Owens Suffered Enough?

Politics | 03/16/2010 12:00 am

Hasn't Death Row Inmate Gaile Owens Suffered Enough?

By Andrew Belonsky

Gaile Owens

Yes, the 57-year-old maintains that she called off the "hit," and Henry explains that Owens "accepts her responsibility for setting the wheels in motion that led to her husband’s death and knows that her actions made her guilty of accessory before the fact to first-degree murder." Porterfield, meanwhile, has employed a different tactic: He’s claiming to be mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for execution.

One of the most important aspects of the Owens case revolves around her abuse — abuse of which the jury never heard. Though courts today regularly take "battered woman syndrome" into account, the condition hadn’t yet been codified – or, at least, recognized – back in the 1980s. And it’s that argument that should be of utmost importance to the Tennessee Supreme Court. People, regardless of gender, can only take so much abuse before they snap. Clearly Owens had reached a tipping point. Whether she deserves more or less blame than Porterfield remains a matter of debate, but this woman, now a grandmother, certainly deserves more than a death suitable for the nation’s most egregious criminals.


Rather than subjecting her children to the horrors she had endured, Owens ... pleaded guilty straightaway, hoping to receive life imprisonment.

The Court hasn’t indicated which way it will rule, but as Owens’s story gains more attention – and online support – we’re hoping the justices give her what she deserves: a commuted sentence that allows her more time with her family and the friends she’s made in prison.

If you want to learn more about Owens’s case, head over to the Friends of Gaile website, where you can find information on which authorities to contact to fight for a commutation of Owens’s death sentence.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Lion & the Lamb Gaile Owens, law & order, & Honest Abe by George Hartz

LION AND THE LAMB: Gaile Owens, law and order, and Honest AbeBy George Hartz / Chronicle contributor
Gaile Owens is a lady. More than that, she is a sensitive lady. Learning of her husband's adultery, she was devastated. Her husband, rather than being repentant of his unfaithful conduct, instead felt trapped in his marriage and became abusive. In 1986, this sensitive lady reacted in a way she has been regretting ever since. She hired a man to kill her husband. She pleaded guilty to the murder, believing that she would be sentenced to life in prison. Instead, the verdict was the death penalty.

Unfortunately, Gaile Owens lives in Tennessee, where successful prosecutors move up the ranks and some become judges and some even become "Law and Order" governors.

Law and order is always a successful theme for candidates seeking election, but it gives one cause to wonder. Fair laws are something to which we can aspire, but keeping order? Well, the Nazis were very good at that. Rogue nations take all sorts of violent measures to keep order. Eventually all such measures fail. Is there any order in Iran today? What we really need is law and justice.

But back to the case of Gaile Owens: except for the fact that she has confessed her guilt and shown remorse, her case is not unlike several other persons on death row who have lost the battle for life.

First, there is inadequate defense. Like all executions before her, the candidates were poor and could not afford a competent attorney. And then there are zealous prosecutors who have honed their skills. They know how to control the jury from beginning to end. They know how to mute eye witnesses and bring pressure on other witnesses to reverse testimony in exchange for immunity. In many cases, the reversed testimony comes from an incarcerated inmate with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Most of all, they are experts on technicalities. They know how to keep evidence from the eyes and ears of the jury.

Before Gail was accused, she was abused. She was the victim of an unfaithful husband. But none of this part of her story was allowed to be viewed by the jury.

Yes, Gaile Owens is a victim of a broken justice system based on retaliation and capital punishment. Unlike other civilized nations who have abandoned the death penalty, we see no contradiction in making our state an instrument of retribution.

Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?

The qualities of mercy, forgiveness and rehabilitation have been drained out of our justice system.

I often think of the great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln. Today, Republicans take pride in his historical presence, as indeed they should. There was a forgiveness factor in this man. He was moved by appeals for mercy, and with a magnimous spirit along with his executive power, he saved thousands of lives. It is a fact that of all sentences of death imposed on Union soldiers for sleeping at post, not one was approved by Lincoln.

What is less known is that Lincoln issued 331clemency warrants to individuals convicted in civil courts. It seems sad that standard bearers of his party today cannot embrace this part of his nature.

Gaile Owens may well be an example of the true qualities of the people of Tennessee. The state has requested that the state Supreme Court set the date for the execution of Gaile Owens. We wait and see.

Thinktrain by Rob Robinson/Gaile Owens doesn't deserve to die

If it’s OK for Mary Winkler to live as a free citizen and have custody of her kids, it isn’t OK for Gaile Owens to be executed by the state.
Owens is the only inmate in Tennessee prison history to face execution after accepting a prosecutor’s offer to plead guilty with a life sentence.
Though there is little doubt that Owens was severely abused by her husband, the jurors who decided her fate never knew about it. Owens never testified and hasn’t sought publicity for her plight, out of respect for her children. She even declined to appear on Oprah when approached by the program. Owens is remorseful for her crime and from the outset pled guilty. She signed a plea agreement to serve a life sentence, which the prosecution refused to accept when her co-defendant rejected the same offer.
In my opinion, this isn’t someone who deserves to die for her crimes, but my point of view isn’t the one that matters at this point. Governor Bredesen, please do the just and equitable thing and let Owens live.

Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry will discuss the case of Gaile K. Owens


The Case of Gaile Owens, a talk by Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry

Date:
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time:
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location:
Renaissance Room, Vanderbilt Law School, 131 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37203


Please consider coming to hear Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry discuss Gaile's case at Vanderbilt Law School on March 18.

Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry will discuss the case of Gaile K. Owens, one of two women on Tennessee's Death Row.

Owens was arrested in 1985 and later convicted for hiring a man to kill her husband, Ronald Owens. Her attorney, George Barrett '57, and two federal public defenders, including Henry, have filed a formal plea asking Gov. Phil Bredesen to commute her sentence to life in prison.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Woman On Death Row Asks For Mercy

Gaile Owens, Who Hired Husband's Killer, Says She Was Battered Wife

POSTED: 7:00 pm CST February 16, 2010
UPDATED: 8:45 am CST February 17, 2010

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The first woman on Tennessee's death row is asking the state Supreme Court for mercy because she says she suffered from "battered-wife syndrome."

However, prosecutors said Gaile Owens prevented her own lawyers from making that argument at her trial.

The state has asked the court to set a date for Owens' execution after she hired someone to kill her husband in 1986. Owens wants the sentence reduced to life in prison.

In a response filed by the state Tuesday, prosecutors said Owens refused to undergo the mental evaluation her defense requested to prove a battered wife defense.

She also refused to testify in either the guilt phase or the penalty phase.

http://www.wsmv.com/news/22585194/detail.html

I desperately want to fight for my mother's life


From Stephen`s blog :

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Gaile Owens


I desperately want to fight for my mother's life. Our relationship is alive and I can only plea to others not to take this away from me now.

I am uncertain of the path that God is leading me on but I can tell you that He is showing up every day and I can see and feel His presence in the people and events unfolding around me. I know the only way I ever would have believed that my mother had changed and reformed her life was to see the evidence face to face. God has revealed this proof and continues to reveal His work to me every time I see her. It is so difficult for me to describe in words. It is real. It is powerful. It is amazing. It is love. It is peace. It is undeniable.

Deeper Look Shows Even More Cases of Unequal Justice


Deeper Look Shows Even More Cases of Unequal Justice

That's the title of John Seigenthaler's followup article in the Sunday edition of the Tennessean. LINK

A news story published here Dec. 20 under my byline reported critically on the striking differences in sentences that state judges and juries gave three Tennessee women convicted of killing their abusive husbands.

Further research makes it clear that the article failed to deal in adequate depth with the question of whether penalties handed down in such cases by Tennessee courts reflect what Judge Richard S. Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals called "the reality and perception of equal justice."

A review of the disparate levels of punishment the courts dispensed in these and six similar cases over the last quarter-century makes the point:

• Two of the nine cases resulted in the killers being granted full probation — one after a new trial and the other after 67 days in a mental health facility.

• One of the cases resulted in a life sentence being commuted to 18 months and probation.

• Another resulted in a prison term of 15 years and early parole.

• Four of the cases resulted in life sentences. Two of these women were freed on parole; the others are entitled to parole hearings.

• Only one woman was sentenced to death. Gaile Owens' court appeals were exhausted last month, and the Tennessee Supreme Court soon will set the date for her death.

In all nine cases, the murders were brutal. In four of them, wives arranged for hit men to kill their husbands. In all but one of the cases, defense lawyers, either during trial or on appeal, presented evidence that the wives had endured physical or emotional abuse from their spouses. In at least half the cases, defense lawyers sought to prove that the killers suffered from battered woman syndrome — a condition the courts have defined as "a female who is the victim of consistent, severe domestic violence."

David Raybin, a criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor — who convicted the killer in one of the nine cases and successfully defended the killer in another — believes that the pattern of inconsistent sentencing may have resulted from the failure of some defense lawyers to effectively present battered woman syndrome testimony. Court records seem to document that.

Seigenthaler's original article, "The uneven hand of justice in TN murders," was noted here last month.

Thoughts on justice - Gaile Owens



Thoughts on justice

John Seigenthaler :

http://www.friendsofgaile.com/news/Seigenthaler-Deeper%20look,unequal%20justice_Tennessean_Jan.%2010,%202010.pdf

Support system makes difference for victims


Support system makes difference for victims

By Mary Jones • February 28, 2010

Tennessee Voices

One day, out of the blue, I was grabbed from behind and choked by my husband. In the seconds that it took to realize what he was doing to me, I also thought this was my last breath. What will happen to my children? Will anybody find my body? Is this real?

Domestic violence showed its ugly face in my marriage long before I recognized it as such. I dismissed my husband's rude, selfish and demeaning behavior as just having a bad day. This behavior became a way of life in our relationship. I never understood why or what I had done to make him behave this way. Even in asking, I was made to feel stupid for not realizing that it was me who made him do the things he did. I could never live up to his standards.

My husband was an abuser of drugs and alcohol and did not waste any time after the marriage vows to show his true colors. His emotional and verbal abuse stripped me of my own existence. My young children watched and heard us. When I looked into my children's eyes and saw that they were looking for answers from me, I knew that I had to take action. It was not until about six months after one particularly dangerous episode that I found the last bit of self-esteem that I still held onto and left him.

We left when he was not home. We ran with the mere clothes on our backs, no money in our pockets and my heart in my throat. I had one purpose: to get my children to safety.

Thankfully, I had options

I have a lot in common with Gaile Owens. We are both mothers. We are both victims of domestic violence. We both endured horrors that no one should have to endure. Like Gaile, I, too, feared involving my family in my situation. Yet, unfortunately for Gaile, that is where the similarities end.

When I made up my mind to leave my husband, I called the YWCA's domestic violence crisis line. It was the voice on the other end that ultimately saved my life and the lives of my children.

In 1985 in Memphis, Gaile Owens did not know that help was available because the services were limited, and even those were not well-publicized. The first services in the Memphis area for abused women were offered in 1979 in the form of a crisis line — listed in the phone book under "Wife Abuse" — that operated only four hours a day. Today, the YWCA Nashville's crisis line is available around the clock.

In 1985 in Memphis, Gaile felt she had nowhere to turn. Had a support system for domestic violence victims been well-established, perhaps Gaile today would not be sitting on death row for killing her husband.

Thanks to the YWCA, I am living a violence-free life. I now have hope. I keep my children safe. Together, we are getting stronger every day.

If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, please get help. Call the YWCA Crisis & Information Line at 615-242-1199 or 800- 334-4628. It is free and confidential, 24 hours a day.

Battered woman's syndrome is real. Domestic violence is real. The fear for your life is real. And Gaile Owens is proof of how real it can be.

Mary Jones of Nashville is a domestic violence survivor and a volunteer with the YWCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee.

Does battered woman deserve execution?


Does battered woman deserve execution?

By Nancy S. Jones • February 28, 2010

Tennessee Voices

I don't know Gaile Owens, but I feel like I do. At the YWCA we work with some women like Gaile who suffer from trauma as severe as battered woman syndrome, a serious mental disorder that mental health professionals and courts have recognized in women who are the victims of consistent, severe domestic violence.

Out of respect for Gaile, who is now awaiting an execution date for arranging the 1984 murder of her abusive husband, I am not going to share the horrid details of how she suffered. She never testified in her own defense in order to protect her children from those details, and I will honor her silence.

Suffice it to say that Gaile has been diagnosed with battered woman syndrome, according to court documents and a recent thorough assessment by Jan Vogelsang, a licensed clinical social worker with almost 30 years of experience in this area. YWCA domestic violence staff describe the symptoms of battered woman syndrome as a high level of anxiety that interrupts normal life, repeated reliving of painful abusive episodes, inability to develop and maintain healthy relationships, and an acute sense of isolation. Does this disorder excuse her criminal conduct? Absolutely not.

Help not available back then

The YWCA supports thousands of Middle Tennessee victims of domestic violence each year, and we never advocate violence as an appropriate response to an abusive relationship. Instead, we provide counseling, shelter, support groups, resources — all things that were unavailable to Gaile in Memphis 26 years ago, when many cities were in the early stages of recognizing and addressing domestic violence.

I firmly believe that if Gaile had had access to resources like these in 1984, she wouldn't be on death row. We couldn't be there to help her then, but we can help her now.

Because of our work in domestic violence in Middle Tennessee, members of the YWCA board of directors have been moved to speak out on behalf of Gaile. In doing so, we take no position on the appropriateness of the death penalty as a punishment for criminal conduct. We do question, however, whether Gaile's case rises to the level of a capital crime, given the outcome of comparable cases that resulted in probation or early parole.

Gaile has never denied her guilt. She isn't asking for a pardon. Her attorneys are asking for commutation of her sentence to life in prison, which was the original deal she arranged with the prosecutor 25 years ago. Unless the Tennessee Supreme Court or Gov. Phil Bredesen provides relief from the death sentence, we will be executing a battered woman.

Nancy S. Jones is chairwoman, Advocacy Committee, YWCA Board of Directors in Nashville.

Tennessee Voices - Gaile Owens

Support system makes difference for victims

http://www.friendsofgaile.com/news/Does%20battered%20woman%20deserve%20execution.pdf

Does battered woman deserve execution?

Does battered woman deserve execution?


http://www.friendsofgaile.com/news/Support%20system%20makes%20difference%20for%20victims.pdf

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Battered woman's life is in Bredesen's hands

THE TENNESSEAN
Caitlin O'Leary

February 28, 2010

Gov. Phil Bredesen holds the life of a battered
woman in his hands. The state will execute Gaile
Kirksey Owens, 57, by lethal injection unless the
governor commutes her sentence to life in prison.

Gaile is a victim of severe domestic violence who
was arrested in 1985, and later convicted, for hiring
a man to kill her abusive husband, Ronald Owens.

After exhausting her appeals, her lawyer and two
public defenders have filed a formal plea asking
Gov. Bredesen to commute her sentence to life in
prison.
Though she was diagnosed with battered woman’s
syndrome, Gaile’s jurors never heard about the
physical, emotional and sexual abuse she endured
from her husband.

Among nine comparable cases over the past 25
years: two defendants are serving life sentences and
six have received probation or early parole, while
only Gaile is facing death. Unless Gov. Bredesen
commutes Gaile’s sentence, she will be the first
woman executed by the state since 1820.

Not only were there very few, if any, resources for a
battered woman in the early ’80s, but a woman who
has suffered severe and consistent abuse is not in a
competent state of mind. Gov. Phil Bredesen should
commute Gaile Owens’ sentence to life in prison and
save the state from executing a battered woman.

www.tennessean.com

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Gaile Owens' attorneys ask TN high court to commute death sentence

By Kate Howard
THE TENNESSEAN

Attorneys for death row inmate Gaile Owens have asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to commute her death sentence, saying her case presents unique circumstances that warrant the rare move.

Owens, 57, was given the death penalty by a jury for soliciting the 1985 murder of her husband, Ronald Owens. She hired Sidney Porterfield, who beat Owens to death. Porterfield is also on death row.

Owens' attorneys argued in briefs filed with the Tennessee Supreme Court Friday that Owens punishment should be commuted to a life sentence because she is the only inmate who is on death row after agreeing to a plea bargain for a life sentence, and no jury ever heard the details of abuse she alleges that she endured from her husband.

The woman said she was sexually and emotionally abused by her husband, but she never took the stand because she wanted to protect her sons from the details. She also agreed to plead guilty to avoid a trial, but the prosecutor took the offer off the table after Porterfield, her co-defendant, refused to also plead guilty. The judge refused to try their cases separately.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Owens' appeal, leaving
her to appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court or the governor.

"I have, pending with the governor, a petition for commutation which I believe he will address after the Tennessee Supreme Court has acted on the attorney general's motion for an execution date,'' said Nashville attorney George Barrett in a statement. "Otherwise, we will be executing a battered woman. That would be a first for Tennessee.''

The attorneys also pointed out that Owens is the only woman in the state of Tennessee who got a death sentence for the death of her husband.

Owens is one of two women on death row in the state, and would be the first woman executed here since the early 1900s.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Attorneys urge high court to commute death sentence

NASHVILLE (AP) — Attorneys for death row inmate Gaile Owens on Friday asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to commute her sentence to life in prison. Alternately, the request asks the court to recommend Gov. Phil Bredesen commute the sentence.

The request is in response to the attorney general's motion to set an execution date, Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry said.

The attorneys said Owens, 57, was the victim of severe domestic abuse and the court never heard the evidence of that abuse.

Owens was convicted in Shelby County in 1986 of hiring Sidney Porterfield to kill her husband.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Deeper look shows even more cases of unequal justice

January 10, 2010


Owens on death row while others are free

By John Seigenthaler

A news story published here Dec. 20 under my byline reported critically on the http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091220/NEWS03/912200335/The-uneven-hand-of-justice-in-TN-murders">striking differences in sentences that state judges and juries gave three Tennessee women convicted of killing their abusive husbands.

Further research makes it clear that the article failed to deal in adequate depth with the question of whether penalties handed down in such cases by Tennessee courts reflect what Judge Richard S. Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals called "the reality and perception of equal justice."

A review of the disparate levels of punishment the courts dispensed in these and six similar cases over the last quarter-century makes the point:

• Two of the nine cases resulted in the killers being granted full probation — one after a new trial and the other after 67 days in a mental health facility.

• One of the cases resulted in a life sentence being commuted to 18 months and probation.

• Another resulted in a prison term of 15 years and early parole.

• Four of the cases resulted in life sentences. Two of these women were freed on parole; the others are entitled to parole hearings.

• Only one woman was sentenced to death. Gaile Owens' court appeals were exhausted last month, and the Tennessee Supreme Court soon will set the date for her death.

In all nine cases, the murders were brutal. In four of them, wives arranged for hit men to kill their husbands. In all but one of the cases, defense lawyers, either during trial or on appeal, presented evidence that the wives had endured physical or emotional abuse from their spouses. In at least half the cases, defense lawyers sought to prove that the killers suffered from battered woman syndrome — a condition the courts have defined as "a female who is the victim of consistent, severe domestic violence."

David Raybin, a criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor — who convicted the killer in one of the nine cases and successfully defended the killer in another — believes that the pattern of inconsistent sentencing may have resulted from the failure of some defense lawyers to effectively present battered woman syndrome testimony. Court records seem to document that.

"If the lawyer can demonstrate that the defendant was a battered woman, it helps the jurors understand why she acted as she did," Raybin said. "Evidence that a defendant has suffered from an abusive relationship can be a strong mitigating factor in the minds of jurors when they consider punishment."

Eight cases, various results

Here is a chronological review of the eight cases that resulted in sentences less severe than the death penalty:

• 1981: Dr. Rose Horne Leaphart, a practicing physician in Nashville, was convicted of paying $10,000 to Gary Carlton Jackson and Michael Miller Jackson to kill her husband, Bobby, a dental student at Meharry Medical College. Raybin prosecuted, and Mike Engle, a Metro public defender, represented Dr. Leaphart. A witness told jurors that Leaphart admitted that she was present when the two hit men beat her husband to death with a baseball bat. She accompanied the killers as they stuffed the victim's body in the trunk of his car. The body was discovered two months later in an Atlanta tow-in lot.

Leaphart's battered woman defense included testimony that she had suffered two years of marriage during which her husband had beaten her, broken her arm, blacked her eyes and forced her to submit to drug injections. There was psychological testimony that she fit the profile of a victim of battered woman syndrome.

An appeals court noted that the jury, because of the testimony supporting her battered wife claim, was "somewhat sympathetic" and gave her a "near-minimum" 15-year sentence. Dr. Leaphart has since been paroled and has regained her license to practice medicine.

• 1982: Barbara Tipton operated the Bi-Lo Diner in Grainger County with her husband, Ronald, to whom she had been married for 18 years. On July 5, Ronald Tipton's body was found in his wrecked car on a rural county road. He had died from a shotgun blast to the neck.

His wife was convicted of accessory to murder after Charles Brooks, a local man with whom she had a sexual relationship, confessed that she had enticed him to murder her spouse, promising to share $400,000 in life insurance.

Barbara Tipton testified that in the months before he was murdered, her husband had sexually abused her. Her lawyers, however, did not present a battered woman syndrome defense. She and Brooks were sentenced to life in prison. Released on parole, she has since died.

• 1982: Evelyn Mosher was at a rock concert in Chattanooga on the night her husband, Robert, was slain at their Signal Mountain home. An assailant used a sheet of plastic to suffocate him. Evelyn Mosher collected $200,000 in life insurance.

It was not until 1985 that police, suspecting her of trafficking in drugs, raided her home and found evidence linking her to Bobby Wilcoxson, whom she had employed as the hit man. Wilcoxson, convicted and sentenced to death for Robert's murder, died in prison after his death sentence was set aside. Evelyn Mosher, sentenced to life for first-degree murder, is currently eligible for parole.

• 1982: Kathryn England drugged her abusive husband, then shot and killed him while he slept. She fired the fatal rifle shot from an upstairs room through a hole she had created in their bedroom ceiling.

Her lawyers presented evidence that she had been physically and sexually abused by her husband. Still, she was convicted and sentenced to serve a life sentence. In prison, she contracted breast cancer. Because of her illness, Gov. Lamar Alexander commuted her sentence to the 18 months she had served. Freed in 1984, she remarried and later died.

• 1985: Frances Blaylock was separated from her husband, Roy Lee Blaylock, a McMinn County farmer, when he was shot to death by Chris Smith, a former high school classmate of one of the Blaylock's daughters. After firing the fatal shotgun blast, Smith, by agreement with Frances Blaylock, took $5,000 from the victim's wallet. The murder occurred after a stormy marriage of 25 years marked by drunken, violent attacks by the husband.

At trial, Blaylock's lawyers sought to put on evidence from a psychologist that she suffered from battered woman syndrome, but the trial judge limited testimony to the question of whether Frances Blaylock was sane. Both Blaylock and Smith were convicted of first-degree murder. She is now free on parole.

• 1987: Deborah Mae Furlough murdered her husband, Tim, as he drank beer beside a creek in Macon County. She shot him first with a rifle, then with a pistol. The killing followed an argument that interrupted a drive from Adolphus, Ky., to Nashville. A witness to the murder, Mary Sue Scott, a family friend, helped her bury the body in a nearby sandbar. Tim's corpse was discovered two days later by fishermen.

At trial, Furlough testified that she had endured a violent marriage during which her husband had put a knife to her throat, tried to smother her with a pillow and threatened her with a hammer, which he used to sexually abuse her. She killed her husband, she stated, after he repeatedly told her he was going to have sex with their infant daughter.

She was convicted of first-degree murder in 1988 and has since been freed on parole.

• 1990: Laurie Zimmerman and her husband, Mark, operated a marketing business from their Murfreesboro home. There, they argued bitterly one night over whether the husband would take their 2-year-old son from the house. The argument ended when Laurie fatally stabbed Mark with a butcher knife. His blood-alcohol level at death indicated that he was intoxicated.

Zimmerman was tried twice. The first case resulted in her conviction for second-degree murder with a 15-year prison term. During that trial, her two lawyers sharply disagreed over a defense strategy. One of them, Herb Rich, favored a battered woman syndrome defense and told jurors that Zimmerman and other witnesses would testify that she was an abused wife. David Vincent, Zimmerman's lead lawyer, disagreed and convinced her not to take the stand in her own defense.

Her jury heard nothing of the fact that on the day before the fatal argument Laurie Zimmerman had sought a court order protecting her from drunken spousal assaults. No psychological expert was called to support a battered woman defense. Her medical doctor was not called to document evidence of physical assaults.

After her conviction, Zimmerman hired David Raybin, who won for her a motion for a new trial. Zimmerman testified in the second case, and a psychologist asserted that she was a victim of battered woman syndrome. The jury agreed. She was found guilty of negligent homicide, and the judge granted her full probation. She moved out of state and remarried.

• 2006: Mary Winkler, the wife of an ordained minister, shot her husband, Matthew, in the back while he was still in bed. The pellets severed his spine. She fled the residence with their three young daughters and drove to Alabama, where she was apprehended by police.

Her lawyers defended her on the grounds that she was a battered wife, emotionally and sexually abused by Matthew and constantly harassed by him as a spendthrift. Following a voluntary manslaughter conviction, the judge granted her probation and freed her after she spent 67 days in a mental health facility. She has regained custody of her three children and lives in McMinnville.

Death sentence for Owens

Gaile Owens faces a death sentence even though many aspects of her case are identical to those of the eight other women.

She, too, hired a killer, Sidney Porterfield, who beat her husband to death with a tire iron in Memphis in 1985. Her lawyers initially planned to present a battered woman defense, then abandoned that course after the judge limited the statement of a professional psychologist to whether Owens was sane. That same psychologist, Dr. Lynne Zager, who was prepared to appear as a battered woman witness for Owens, testified 20 years later for Mary Winkler. Owens' jurors heard not a word about the physical, emotional and sexual abuse she had endured. She had agreed to plead guilty in return for a life sentence — but the district attorney would not accept that plea unless Porterfield, the hit man, entered the same plea. Porterfield is appealing his capital conviction on grounds that he is mentally impaired.

Owens' death would be Tennessee's sixth execution since 2000. She would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in 190 years.

As the state Supreme Court considers an early death date, Owens' lawyer, George Barrett, is preparing to petition Gov. Phil Bredesen to commute her sentence from death to life imprisonment. The petition will question whether Owens' sentence reflects equal justice under the law.