{ Stevie Lamar Fields } Killer exhausts appeals in 30-year-old murder

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 4/14/8 | Bob Egelko

[SmithL]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Los Angeles man's last remaining challenge to his death sentence for the murder of a student librarian in 1978, one of the oldest cases on California's Death Row.

Stevie Lamar Fields had won a reversal of his sentence in 2000 from a federal judge, who ruled that he should get a new penalty trial because the jury foreman cited biblical passages to his fellow jurors after a majority had voted in favor of a life sentence. But a federal appeals court reinstated the death sentence last year, and the high court denied review of the case without comment Monday.

Defense lawyer David Olson said he would consult with Fields about the possibility of further appeals and about whether to seek clemency from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Fields is one of a handful of the 669 prisoners on California's Death Row to have exhausted the appeal process. Executions in California are on hold while a federal judge reviews changes to the state's lethal injection procedures after finding that the former methods lacked safeguards against a prolonged and agonizing death.

Fields, now 52, went on a three-week spree of violent crimes in September 1978, two weeks after he was paroled from prison on a manslaughter sentence.

He was convicted of three rapes, one robbery, two kidnappings and the murder of Rosemary Cobb, a 26-year-old graduate student and librarian at USC. According to the trial record, he tied her to the rails of his bed, forced her to write checks to him, ordered her into a car, then shot her six times and beat her until she died.

[ronnie raygun]

1978, 30 years of medical, food, housing and recreation. What was the total bill for the state?
What a travesty for the American taxpayer.

[popdonnelly]

He’s been alive for thirty years longer than his victim. Why was she deprived of life?

[nuconvert]

And people wonder why the death penalty isn’t much of deterrent

[lilylangtree]

Damn! He should have died years ago. A prime example of our broken down judicial system.

[ricks_place]

The lastest appeal is based on the 30 year delay in the sentence. “My client has been kept in an agitated state not knowing if or when he would be executed. This is the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the US constitution; we will file suit to recover treble damages plus expenses.” - Mr. Sarc, Esq. of Duey, Suem, and Howe, Lawyers LLC

[gridlock]

He lived longer on death row than his victim lived all her life.

[John Locke]

Please read this:

He was convicted of three rapes, one robbery, two kidnappings and the murder of Rosemary Cobb, a 26-year-old graduate student and librarian at USC. According to the trial record, he tied her to the rails of his bed, forced her to write checks to him, ordered her into a car, then shot her six times and beat her until she died.

And now read this:

Executions in California are on hold while a federal judge reviews changes to the state's lethal injection procedures after finding that the former methods lacked safeguards against a prolonged and agonizing death.

Tell me, O all wise federal judge - what did you, or the law, or the courts, or the police, or any of your damnable liberal apparatus of so-called justice - what did any of you do to safeguard Rosemary Cobb from a prolonged and agonizing death?

It is past time you and all your kind were hanged by the neck until dead. Salus populi suprema lex.