Peewee serial killer

Wainwright, U. The eight "undisputed" pieces of evidence are: 1 tapes of Gaskins' conversations with Jack Martin the intermediary through whom Cimo contacted Gaskins in prison ; 2 identities of the voices on the Martin-Gaskins tapes; 3 the dates when the conversations occurred; 4 the exhibit showing when Cimo and Gaskins conversed; 5 Gaskins' voice on a statement given to an investigator; 6 two inculpatory letters written from Gaskins to Brown; 7 a letter written from Gaskins to Lee exculpating Lee; and 8 that electronic equipment, a soldering iron, speakers, and radios were found in Gaskins' cell.

As the magistrate's recommendation, adopted by the district court, correctly notes, Gaskins presumably could have sought the testimony of voice and handwriting analysts to contradict items , and any number of inmates could have testified to the items Gaskins kept in his cell before Tyner's murder.

We agree with the district court that, under these circumstances, the prosecutor's "laundry list" argument did not constitute a Doyle violation. Likewise, the state's argument during sentencing to the effect that Gaskins has shown no remorse must be viewed in context. The solicitor stated that:. Gaskins has announced to the Court that he is going to make a speech to you as well. I want Mr. Gaskins when he comes up to tell you what in his character caused him to murder each of these people, what caused him to murder Dennis Bellamy?

What caused him to shoot this 15 year old, Johnny Knight, in the back of the head? Under no reasonable view can the solicitor's statement be construed to constitute an improper comment on Gaskins' refusal to testify at the guilt phase of his trial.

Gaskins asserts the following two errors in the trial court's guilt-phase jury instructions: 1 the trial court's charge regarding presumed malice constituted an impermissible burden-shifting instruction; and 2 the trial court's reasonable doubt instruction impermissibly lessened the state's burden of proof.

As part of the jury charge, the trial court instructed the jury that "while malice is presumed from the use of a deadly weapon or from a dangerous instrument On direct appeal, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that, although the instruction constituted impermissible burden-shifting, the constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Both the magistrate and the district court agreed with the state supreme court.

We also agree. Even where an instruction constitutes impermissible burden-shifting, any error in giving it may be found harmless if the reviewing court can say beyond reasonable doubt that the jury would have found it unnecessary to rely on the burden-shifting presumption in order to convict. See Rose v. Clark, U. Here, the jury necessarily found by its guilty verdict that Gaskins had murdered Tyner with a bomb Gaskins had built from electronic components in his cell and a piece of dynamite he received in the mail, so it is difficult to see how the jury could not have concluded, even without the presumption, that the killing was done "with malice.

Gaskins next asserts that the trial court's definition of reasonable doubt for the jury as "a doubt for which you can give a reason[,] [i]t is a substantial doubt," J. An instruction equating reasonable doubt with " 'a substantial doubt, a real doubt' Kentucky, U.

At some point, a reasonable doubt definition may be so incomprehensible or potentially prejudicial that it requires reversal. Moss, F. Nevertheless, the question in a collateral proceeding such as this is "whether the ailing instruction by itself so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process, not merely whether 'the instruction is undesirable, erroneous or even universally condemned.

Bordenkircher, F. Kibbe, U. Viewed in the context of the entire record of trial, the substantial-doubt portion of the instruction did not rise to the level of a due process violation. First, the trial court employed the instruction to set in contrast "some imaginary doubt or some slight doubt or some fanciful doubt that you might have.

The trial judge's use of the term substantial doubt was, in context of the entire instruction, more accurate than when viewed in artificial isolation, and was not "likely to 'mislead the jury into finding no reasonable doubt when in fact there was some. Moreover, the trial court flatly instructed the jury that "the proof offered by the state must exclude every other reasonable hypothesis except the guilt of the accused and must satisfy you beyond a reasonable doubt.

This instruction further neutralized any negative effects of the substantial-doubt instruction. See Bordenkircher, F. We are not prepared to say that this instruction, even in combination with the substantial doubt instruction, "so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process.

Gaskins argues that allowing evidence that a prior death sentence of Gaskins had been vacated could have led the jury to believe that any death penalty it imposed was advisory only, thereby diminishing the jurors' sense of responsibility for death-penalty imposition in violation of Caldwell v. Nevertheless, "if the challenged instructions accurately described the role of the jury under state law, there is no basis for a Caldwell claim.

To establish a Caldwell violation, a defendant necessarily must show that the remarks to the jury improperly described the role assigned to the jury by local law. Adams, U. The asserted Caldwell violation occurred when, during the penalty phase of the trial, the state introduced evidence of Gaskins' previously vacated murder conviction. Even taken together, we conclude that this evidence and the judge's statement "had no effect on the sentencing decision.

First, Gaskins points to no references by the state or the trial judge concerning death-sentence review. We do not believe that evidence concerning a prior vacated death sentence "improperly described the role assigned to the jury by local law. The most that a reasonable jury could have made of this evidence was that the statute under which the jury was to sentence Gaskins might conceivably be invalidated as unconstitutional at some future date.

Nowhere was there any suggestion that such invalidation was imminent or even contemplated. Similarly, even taken together with the prior-death-sentence evidence, it is difficult to see how, in context, the trial judge's use of the word "recommend" could have had an effect on the sentencing decision.

In an exhaustive analysis, the facts of which are not disputed here, the magistrate noted that during voir dire, the trial judge, the solicitor and Gaskins' attorney repeatedly told each juror that the jury could sentence to death or life imprisonment, that the jury had to make the decision, and that "the jury will be asked to decide his punishment, either life imprisonment or death by electrocution.

Moreover, in each case Gaskins cites finding a Caldwell violation, the suggestion to the jury that its decision was merely advisory was explicit and obvious. Nowhere in this case did anyone even imply that the jury's recommendation was non-binding. Though, in retrospect, we believe a wiser course would have been for the trial judge to explicitly instruct the jury that the word "recommendation" meant "binding recommendation," under the circumstances, we are satisfied that the jury was properly aware of its sentencing responsibilities.

Gaskins also contends that, even if there was no Caldwell violation, allowing testimony concerning the prior-vacated death sentence introduced arbitrary factors in the sentencing decision in violation of Booth v. Maryland, U. Gaskins argues that this testimony implied that, regardless of whether Gaskins should be sentenced to death for Tyner's murder, the jury could properly reimpose the earlier death penalty which was, after all, only vacated because of a legal technicality.

Although we agree that evidence of a prior-vacated death penalty is of limited, if any, relevance to the jury's decision whether to impose the death penalty, it is simply not a consideration so "constitutionally impermissible or totally irrelevant to the sentencing process," Zant v. Stephens, U. Gaskins' final assignments of error concern the trial judge's instructions to the sentencing jury to the following effect: 1 that the jury could not allow itself to be governed by sympathy; 2 that mitigating circumstances must be found beyond a reasonable doubt; 3 that the decision to impose a life sentence must be unanimous.

At the sentencing hearing, the trial court instructed the jury not to allow itself to be governed by sympathy:. You cannot allow yourselves to be governed by sympathy, by prejudice, or by passion or by public opinion.

Both the state and the defendant have the right to expect that each of you will carefully and impartially consider all of the evidence in this case Gaskins argues that this instruction, coupled with the prosecutor's statements to the effect that Gaskins was asking for, but deserved, no mercy, constituted an eighth amendment violation because it effectively precluded the jury from considering relevant mitigating evidence offered by Gaskins, namely his individualized appeal for compassion, understanding and mercy.

See, e. Georgia, U. Our consideration of this issue is foreclosed by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Saffle v. Parks, U. Parks, considering the eighth amendment ramifications of a sympathy instruction in all material respects identical to the charge given in Gaskins' case,6 held that to uphold such a claim would be to adopt a "new rule" under Teague v. Lane, U. Accordingly, the proposed rule could not be announced or applied in a habeas case on collateral review.

Parks, S. Parks dictates a similar rejection of Gaskins' claim here. Gaskins next asserts that the following charge, because it used the term "reasonable doubt" so close to the term "mitigating circumstance," impermissibly suggested to the sentencing jury that mitigating circumstances must be found beyond reasonable doubt in contravention of the eighth amendment:.

Before you can recommend the imposition of a life sentence, it is not necessary and I repeat, it is not necessary for you to find beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of any alleged statutory mitigating circumstances or any other mitigating circumstance. While it is necessary for you to find beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of at least one alleged statutory aggravating circumstance before you can recommend that the defendant be sentenced to death, it is not--it is not required that you find beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of at least one alleged statutory mitigating circumstance in order to recommend that the defendant be given a life sentence.

As a matter of fact, you may recommend that the defendant receive a life sentence irrespective of whether you find the existence in the evidence of an alleged statutory mitigating circumstance or not; but where you consider an alleged statutory mitigating circumstance, it is proper for you to consider only a statutory mitigating circumstance that is supported by the evidence.

We disagree. Gaskins' strained interpretation of the trial court's jury instruction is simply not supported by its language, and does not warrant finding an eighth amendment violation. Similarly, the trial court's statement to the effect that "you have to find at least one or more aggravating circumstances or else you will have to recommend a death sentence [presumably the trial court meant to say life imprisonment instead of death sentence]," could not, in the context of the entire charge, have confused a reasonable juror.

As the South Carolina Supreme Court stated, the trial court instructions made patently clear that: 1 a death penalty could not be imposed without aggravating circumstances; 2 if statutory or non-statutory mitigating circumstances were found, a life sentence would be appropriate; 3 the jury had, in any case, full discretion not to impose the death sentence, even though aggravating circumstances and no mitigating circumstances were found.

Gaskins' final asserted error in the jury charge concerned the trial court's erroneous instruction to the effect that the decision to impose a life sentence must be unanimous.

Gaskins contends that this incorrect instruction effectively communicated to the jury that if all members of the jury did not agree on Gaskins' sentence, then a mistrial would ensue. Thus, the erroneous instruction constituted an arbitrary factor into the sentencing, rendering the unanimous death sentence unreliable. Although the trial court inadvertently misstated South Carolina law, it is inconceivable that the disputed instruction could have caused the jurors unanimously to impose a death sentence out of fear of mistrial should they not be unanimous in their decision to impose life imprisonment.

We are satisfied that this improper instruction, viewed in context of the entire jury charge, could have had no effect on the sentencing decision.

See Caldwell, U. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court's dismissal of Gaskins' habeas corpus petition. United States v. Jones, F. The parties do not raise and we therefore do not address the possible bearing on this point of Zant v. Procunier, F. When he plugs that son of a bitch up, it'll blow him on into hell Dam [sic] if I can't fix him up. Because this claim is closely related to Gaskins' claim that the trial judge's sentencing-phase instructions exacerbated the Caldwell violation, both will be dealt with in this section of the opinion.

The sentence was vacated when the South Carolina Supreme Court declared South Carolina's death penalty statute unconstitutional. You must avoid any influence of sympathy, sentiment, passion, prejudice, or other arbitrary factor when imposing sentence.

You should discharge your duty as jurors impartially, conscientiously and faithfully under your oaths and return such verdict as the evidence warrants when measured by these Instructions. Parks v. Brown, F. Donald Henry Gaskins, Petitioner-appellant, v. Parker D. Travis Medlock, Attorney General, Respondents-appellees. Ross Anderson, Jr. With but a few hours remaining until the scheduled execution of petitioner Donald Henry Gaskins, he has filed a voluminous petition for a writ of habeas corpus in which he attacks his conviction and sentence for capital murder rendered after a jury trial in the Richland County Court of General Sessions sitting in Columbia, South Carolina.

Petitioner also seeks an evidentiary hearing on his petition for the great writ and a stay of his execution, which is set for a.

September 6, Tyner had previously been convicted of the capital murders of Mr. Warren Moon and sentenced to be executed. Gaskins was a fellow inmate of Tyner and was convicted of murdering Tyner for hire. At the time he murdered Tyner, Gaskins was serving nine life sentences for previous murders he had committed.

The South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence on direct appeal. Post-conviction relief was unsuccessful. His most recent petition for a writ of habeas corpus was denied by the South Carolina Supreme Court in the late afternoon of September 4, Gaskins has previously sought habeas corpus relief in our court but his petition was denied.

McKellar, F. The district court has denied his latest petition in an exhaustive opinion which has thoroughly discussed the three issues he has raised. In his new petition, Gaskins presents three grounds: 1 that the trial judge refused to admit into evidence, during the sentencing phase of his trial, the confession of Tyner to the murders of Mr. Moon and thereby denied him the right under Payne v. Tennessee, U. There is no merit to these claims. While we feel that petitioner reads Payne too broadly, even so, the evidence as to Tyner's character was fully presented to the sentencing jury, and a copy of Tyner's confession would have added nothing about his character of which the jury was not already aware.

The jury had been made repeatedly aware that Tyner had murdered Mr. Moon in cold blood to prevent them from being witnesses to his armed robbery of them and their convenience store. Gaskins' jury was also aware that Tyner was awaiting execution for his crimes. The second ground, that it was error to admit evidence as to his racist views and affiliations, is now barred. This claim was presented in his first petition to the United States District Court filed August 11, The claim was denied by the district court, and the claim was abandoned by petitioner when he failed to appeal this issue to the U.

Court of Appeals. The claim is also barred because it is successive, having been raised in his original petition of August In his third ground petitioner seeks at this late hour to attack the validity of his prior murder convictions.

This is clearly an abuse of the writ. Petitioner and his attorneys have known since his trial that his prior murder convictions, together with his murder of Tyner for hire, were used as aggravating circumstances under Section C a Code of Laws of South Carolina, to support the jury's recommendation of a death sentence.

Petitioner has made no showing that he did not have knowledge of the circumstances applicable to his prior murder convictions prior to his most recent petition, nor has he shown why this claim was not asserted at an earlier time. The issue of Gaskins' prior murder convictions was also covered in our prior decision, and the present claims add nothing new. The petition to stay execution does not present substantial grounds upon which relief might be granted.

The issues have been previously considered and decided. The present petition for the writ is lacking in merit as we have explained above, therefore the motion to stay execution is denied. The mandate shall issue forthwith. All of our Serial Killer Magazines and books are massive, perfect bound editions. These are not the kind of flimsy magazines or tiny paperback novels that you are accustomed to. These are more like giant, professionally produced graphic novels.

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Gaskins had never killed a victim on Death Row. Pee Wee was on his way to the Big House. And in the process, he would have some fun. Coastal Kills Gaskins settled in Sumter, South Carolina, working construction and stripping hot cars on weekends, cruising bars for sex.

Easy to kill Rudolph Tyner in September Early life Born in Manning, South Carolina, Gaskins spent most of his youth in and out of reform school, and later prison. As a youth, he hit a woman in the head with a hatchet and left her for dead; she survived. Murders In , after being released from prison, Gaskins continued killing. Imprisonment Before , Gaskins was on death row, but his sentences were commuted to life in prison when the South Carolina General Assembly's death sentence ruling was changed to meet the United States Supreme Court guidelines for the death penalty in other states.

Death Gaskins was executed on September 6, at a. Once Gaskins got the hang of it, his homicidas proliferated at a dizzy pace. We address each of these in turn. II Gaskins contends that he was erroneously denied an evidentiary hearing to establish his claim that portions of a confession given by him in connection with an earlier, bargained plea of guilty to several unrelated murders were unconstitutionally admitted at the sentencing phase of his Tyner murder trial. III We next consider the district court's dismissal of Gaskins' claim that the state trial judge's demonstrated bias and lack of impartiality made his state trial fundamentally unfair and therefore violated his constitutional right to due process.

Did you ask him? He didn't tell me that. Tell the jury what he told you? Later, after Caison's redirect testimony concerning Brown's alleged involvement in an earlier attempt to poison Tyner, the trial judge again engaged in a colloquy with Caison: MR. What did he have against Rudolph Tyner? Why did he want to kill him? He didn't say. This, argues Gaskins, rendered the trial fundamentally unfair, especially when coupled with the following accessory-before-the-fact jury instruction: [Y]ou must be convinced as I told you that the Defendant here aided, counseled, or otherwise procured James Brown to commit the murder of Rudolph Tyner and that the Defendant was not present either actually or constructively.

IV We next consider related claims respecting the jury selection process. V During the course of the trial, the trial court made three evidentiary rulings which, Gaskins argues, rendered his trial fundamentally unfair. VI Gaskins' next claim involves alleged prosecutorial misconduct. The solicitor stated that: Mr. VII Gaskins asserts the following two errors in the trial court's guilt-phase jury instructions: 1 the trial court's charge regarding presumed malice constituted an impermissible burden-shifting instruction; and 2 the trial court's reasonable doubt instruction impermissibly lessened the state's burden of proof.

VIII Gaskins argues that allowing evidence that a prior death sentence of Gaskins had been vacated could have led the jury to believe that any death penalty it imposed was advisory only, thereby diminishing the jurors' sense of responsibility for death-penalty imposition in violation of Caldwell v.

IX Gaskins' final assignments of error concern the trial judge's instructions to the sentencing jury to the following effect: 1 that the jury could not allow itself to be governed by sympathy; 2 that mitigating circumstances must be found beyond a reasonable doubt; 3 that the decision to impose a life sentence must be unanimous.

Simmons, then North Charleston police chief, said, "The investigation revealed that a lot of people connected seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth, but there was a common thread that ran between them all. Henderson was assigned. Neely admitted being present when two of the victims were murdered, and he led officers to the graves of Dennis Bellamy, 29, a Charleston carpenter, and year-old John Henry Knight of North Charleston.

The victims were half-brothers. Digging began Thursday, Dec. By dusk, three bodies, including Bellamy's and Knight's, had been found. Two dozen lawmen combed the area for more graves, and by Saturday, three more bodies were located.

The searchers borrowed a vapor-sensing device from Florida law enforcement agencies and kept looking. The digging continued for six days and three miles. Searchers found the corpses of a woman and a child in shallow graves. What most people involved in the search would remember later was the stench.

And there was the baby. We all knew that we were involved in something that wasn't like anything we'd ever seen before. Gaskins was charged with eight murders. He was a suspect in as many as Law enforcement officers in several counties started sifting through their unsolved case files, looking for ties to Gaskins.

Prosecutors literally could pick and choose their cases against Gaskins, and tried him first for the murder of Dennis Bellamy. Gaskins and Neely both were convicted and sentenced to death for that murder in May , but the sentences were commuted to life when South Carolina's death statute was overturned by the U.

Supreme Court later that year. Meanwhile, bodies linked to Gaskins kept turning up. He led authorities to three in exchange for a conjugal visit with his wife:. She had been missing for six years. Gaskins was charged in Yates' death and was sentenced to his second life term in April , just a couple of months before the death penalty was again legalized in South Carolina. Two days after the Yates trial ended, the body of year-old Martha Dicks was found in Sumter County.

She had been missing since Only then, with multiple murder charges still pending, did Gaskins begin to consider dealing with solicitor Summerford, who was threatening to seek the death penalty against him for the murder of John Henry Knight. But it wasn't clear then whether the death penalty could be sought for a murder that had happened before the law was re-enacted.

Gaskins' present attorneys say that Summerford couldn't have gotten a death sentence that would stand up on appeal because the timing of the law. In addition to the two murders he'd already been convicted of, he confessed to killing the eight people buried at Prospect and two others in Charleston, whose bodies have never been found.

And, under truth serum, he confessed that he'd killed Ghelkins, Allsbrook, Dicks, and his own niece, year-old Janice Kirby. He started to become a pimp himself, and the cruelty the two men. Macey has to live with the fact that she murdered his husband, In or out of jail.

She is a murderer and she deserves jail, prison, or. In , 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee was brutally murdered because of gang retaliation. The initial retaliation of Lee was to kidnap him and cut off his ears and fingers. In the year , Ivan Milat was arraigned to court for the alleged sexual assault of two female hitchhikers, who claimed that he was armed with a knife when he attacked them.

The charges raised against him were later dropped because the prosecution had failed to come up with a comprehensive and convincing case against Ivan Milat. Ivan was involved in various crimes in his life, but the ones that brought him into the limelight were murder and sexual assault. He killed his victims by paralyzing them with a knife wound to the spine, stabbing them severally or shooting them multiple times in the head.

One of his victims, Anja Habschied, had her head decapitated and dumped far away from her body. The prosecution displayed its case by playing a recording of a call that Nicole Brown Simpson had made on January 1, Fear was expressed from Nicole that Simpson would physically abuse her and was easily heard yelling at her in the background.

The prosecution also displayed plenty of expert witnesses, on subjects starting with DNA fingerprints and ranging all the way to blood and shoeprint analysis, to justify why Simpson would be placed at the scene of the crime. The article I selected is a hard and harrowing story to hear about Gregory Green, who killed his two stepchildren Chadney and Kara Allen in front of the mother, two biological children by asphyxiation Kara and Kaleigh Green , and tortured his wife Faith Green.

I chose this story, because I continue to see this in the news of parents or a parent killing their children. I cannot begin to fathom the numerous mental health issues that affects these parents. Undaunted by arrests and imprisonment he conducted a crusade of murder and mayhem over nearly three decades and killed more than fifty people. His motives were as varied as his methods.