Man killed in random knife attack at California steakhouse

Man killed in random knife attack at California steakhouse


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By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A homeless man who randomly stabbed a man to death as he was holding his daughter in a crowded Southern California restaurant was reported just a few hours earlier for disruptive behavior but police ultimately determined he was not a threat, authorities said Saturday.

Jamal Jackson, 49, is facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of 35-year-old Anthony Mele. He was being held in Ventura County jail on a $1.5 million bail. It was unclear if Jackson, who is also a convicted felon, had an attorney to speak on his behalf.

Mele and his wife were eating dinner with their 5-year-old daughter Wednesday at Aloha Steakhouse in Ventura. The girl was sitting on her father's lap when prosecutors say Jackson walked up and stabbed Mele in the neck.

Prosecutor Richard Simon said patrons and a restaurant employee followed Jackson out of the restaurant, even though he still had the knife. They kept track of him until Ventura police arrived and arrested him.

Mele was taken to a hospital and died Thursday after being taken off life support.

"It's horrible," Simon said. "You don't think you're going to be killed when you go out to dinner at a nice restaurant with your family and you didn't do anything."

Simon said the two men had not interacted before the attack.

"He was just sitting there with his daughter in his lap," Simon said. "You're not supposed to die that way."

Mele's loved ones started a GoFundMe page to help raise money for a funeral and to support his wife and daughter.

Mele's Facebook page was filled with photos of his daughter and said he was a manager at an AT&T store.

Police confirmed that a bystander reported a man — who turned out to be Jackson — for disruptive behavior several hours before the stabbing.

According to the bystander, a man was yelling on the promenade not far from the beachside restaurant about three hours before the attack.

Patrol officers were out on other calls so command center staff monitored the man via a pier security camera system for more than 20 minutes before deciding he didn't seem to be a threat, police said.

Police are asking anyone who spoke with Jackson during that time to contact investigators.

The killing prompted the Ventura City Council to increase police patrols in the area and add staff members to monitor security cameras, among other measures.

"We are extremely disheartened and infuriated by this criminal attack," Mayor Neal Andrews said in a statement. "We will not tolerate this in our community. Nothing is more important than the safety of our visitors, residents and businesses."

If convicted, Jackson faces up to 55 years in prison. According to online court records, he has prior convictions for burglary and unlawful sexual intercourse dating back to the 1990s.[COLOR=#666666 !important]

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Associated Press writer Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California, contributed to this report.

http://www.wral.com/transient-charge...rant/17500879/
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Death penalty within 48 hours!

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Originally Posted by Beezer

Death penalty within 48 hours!

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Yep, there is absolutely not doubt he did it .... plenty of witnesses. Oh, that's right, California doesn't believe in the death penalty. Such a shame. :(

California has over 700 people on death row and executions could begin soon

Jim McDermott April 20, 2018

https://www.americamagazine.org/site...?itok=C17Q60XBJournalists photograph the lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison in California in 2010. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

California is often viewed as the center of progressive politics in the United States. It has some of the strongest environmental regulations in the country, the strongest pesticide regulations and along with Connecticut the strongest gun control measures. California’s legislature is already working to reinstate the net neutrality measures recently dumped by the Federal Communications Commission, and many cities have spent the last 18 months actively resisting the Trump administration’s siege on undocumented immigrants.

Yet California also has more than twice as many people on death row as the next highest state—746, compared with Florida’s 347. That is the largest population of inmates awaiting execution in the entire Western Hemisphere and two-thirds of the total number of people known to have been executed by their governments worldwide in 2016.

Even a careful observer of the Golden State can be forgiven for not knowing these figures. The state has executed only 13 people since 1992 and none since 2006, when a federal court ruled that California’s lethal injection procedures violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. (The state has spent the last 12 years trying to revise those procedures. On April 11, several media organizations in California sued the state over the latest rules, saying that the administration of lethal injections would occur out of view of the journalists who witness the executions on behalf of the public.)

“We’ve had such a long lull now between executions,” says Mary Kate DeLucco, communications director at Death Penalty Focus, “that many residents aren’t even aware we have it.”

“We’ve had such a long lull now between executions, that many residents aren’t even aware we have it.”

Twice since 2006, California voters have had the chance to end the death penalty via referenda. Both initiatives failed. In the most recent case in 2016, a proposition to ban executions competed against another to speed up the process of appeals.

A week before the vote, pollsters for the Los Angeles Times found that 40 percent of those who supported ending the death penalty were confusing the two initiatives. In the end, the proposal to quicken the process, Proposition 66, passed with 51 percent.

So at a time when much of the country seems to be moving away from the death penalty—2017 saw just 23 executions nationwide, the second lowest since 1991—California may soon begin executing people again.

Among the many organizations working to keep that from happening is the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a national ministry of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Since 2009 C.M.N. has been engaging with Catholics around the country to stop the practice of executing criminals.

“We’re kind of the convening power,” says the group’s managing director, Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, “bringing Catholics who are concerned about these things together and leveraging their impact.”

California has 746 people on death row, or two-thirds of the total number of people known to have been executed by their governments worldwide in 2016.

While their work takes many different forms, one thriving C.M.N. program is the Mercy in Action Project, in which Catholics send letters to state officials on behalf of those soon to be executed, pleading for clemency. “Some are really powerful,” says Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy, “especially when victims’ families reach out and say, ‘Please don’t take another life, this won’t help.’” (You can sign up to join the Mercy in Action mailing list here.)

Their network has “grown exponentially” in the last two years, Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy reports. “We now see upwards of a thousand letters per clemency call.” And last year across the United States there were 18 stays of execution; some were a matter of legal issues, while others involved state leaders stopping the process.

“We feel pretty excited that people feel connected to that effort,” says Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy. “We see our role to really channel that call for clemency.”

Contrary to prevailing narratives, C.M.N. finds that banning the death penalty often enjoys bipartisan support.“What we’re finding is that the death penalty is not a liberal or conservative issue, a Democrat or Republican issue,” she explains. So in Utah, for instance, a recent bill to end the death penalty was sponsored by Republicans, though it ultimately failed to reach the House floor. “They had tons of conservative support,” says Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy.

“There are libertarians who argue the government can’t even properly deliver the mail, how can they execute someone?”

“There are libertarians who argue the government can’t even properly deliver the mail, how can they execute someone?

But there’s also just the cost of it [the overall appeals process]. It’s exorbitantly expensive,” she explains.

Despite the results of the 2016 vote, the constitutionality of the death penalty as currently administered in California remains tied up in state and federal court. Proposition 66 has also created new legal issues, the state legislature having used it to pass responsibility for the development of the process of execution to the state corrections agency. “We think this violates the separation of powers,” says Linda Lye, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.


“Our elected leaders are responsible for setting policy,” Ms. Lye says. “They don’t want to have to decide the politically unappealing questions like how painful [an execution] should be, how quick it should be. But we think constitutionally they are required to.”

In recent years some have also accused Gov. Jerry Brown, a Catholic who is personally opposed to the death penalty, of dragging his feet on setting executions back in motion. As he approaches retirement in January, others hope he will offer some final gesture of mercy to those on death row. California law prevents him from commuting the sentences of anyone convicted of two or more felonies (the Los Angeles Times reports that over half the people on death row fall into this category) without the support of the state’s Supreme Court.

But on his own the governor could potentially offer stays of executions to the rest.

“The good news about California,” says Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy, “is they’ve got some amazing groups on the ground making it really hard for the state to move forward with executions.”

“But we really can’t sit back,” she notes. “If these couple of court challenges were ironed out, we could start seeing people being killed in California within the next year.”

She also admits that grassroots letter writing has its limits.

“I’m not going to say a constituent in Kentucky writing to the California governor has all the weight in the world,” she says.

“But it does have an impact, knowing that there are others are taking note of what a governor is doing, what their board of parole is doing.

“If you’re not in a state that has the death penalty, you probably don’t think about it that much. But it’s still this practice that we use that’s inhuman and contrary to the Gospel. So really it involves each one of us, and we all have a say on that.”

https://www.americamagazine.org/poli...ns-could-begin

Capital punishment in California

The penal code was modified on February 14, 1872, to state that hangings were to take place inside the confines of the county jail or other private places. The only people allowed to be present were the county sheriff, a physician, and the county District Attorney, who would in addition select at least 12 "reputable citizens".

No more than two "ministers of the gospel" and no more than five people selected by the condemned could also be present.^[7]

Executions were moved to the state level in 1889 when the law was updated so that hangings would occur in one of the state prisons—San Quentin State Prison and Folsom State Prison. According to the California Department of Corrections, although the law did not require the trial judge to choose a specific prison, it was customary for recidivists to be sent to Folsom. Under these new laws, the first execution at San Quentin was Jose Gabriel on March 3, 1893, for murder. The first hanging at Folsom was Chin Hane, also for murder, on December 13, 1895. A total of 215 inmates were hanged at San Quentin and a total of 92 were hanged at Folsom.^{[7]
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The lethal injection room at San Quentin State Prison

Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of California.

It carried out 709 executions from 1778 to the 1972

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capita..._in_California

Ten years after NC's last execution, AG candidates concur death ...
www.wral.com/ten-years-after-nc-s-last-execution-ag-candidates.../15912008/
Aug 12, 2016 -It has been 10 years since North Carolina carried out an execution. Candidates for attorney general say they will do what they can to restart executions, but progress is limited by a number of court challenges...
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North Carolina's fraught history of executions | News & Observer
www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article181291786.html
Oct 28, 2017 - In 1947, a person accused of a capital crime could be convicted and executed in just a matter of months. North Carolina has carried out 405 executions since Walter Morrison, a laborer from Robeson County, became the first person to die in the state's electric chair on March 18, 1910.

JD2, don't really understand the purpose behind the articles you're posting. Are they in opposition to the death penalty, for the death penalty or just general knowledge?

So, can we assume California is not issuing death sentences based on the following:

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If convicted, Jackson faces up to 55 years in prison.

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Seems like it to me. This case is tailor made for the death penalty. Too bad it will probably not happen. Something else to consider, he may be judged mentally unstable. I mean who goes up and stabs someone in the neck in front of numerous witness for absolutely no reason? :confused:

The last person executed in North Carolina was Samuel Flippen, put to death Aug. 18, 2006, for the murder of his 2-year-old stepdaughter. It's possible Flippen forever will remain the last person executed in North Carolina.Sep 2, 2010

EDITORIALS: “The last man to die” | Death Penalty Information Center

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/editorials-“-last-man-die”

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Originally Posted by MW

. . . Oh, that's right, California doesn't believe in the death penalty. Such a shame. :(

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In 2016 we voted to speed up the execution process. And the sooner they execute everyone on death row the better I'll like it.

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In the most recent case in 2016, a proposition to ban executions competed against another to speed up the process of appeals.

A week before the vote, pollsters for the Los Angeles Times found that 40 percent of those who supported ending the death penalty were confusing the two initiatives. In the end, the proposal to quicken the process, Proposition 66, passed with 51 percent.

So at a time when much of the country seems to be moving away from the death penalty—2017 saw just 23 executions nationwide, the second lowest since 1991—California may soon begin executing people again.

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And North Carolina hasn't executed anyone since Aug. 18, 2006, and probably won't again , per the posted N.C. article.

So why are you worried about CA. when your own state no longer executes people?

JD2 wrote (excerpt):

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So why are you worried about CA. when your own state no longer executes people?

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Didn't say I was worried. Just made a comment that California doesn't believe in the death penalty. Okay, guess I'll adjust that comment to say California doesn't participate in the death penalty. Is that better?

No need to get defensive. I don't judge you based on the state you're in and I hope you won't judge me on anything that happens in North Carolina. :D

The guy is in California. Regardless, I don't care what state he's in, he deserves the death penalty.