Another One In CA Escapes The Hangman's Noose

[dales]

California killer Stevie Lamar Fields dies on death row


PUBLISHED: February 28, 2017 at 2:26 pm | UPDATED: February 28, 2017 at 2:41 pm



Condemned killer Stevie Lamar Fields, 60, was pronounced dead Tuesday on San Quentin State Prison’s death row, the California Department of Corrections reported.

The cause of death is unknown, and an autopsy will be conducted, the agency’s press release said. Fields was found unresponsive in his cell at 5:38 a.m. Tuesday. He did not have a cellmate.

In 1984, Fields had come within 42 hours of execution before the state Supreme Court approved a stay.

Fields had been on death row since 1979, convicted of the kidnapping, rape and killing the previous year of Rosemary Cobb, a 26-year-old student librarian at the University of Southern California.

He also was convicted of 12 other felonies, including two rapes and three kidnappings that occurred in an eight-day period after the murder.

The Los Angeles spree took place two weeks after he was paroled from a manslaughter sentence.

The California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence in December 1983. A year later, less than two days before his scheduled execution, he received a stay to give his lawyers a chance to work on new arguments in the case.

His lawyers filed several appeals in the following decades in attempts to overturn his death penalty. Among the claims were:
•Failure of his lawyer to investigate potential evidence concerning psychological damage caused by Fields’ cruel childhood.
• Bias by a juror whose wife had been a crime victim.
•Improper injection of religion into the proceedings by a juror who cited biblical quotations during the penalty phase.

In the last action on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 let stand without comment a federal appeals court’s reinstating of Fields’ death penalty.

[RayThom]

The cause of death is unknown, and an autopsy will be conducted, the agency’s press release said. Fields was found unresponsive in his cell at 5:38 a.m. Tuesday. He did not have a cellmate.

After the untimely death of his soulmate, Rosemary, Fields became quiet and inconsolable. An unnamed source for the Department of Corrections says that Fields, lonely for so many years, died of a broken heart.

The man always kept him down.

[Bicycle Bill]

Apparently California has found the surest yet least traumatic means of putting a condemned prisoner to death.

Old age.

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

31 years of death row level security, legal appeals, etc. - if he'd been given LWOP instead, the state would have had millions more to spend on children, the elderly, the disabled, etc.

DP is a waste of $, period. It does not deter and vengeance is not the purview of our legal system.

[dales]

The MAJORITY of CA voters would disagree.

[BoSoxGal]

Barely: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6365

I expect that will change in the next decade, two at most - as more info on exonerations is shared through mainstream media. Also many of these polls don't get into detail explaining to voters the cost differential between LWOP & DP, so the numbers are often skewed by that.

The DP will die out before I do, I'm fairly sure. Possibly not in the shithole South/Texas, it might take them longer to clue into common sense and basic humanity.

[Bicycle Bill]

I expect that will change in the next decade, two at most - as more info on exonerations is shared through mainstream media.

What possible reason for exoneration could you ever find or even posit for a murder as pre-meditated, as cold-blooded, and as heinous as this one — http://people.com/crime/mom-poisons-son ... -50-years/?  It's bad enough this so-called mother poisoned her 5-year-old son with cold medicine in an attempt to "make her husband pay for divorcing her", but then to commit arson to try to cover up the crime and make it look like a car accident?

Sorry, BSG — there are some people who quite simply do not deserve to be permitted to breathe the air, and she sounds like one of them.

[Scooter]

And yet the death penalty was not sought in that case, a testament to the arbitrariness of its application.

[BoSoxGal]

What I'm referring to, BB, is the growing number of ACTUALLY INNOCENT people who have been exonerated & released from DEATH ROW.

Our system is based on the premise that better 9 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man languish or perish in custody.

But nobody's suggesting we set them free. Life without parole costs far less than the death penalty legal process AND death row incarceration process, and preserves the innocent from being executed.

And yes, we have executed innocent people - an abhorrent truth that is indefensible.

Justice is NOT about vengeance - there is no room for the death penalty is a civilized society.

[Bicycle Bill]

And yet the death penalty was not sought in that case, a testament to the arbitrariness of its application.

This was in Maryland where the death penalty was abolished in 2013, so that possibility was never on the table to begin with.

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

LWOP is a win-win--the DP advocates eventually get their desired end, and the people save on the costs associated with the DP and its maintenance, and occasionally, to set a wrongly convicted person free. And for the punishment advocates, life in prison is hardly a cakewalk.