Massachusetts declines prosecuting Amy Bishop for her brother’s death

UAH shooter Amy Bishop wants trial on brother‘s killing to prove ‘loving and caring relationship’ with him (updated)

Published: Tuesday, October 02, 2012, 9:22 AM
Updated: Tuesday, October 02, 2012, 11:59 AM

By The Associated Press

BOSTON — The former University of Alabama in Huntsville professor sentenced to life in prison last week in a shooting rampage that killed three of her colleagues wants to go on trial in the 1986 death of her brother in Massachusetts.

Madison County corrections officers escort UAH shooter Amy Bishop to a courtroom for her plea hearing on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011. (The Huntsville Times/Glenn Baeske)

Court documents filed by Amy Bishop‘s lawyer say she objects to a decision by Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey to decline to prosecute her in the killing of 18-year-old Seth Bishop.

Attorney Larry Tipton says Bishop wants to prove at trial that she had a “loving and caring relationship” with her brother and that the shooting was accidental.

David Traub, a spokesman for the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said this morning that the filing was “legally meaningless.”

Roy Miller and Robert Tuten, who helped defend Bishop in her Alabama criminal case, said they thought it was highly unlikely that Alabama would ever release Bishop to face charges in Massachusetts.

“It’ll be a cold day in hell when Alabama

Amy Bishop Anderson gets a new name: 285694

Amy Bishop’s Tutwiler Prison mugshot released

Published: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 8:25 AM
Updated: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 9:53 AM
By The Huntsville Times

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — State prison officials have released the booking mugshot of Amy Bishop taken when she was processed into the Tutwiler Prison for Women on Tuesday.

Bishop, 47, was convicted Monday of killing three people at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and trying to kill three others in February 2010.

Amy Bishop Anderson, official portrait from Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, Wetumpka, Alabama

Bishop received

Amy Bishop gets off scot-free in brother’s murder

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Ex-Alabama prof won’t be tried in brother’s death

By JAY LINDSAY Associated Press  / September 28, 2012

FILE – This Feb. 13, 2010, file booking photo provided by the Huntsville, Ala., Police Department shows college professor Amy Bishop, charged with capital murder in the Feb. 12, 2010 shooting deaths of three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Bishop pleaded guilty to capital murder charges in an agreement that will send to her prison for the rest of her life and make her ineligible for the death penalty. A judge scheduled jury selection for Monday, Sept. 24, 2012, as a trial is still required under Alabama law because Bishop admitted to a capital charge of murder. (AP Photo/Huntsville Police Department, File)

BOSTON (AP) — A former Alabama professor convicted of fatally shooting three colleagues won’t face a Massachusetts murder trial in the 1986 death of her brother after prosecutors withdrew their indictment.

The announcement Friday by the Norfolk district attorney follows Amy Bishop’s sentencing this week to life in prison without parole for the killings at the University of Alabama-Huntsville in February 2010.

In a statement, Michael Morrissey said the life sentence his office would have pursued in the killing of 18-year-old Seth Bishop was identical to the punishment she received after her guilty plea in Alabama, so there was no need to move forward.

‘‘We will not move to have her returned to Massachusetts,’’ Morrissey said. ‘‘The penalty we would seek for a first degree murder conviction is already in place.’’

The office withdrew the indictment ‘‘without prejudice,’’ meaning Morrissey could reinstate it if something went wrong in the Alabama sentence, though he said he considered that unlikely.

Amy Bishop, convicted of killing three colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, appears on the cover of the January 2009 cover of the Huntsville R&D Report.

Bishop said

One sure-fire way to cut governmental costs: Abolish the Death Penalty

Completely ignoring any issue of morality, the really ugly side of the Death Penalty is… it’s too damn expensive.

Lawyers are expensive.

Court is expensive.

Trials are expensive.

Life in prison without the possibility of parole – which would include humane healthcare – is exceedingly less expensive.

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Former death penalty supporters now working against it

A lawyer, a county supervisor and a retired San Quentin Prison warden are backing Proposition 34, which would make life without possibility of parole California’s toughest punishment.

By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles TimesSeptember 23, 2012

Don Heller wrote the 1978 initiative restoring capital punishment and is now trying to get Californians to ban it. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Donald Heller wrote the 1978 ballot measure that expanded California’s death penalty. Ronald Briggs, whose father spearheaded the campaign, worked to achieve its passage. Jeanne Woodford, a career corrections official, presided over four executions.

The lawyer, El Dorado County supervisor and retired San Quentin Prison warden now want California’s death penalty abolished, contending the state no longer can afford a system that has cost an estimated $4 billion since 1978 and executed 13 prisoners.

“We started with six people on death row in 1978, and we never thought that there would one day be 729,” said Briggs, a conservative Republican. “We never conceived of an appellate process that is decades long.”

Backing Proposition 34, which would make life without possibility of parole the state’s toughest punishment, the three have joined with retired Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti to try to dismantle a system in which each has played a role.

Death penalty supporters concede the system is not working but argue

Huntsville Judge Donna Pate Sentences Daniel Ray Proctor to TWO Life Sentences on Theft

Alabama‘s prison system will again be pushed to the taxpayers’ breaking point by stupidity such as this sentence. It is extreme – even with the increased severity of punishment required for habitual offenders.

This is the so-called “Three Strikes and you’re out” law in action.

Realistically, “Three Strikes and you’re out” only applies in baseball games. But someone thought it sounded cool, and morphed it into a law in California. Subsequently, California’s prison population has exploded because that state adopted that law. They’ve now seriously modified it. It may be time to rethink sentencing guidelines in Alabama. But the likelihood of that happening is practically negligible.

Thanks to our legislature, this man will now burden every honest Alabama taxpayer.

That’s not to say he and others like him should not be punished, but rather acknowledges the failure of a pop-culture-driven bumper sticker slogan to effectively remedy, ameliorate or mitigate criminality. In essence, there is little or nothing done to correct, and much done to punish. Oddly, every state has a “Department of Corrections,” rather than a ‘Department of Punishments.’ There’s a reason for that, and it’s because there is a two-fold purpose (to punish and correct), with the higher one being correction.

Yet standing in stark contrast is the as-yet-untried, and officially indefinitely delayed case of Amy Bishop, the Harvard PhD-educated biology professor who went on a shooting rampage and killed three, and wounded three other colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). Even though she has a track record of mental instability,