GUILTY PA - James Sementelli, 83, dies in hatchet attack, Lock Haven, 25 March 2003

A woman was convicted Monday of murdering her neighbor with a hatchet, striking the 83-year-old Pearl Harbor veteran nearly 70 times as he begged for his life.

Prosecutors said 25-year-old Shonda D. Walter carried out the attack because she wanted to join a gang, and one of the initiation requirements was to commit a crime. She also stole $500 in quarters from the veteran and drove away in his Toyota Camry.

The jury took less than 30 minutes to convict Walter of first-degree murder in the slaying of James Sementelli.

Witnesses at the trial testified that Walter said she took a break during the slaying to recite the Lord's Prayer, etched a cross in the veteran's stomach as he neared death, then watched TV and ate a bowl of ice cream before making off with his car and money.

"We thought that the evidence was overwhelming and, obviously, the jury did too," District Attorney Ted McKnight said.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw...45258.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

After deliberating for only 21/2 hours, a Clinton County jury sentenced a woman to die Tuesday for murdering her elderly neighbor with a hatchet in 2003.

Shonda Walter, 25, sat quietly as the jury's foreman announced the sentence. She is the first person to be sentenced to death in the county since Pennsylvania reinstated capital punishment in the early 1970s, and will be one of only a few women on death row

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/11437862.htm

Shonda Dee WALTER

"Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: To steal and sell his car to pay off court debts and gain entry into the Bloods street gang in Lock Haven
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder: March 25, 2003
Date of birth: July 16, 1979
Victim profile: Her neighbor, 83-year-old James Sementelli
Method of murder: Beating 66 times with a 10-inch hatchet
Location: Lock Haven, Clinton County, Pennsylvania, USA
Status: Sentenced to death on April 19, 2005..."

http://murderpedia.org/female.W/w/walter-shonda.htm

Could One of These Cases Spell the End of the Death Penalty?
Abolitionists seek the perfect case for a Supreme Court challenge.

"Last June, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the death penalty might be close to its ultimate demise. “Rather than try to patch up the death penalty’s legal wounds one at a time,” he wrote in a dissent to Glossip v. Gross, to which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg added her name, “I would ask for a full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.”...

On Friday, the high court will discuss whether to hear a challenge to the death sentence of a Pennsylvania woman named Shonda Walter. Her case is one of several posed as direct responses to Breyer’s invitation to attack the death penalty head-on...

Shonda Walter, whose case will be discussed in a conference of the judges on Friday, was convicted in 2005 of killing 83-year-old James Sementelli with a hatchet in the small, central Pennsylvania town of Lock Haven. She was 24 years old. Walter’s current defense team argues that her trial was unfair in part because her trial lawyer openly conceded her guilt to the jury (she tried to have a new lawyer appointed, but the judge refused). In an appeal, the trial lawyer made arguments that one judge described as “unintelligible.” Her new lawyers argue that Walter “emerged from an arbitrary process which fails to limit the death penalty to the worst offenders.”...

https://www.themarshallproject.org/...spell-the-end-of-the-death-penalty#.L2cKJt40k

Supreme Court Faces Decisions On Where To Go Next With The Death Penalty

"WASHINGTON — Five months after two Supreme Court justices made clear that they have serious questions about the constitutionality of the death penalty, lawyers are bringing plenty of related cases to the justices...

Frontal Constitutional Challenge

Shonda Walter, sentenced to death in Pennsylvania in 2005, has brought the most significant challenge to the justices, asking earlier this month for the court to address the fundamental question of the constitutionality of the death penalty head on.

“The question presented is whether, in all cases, the imposition of a sentence of death violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments,” Walter’s lawyer, Daniel Silverman, writes.

Walter was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the 2003 killing of an 83-year-old man, James Sementelli.

This is of course the most significant of claims that could be brought to the justices, as it asks for the court to end the death penalty across the board, across the country.
Walter’s lawyer argues that the death penalty should be abandoned for two reasons: “First, our standards of decency have evolved to the point where the institution is no longer constitutionally sustainable.”

“Second, the assumptions underlying this Court’s reinstitution of the death penalty after Furman have proved wrong, flawed, or illusory,” Walter’s lawyers continue. They argue the reliability of the process put in place since the 1970s cases ending and then approving the use of the death penalty still don’t protect against wrongful executions — and that arbitrariness and racial discrimination remain...."

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidne...ons-on-where-to-go-next-with-the-d#.apJrwx6yV

Supreme Court of the United States

No. 15-650 *** CAPITAL CASE ***

Title:
Shonda Walter, Petitioner
v.
Pennsylvania

Docketed: November 17, 2015
Linked with 15A403
Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District
Case Nos.: (645 CAP)
Decision Date: July 20, 2015

"Jan 15 2016 Rescheduled..."

http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docketfiles/15-650.htm

SHONDA WALTER,
Petitioner,
v.
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA,
Respondent.
_____________________
Petition for Writ of Certiorari to
the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
THIS IS A CAPITAL CASE
----------------------------------------------
QUESTION PRESENTED

Recently, Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that “rather
than try to patch up the death penalty’s legal wounds one
at a time,” the Court should entertain “full briefing on a
more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the
Constitution.” Glossip v. Gross, 135 S. Ct. 2726, 2755
(2015) (Breyer, J., dissenting). This case, which seeks a
writ of certiorari following the affirmance on direct appeal
of Petitioner’s death sentence, provides this Court that
opportunity. The question presented is:

Whether, in all cases, the imposition of a sentence of
death violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against
cruel and unusual punishments...."

http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/pdf/Shonda_Walter_Petition.pdf

Shonda Walter Escapes Death Row in Vet's Hatchet Killing.


Shonda Walter, the only woman on Pennsylvania's death row, had her sentence thrown out by a judge who cited inadequate representation at her trial in the 2003 hatchet killing of her 83-year-old neighbor, reported The Associated Press.

Clinton County Senior Judge Michael Williamson sentenced Walter, 37, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, saying she had "totally incompetent counsel in the penalty phase" of her 2005 trial. Prosecutors had agreed not to seek the death penalty again, Williamson noted.

http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/shonda-waters-escapes-death-row/2016/08/08/id/742564/