The Penalty

Grab a heart balloon.

Get me another one, Nycole can you hold this?

I miss her so much.

Careful with your fingers

Shelby... The one that used to work here that got robbed and killed.

Yeah, that was your daughter?

Yeah.

Beautiful sister man.

Hopefully this will stay up here.

They made this her permanent store July 8th and she got robbed and killed July 20th.

12 days later.

When she used to work here and I came to see her, she was always cordial very friendly, kind

and then when I heard about that situation, it really tore me up

and I really hope that the dude that did it, I hope they give him the death penalty, really

because, just to take somebody's life senselessly

maybe I'm maybe wrong for saying this but when you do senseless murders what not

eye for an eye let's get back to that

take his ass out.

We love you Shelby

I love you Shelby.

"This is Jacksonville 911, Smith."

Yeah, there's a guy that just robbed the Metro PCS across from our store.

OK, was he black, white, Hispanic?

Black guy.

"What color shirt and pants did he have on?"

What color shirt and pants did he have on?

He said he don't know, he just ran out the store whenever he came in there.

"Anyone see what kind of clothes he had on or if he had anything in his hands?"

Do you know if he had a gun in his hands? Did you see the gun?

He said he he saw the gun in his hand.

"Police say an armed man walked in to the store and demanded money

from there witnesses ran out and that's when they heard gunshots

the man took off running and hasn't been seen since."

It was the lieutenant that came to my job

and he didn't say nothing, he just stood there

and I said "Lieutenant, it's Shelby isn't it?"

I started punching the walls and then I just screamed.

"Sitting on the steps outside Police Headquarters, Darlene Farah is begging for answers

knowing the killer is still on the loose."

"By her side, her 16 year-old son, Caleb

who says his sister was the sweetest person he'd ever known".

Since Saturday, I've had 2 hours sleep.

I don't think you know that I can go to sleep for a whole night

knowing that this man that killed my sister is still out.

It killed me to put all of Shelby's stuff in storage

I felt like I was just putting her away.

The pastor went into the house and packed Shelby's stuff up

I didn't even bring the furniture or nothing

I mean we like completely started over.

All we had was the clothes on our back.

"We're learning new details about the killing of a Metro PCS employee

who was murdered on the job this past Saturday evening.

"Police say they've caught the man who did it'

The Sherriff's office says he goes by the nickname... Killer

21 year old James Rhodes is charged with the murder of 20 year old Shelby Farah.

She got shot right here, in the chest in the wrist, in the thigh.

With a 40 caliber Glock and every bullet exited.

The video shows she was standing up and then she collapsed to her knees.

She was reaching for the phone.

She fought for a little over 20 minutes before she died.

I think about that every day, was she reaching for the phone to call me?

You know. What... Oh god.

Darlene Farah struggled to take even a few steps to her daughter's vigil.

She says tonight the pain of Shelby's loss is real.

I'm going to make sure if it takes the last breath in my body.

He needs to get the death penalty.

We begin tonight's show with a look at the chaos surrounding executions in the United States.

Now that many of the drugs used for lethal injections are no longer available.

The execution scarcity stems from the refusal of manufacturers in Europe and the United States.

To let them be used to put people to death.

I think the job of defending the most unpopular amongst our society.

Is absolutely an indispensable part of our society.

All of my clients have been tried, convicted and sentence to death.

In the Ohio state court system.

Basically every execution that's been scheduled, going back to June 3rd of 2009

Billy Slagle, he ended up committing suicide 3 days before his execution

Harry Mitts Jnr on September 25th was executed

Ron Phillips was next on November 14th 2013 and he was reprieved.

And that leads us to Dennis McGuire.

And after McGuire, 9, 10, 11, 12...

12 guys after McGuire all the way out to January 21st, 2016.

Well the attorneys for an Ohio inmate scheduled to die through an experimental execution method.

Say that their client will suffer a terrifying and agonizing death.

According to his lawyers, the untested injection method will not properly sedate McGuire.

Which will cause him to feel the pain of suffocation before he dies.

Dennis McGuire is on death row for the 1989 rape and murder of pregnant woman Joy Stewart.

The state is planning to inject him with a 2-drug mix that's never been used in an execution before.

We've presented our case to the judge to stop the execution.

We argue that Dennis will feel and be consciously aware of feeling like he is he is suffocating.

Because he IS suffocating because of the way the drugs work.

So now we sit and wait, expecting a decision any time today.

Alright, here's the ruling, let's see what it is...

Finding as moot, denying...

Fuck.

Fuck.

Hello this is Debbie can I help you?

Hi Debbie, this is Allen Bohnert from the Federal Public Defenders Office.

Oh hi, how are you?

Oh I've had better days.

I bet you have, I'm sorry, I should not have just said that.

Checking to see if ya'll decided to file a reply to that yet.

No, not that I'm aware of.

I'm preparing for a worst case scenario.

Right right.

Are you kidding me, how am I doing?

I'm doing great, I'm going to have a pulse on Friday.

Nothing that they argued was unexpected you know, so we tried to address it preemptively

I just got off the phone with Dennis and he knows.

Although the court is not without concern over what could transpire during McGuire's execution

the only fair evaluation of the evidence here leads to the conclusion that the degree of risk

that Ohio's protocol presents is acceptable within the contours of the constitution.

For the second year in a row, a record number of people convicted of crimes

have been exonerated in the United States according to a new report by the national registry of exonerations.

149 people falsely convicted of crimes were freed in 2015.

Nearly 40 percent of those cases were charged as homicides.

Seems like you're overwhelmed, no words?

Breaking news from WDSU. After spending 15 years in prison, a Jefferson Parish man is free

DNA evidence exonerated Damon Thibodeaux who was on death row at Angola.

Serving a sentence for the rape and murder of his 14 years old cousin.

His attorneys are speaking right now in the 7th ward, lets listen in live.

You dream of it every day but it's not the same as actually going through it.

It's a surreal walk, it's not something that you can prepare yourself for

because you've been living in those conditions for so long.

How do you feel now?

Free.

Real Free

Damon Thibodeaux, the man right there at the centre of your screen, free today.

He spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement during his 15 years at Angola.

Now 38 years old, he went to jail when he was about 23.

If I had just gone off and done something else that day.

Thoughts like that were running through my head every day for 15 years.

Every day, that's what I would think about.

911 Operator 16, can I help you

I need to get a cop to my house.

Ok what's the problem M'am?

Our 14 year-old daughter's been missing for the last two and half hours

and we can't find her nowhere.

She's missing?

Crystal had come up missing. Everybody was looking for her.

She went to the store and she never came back.

They came to pick up Damon to take him in and question him.

And after that, he never came home.

For the record, can you state your full name?

Damon Allen Thibodeaux.

What time was that you last saw her?

It was just after 5.

Some people come walked over here a minute ago and they found a little girl dead by the river.

Deputies found the Champagnes eldest daughter under the Huey P. Long Bridge last night strangled.

Authorities believe that she may have also been sexually assaulted.

Her panties and her shorts are pulled down to her ankles

her bra and her shirt is pulled up to her shoulders.

Why?

A parent's anguished cry, his 14 year-old daughter is dead, brutally murdered.

If that reality isn't horrible enough, the family must now cope with the fact that a relative is to blame.

22 year-old Damon Thibodeaux, Crystal's step-cousin has confessed to the crime.

You wrapped the wire around her neck twice?

Yes.

They walked in to the courtroom and made it sound like I just walked in to this interrogation room and spilled my guts.

I used to be one of those people who believed that someone would never confess to something they didn't do

and society as a whole believes that

but yet here I am, here I sit.

We'll go on the record, we're here in the case of the state of Florida vs James Rhodes.

It's case 2013 - CF 6932 the defendant is present with his attorneys as is counsel for the state

are both sides ready to proceed?

Yes your Honor

Gregory Pritchard Please.

Ok we can tentatively schedule this matter for continuation of this hearing for April 28th at 2.30pm.

Oh god.

Are you ok?

Oh god, he's just sitting there smiling. Smiling like it ain't nothing.

He gonna smile, he gonna... oh Jesus.

What do you think when you see him each time you come back to court?

It takes a lot out of me when I see him

but I can't be angry cause angry's not going to bring Shelby back.

I want to put structure and stability back in to my other kids's life.

You saw what happened today and before the court hearings were a month apart or 2 months apart

we were in court every week for months.

Thank you Darlene.

Thank you, appreciate your time.

I got to smoke, I'm ready to smoke a cigarette.

My nerves is, my nerves is like zzzzzzz.

A Duval County Judge delayed a decision today on whether accused killer Jame Rhodes is intellectually disabled.

It's because the defense's expert witness was not available.

I'm so disappointed.

Another month, can you believe that?

Same stuff. This is it, this is my life.

It's crazy.

We've been to court so many times in the last few months, I haven't really had time to really grieve over my daughters death.

You know, victim's families go through a terrible ordeal.

Most of the time, the victim's families, they are very much in favour of the death penalty.

There are some people that because of what they did have given up on the right to live amongst us

and that is our philosophy.

You know I've been doing this a long time, I think my first death penalty case was in 1988 and none of those people have been executed.

That's the unfortunate thing in our system, that it takes too long.

I don't think there's enough focus on victims' families, you know in terms of closure.

At some point these families deserve closure don't they?

It'll say Farah right here, the base

I want her to have her own mom.

You can't, where she's buried at.

That's why you shouldn't have buried her right there.