Death Penalty

The final chapter to a duel under a warm June sun was written in Chester County Court yesterday, as a 22-year-old man was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison for killing his former girlfriend's lover. Jason Jaye Welles pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and aggravated assault for the shotgun slaying in the middle of a Phoenixville street as neighbors looked on. Witnesses told police that Welles shot Michael Brockerman four times with a 12-gauge shotgun about 4:40 p.m. on June 6, the last three blasts coming as the 24-year-old Pottstown man lay prone on the street.

"70% of Daily News readers agree: The death penalty should be used more often. " IHOPE the jury deliberating the final fate of Stephen Liczbinski's killers keep that in mind. Levon T. Warner and Eric Deshann Floyd shouldn't get the gift-wrapped life sentence handed to Solomon Montgomery after he killed Sgt. Gary Skerski in 2006. They shouldn't be sent on a decades-long farewell tour like Mumia Abu-Jamal. They deserve a needle in the arm, some quickly mumbled prayers and then.

A former college football player at Lock Haven University was sentenced to life in prison because a jury could not agree on whether he deserved the death penalty for murdering the brother of an Olympic wrestler. The jury voted 7-5 in favor of the death penalty yesterday for Fabian Desmond Smart, of Clyo, Ga. Death sentences require a unanimous decision in Pennsylvania. Smart was convicted last week of the January 1999 murder of Jason McMann, the older brother of Olympic wrestler Sara McMann.

The death penalty is very much in play in the Boston bomber case, even though Massachusetts is one of more than a dozen states without capital punishment. The surviving bombing suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was charged today, not under state law, but under federal law for using a weapon of mass destruction and for malicious destruction of property resulting in death. The Justice Department said that, if convicted, Tsarnaev could face the federal death penalty. Although such executions are rare, there are 59 people on federal death row. The final decision to seek the ultimate penalty belongs to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, as was explained by Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, following Tsarnaev's capture Friday night.

Justina Morley, the 15-year-old who lured a Fishtown teenager to his death in 2003, began to cry yesterday as she demonstrated how her alleged accomplices attacked Jason Sweeney with a hatchet and a hammer. Morley, now 16, testified that she feels remorse for the brutal slaying and for luring Sweeney to his death with the promise of sex. But in a jailhouse letter to Domenic Coia, one of the defendants, Morley wrote: "I am guilty. But I still don't feel guilty for anything.

The West Philadelphia food store owner was not only the cousin of a jailed enemy of the Junior Black Mafia, he was also the object of affection of a female companion of JBM boss Aaron Jones. That put Bruce Kennedy, 26, in serious jeopardy, a prosecutor said. And on Aug. 18, 1990, two enforcers of the drug syndicate pumped 10 bullets into him with an Uzi as he was making a steak sandwich at Kennedy's Mommie's Food Market, 54th Street near Master. Yesterday, a jury convicted Jones, 30, and two henchmen, Sam Brown, 29, and James Anderson, 21, of first-degree murder.

I AGREE with letter- writer Lynn Thistlewood about the death penalty. My father was killed 28 years ago at his place of business. Our family life was destroyed by this. He was only 49 years young. The killers got life in prison. Big deal. They should have died the way my father did. Nancy Branca Philadelphia

By Jonathan Zimmerman Terrance Williams was sexually abused by the two men he killed, according to his lawyers. He was poorly represented at his trial, where jurors never heard about these circumstances. And the widow of one of his victims wants Williams' death sentence commuted. But those aren't the strongest arguments for sparing the life of Terrance Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 3. The best reason is the simplest: Capital punishment is inherently wrong, no matter the circumstances.

CLEVELAND - The man accused of holding three women captive in his home for about a decade pleaded not guilty yesterday to hundreds of rape and kidnapping charges, and the defense hinted at avoiding a trial with a plea deal if the death penalty were ruled out. The death penalty is in play because among the accusations facing Ariel Castro is that he forced a miscarriage by one of the women, which is considered a killing under Ohio law. That charge doesn't...

CLEVELAND - A man accused of holding three women captive in his home for about a decade pleaded not guilty Wednesday to hundreds of rape and kidnapping charges, and the defense hinted at avoiding a trial with a plea deal if the death penalty were ruled out. The death penalty is in play because among the accusations facing Ariel Castro, 52, is that he forced one of the women to miscarry, which is considered a killing under Ohio law. That charge doesn't...

A Philadelphia jury on Friday ordered the death penalty for Kaboni Savage, who became one of the city's most notorious criminals by orchestrating the murders of government witnesses, their relatives, and rivals who threatened him or his sprawling drug operation. The federal court panel deliberated about 10 hours over two days before unanimously recommending that Savage be executed for 12 murders, including a 2004 firebombing in North Philadelphia that killed four children and two women related to a witness cooperating with the FBI. U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick said he would impose the sentence Monday.

SEATTLE - The Army staff sergeant charged with slaughtering 16 villagers in one of the worst atrocities of the Afghanistan war will plead guilty to avoid the death penalty in a deal that requires him to recount the horrific attack for the first time, his attorney said Wednesday. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was "crazed" and "broken" when he slipped away from his remote southern Afghanistan outpost and attacked mud-walled compounds in two slumbering villages nearby, lawyer John Henry Browne said.

Kaboni Savage should die, a prosecutor said Tuesday, because he wantonly slaughtered children and witnesses, and because he laughed about it and vowed that even prison could not stop him from plotting more deaths. "The fight don't stop 'til the casket drop" was his mantra, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Troyer told a federal jury. The drug kingpin should live, Savage's lawyer countered, because his past was shaped by tragedy in a North Philadelphia neighborhood overrun by crime and drugs, and because even a life of solitary confinement in a tiny windowless cell might make a difference.

PHOENIX - Jodi Arias begged jurors yesterday to give her life in prison, saying she "lacked perspective" when she told a local reporter in an interview that she preferred execution to spending the rest of her days in jail. Standing confidently but at times her voice breaking, Arias told the same eight men and four women who found her guilty of first-degree murder that she planned to use her time in prison to bring about positive changes, including donating her hair to be made into wigs for cancer victims, helping establish prison recycling programs and designing T-shirts that would raise money for victims of domestic abuse.

PHOENIX - The same jury that convicted Jodi Arias of murder one week ago took about three hours Wednesday to determine that the former waitress is eligible for the death penalty in the stabbing and shooting death of her onetime lover in his bathroom five years ago. The decision came after a day of testimony in the "aggravation" phase of the trial, during which prosecutor Juan Martinez hoped to prove the June 2008 killing was committed in an especially cruel...

THE CASE against Kermit Gosnell is expected to come to an end today, when the disgraced abortion doctor is sentenced after he unexpectedly waived his right to appeal in order to avoid a death sentence. Gosnell, 72, who was convicted of the first-degree murders of three babies born alive in his West Philadelphia abortion clinic, was supposed to face a penalty-phase hearing starting Tuesday. But yesterday afternoon, Gosnell changed the script when he stood before Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart and waived all of his appellate rights in exchange for a life-without-parole sentence.

Jurors at the federal murder and racketeering trial of accused drug kingpin Kaboni Savage closed their first week of deliberations without a verdict. U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick discharged the nine women and three men early Friday afternoon after five days of talks without any signals of their progress. The group had only a few evidence requests over the week, including one for a transcript of testimony by Lamont Lewis, the admitted killer who said Savage directed him in October 2004 to firebomb the North Philadelphia home of a former gang associate cooperating with the FBI. Two adults and four children died in the fire, which officials have called one of the worst cases of witness retaliation in city history.

CLEVELAND - Prosecutors said Thursday they may seek the death penalty against Ariel Castro, the man accused of imprisoning three women at his home for a decade, as police charged that he impregnated one of his captives at least five times and made her miscarry by starving her and punching her in the belly. The allegations were contained in a police report that also said another woman, Amanda Berry, was forced to give birth in a plastic kiddie pool. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty said his office will decide whether to bring aggravated-murder charges punishable by death in connection with the pregnancies that were terminated by force.