Michigan has history with death penalty

In 1847, Michigan became the 1st English-speaking government to ban the death penalty.

But that didn't stop the federal government from seeking the death penalty in Michigan.

In November 1937, U.S. District Judge Arthur Tuttle sentenced Anthony Chebatoris, 38, to hang for fatally shooting a bystander during a bank robbery in Midland.

He was hanged at the federal prison in Milan at dawn on July 8, 1938.

In August 1942, Tuttle sentenced Detroit restaurant owner Max Stephan to hang for harboring Lt. Hans Peter Krug, a Nazi pilot who had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp near Toronto. Krug was captured in Texas.

Stephan was convicted of treason. Krug testified at trial for the prosecution.

In August 1943, 8 hours before he was to be hanged, President Franklin D. Roosevelt commuted Stephan's sentence to life in prison. Stephan died in prison in 1952 at age 59. Krug returned to Germany.

In March 2002, Marvin Charles Gabrion II, 48, was sentenced to death in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids for killing Rachel Timmerman, a 19-year-old single mother, to prevent her from testifying against him at a rape trial.

She and her 11-month-old daughter vanished in 1997, 2 days before she was to testify in the rape case she had filed against Gabrion. Her bound, gagged and weighted-down body was found 1 month later in a lake in Manistee National Forest -- federal property. Her daughter was never found.

Gabrion denied any involvement in Timmerman's death. He's on death row at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

Source: Detroit Free Press, July 11, 2010

Detroit man to fight for life at trial

Confiding in inmate leads way to federal death penalty case

While sitting in a state prison on a gun charge in 2004, Timothy O'Reilly violated the cardinal rule of doing time -- confiding to a fellow convict.

O'Reilly told the inmate about his involvement in a fatal 2001 armored car robbery in Dearborn, court documents show. O'Reilly's confidant, Barron Nix-Bey, then contacted authorities. They, in turn, rigged a portable radio that Nix-Bey used to record O'Reilly's complete confession, records show.

Nix-Bey, 41, of Detroit is expected to be the government's star witness and the recording he made, Exhibit 1, when O'Reilly, 37, also of Detroit, goes on trial for his life Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Detroit.

It will be the 1st federal death penalty trial in eastern Michigan since 2003. Although the state banned the death penalty in 1847, such trials are permissible under federal law.

The Death Penalty Information Center in Washington said 61 prisoners are on federal death row. Juries impose the death penalty in about 1/3 of such cases.

O'Reilly is accused of premeditated murder, bank robbery and other counts in the fatal shooting of Norman Stephens, 30, of Detroit. Stephens, a married father of six working as a guard for Total Armored Car Service, was filling ATMs at a Dearborn Federal Credit Union about 4 a.m. Dec. 14, 2001, when hooded gunmen ambushed him.

They fled with $204,000.

O'Reilly also is accused in a June 2003 robbery in which an armed car guard at a Comerica branch in Detroit was wounded. The robbers got away with $170,000.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers wouldn't comment.

But defense lawyers who handle such cases said O'Reilly's trial is likely to be gut-wrenching.

"It's a grave, grave responsibility," said Grand Rapids attorney Paul Mitchell. "What you do impacts whether that man or woman lives or dies."

The trial before U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts is to be conducted in two phases: The 1st to determine guilt and the 2nd to determine whether to impose the death penalty.

"This case won't be so much about guilt or innocence, but about life or death," said Wayne State University law professor Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor. "And all you need to avoid the death penalty is the vote of 1 juror."

Investigators had hit a dead end in the case until Nix-Bey, who was serving time for home invasion, told authorities that O'Reilly had bragged about the robberies, court records show.

"Seemed like he had no kind of remorse for the things he did, so I was wondering was it true," Nix-Bey testified.

Authorities said the confession Nix-Bey taped on the radio implicated six other men: Norman Duncan, 40; Kevin Watson, 40, Earl Johnson, 43; Archie Broom, 42; Khayyam Wilson, and Henry Matthews, ages unknown. All the men are from Detroit.

Broom, Wilson and Matthews pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Johnson was tried and convicted for his role and was sentenced to life in 2008.

Duncan and Watson also are facing the death penalty for firing on Stephens.

Source: Detroit Free Press, July 11, 2010