Lazale Ashby becomes youngest on Ct's Row
Associated Press
April 5, 2008
A Hartford man convicted of raping and murdering
his neighbor in her apartment was sentenced to die Friday, making him
Connecticut's youngest death row inmate.
Lazale Ashby, now 23, turned 18 4 days before the
battered body of 21-year-old acquaintance Elizabeth Garcia was found
in her Hartford apartment on Dec. 2, 2002.
She was found after she failed to pick up her
2-year-old daughter from a neighbor.
Hartford Superior Court Judge Carmen Espinosa
sentenced Ashby to death Friday, making him the 10th man on
Connecticut's death row. He was convicted in 2007. A jury recommended
the death penalty earlier this year.
In addition to capital felony murder, Ashby was
convicted of rape, kidnapping, burglary, and murder of a victim of
sexual assault and kidnapping.
About 50 people attended the sentencing Friday in
Superior Court in Hartford, where many let loose with an emotional
chorus of "yes" when Espinosa sentenced Ashby to death, The Hartford
Courant reported on its Web site.
A note that Ashby wrote to a fellow inmate was
among evidence presented at the trial. In that note, he allegedly said
he enjoyed viewing the graphic crime scene photos and wrote to the
other inmate, "I did a good job on her."
Prosecutors said DNA evidence linked Ashby to the
crime, and that Garcia had been badly beaten and stabbed before she
was strangled and left on her apartment floor.
Ashby was arrested by Hartford police in September
2003 and made several statements implicating himself in Garcia's
murder, as well as in the killing of 22-year-old Manchester resident
Nahshon Cohen a few days before his arrest, prosecutors said.
Hartford police found Cohen lying on a street in
the city's North End on Sept. 1, 2003, with several gunshot wounds. He
died several hours later.
Ashby was charged with murder, attempted murder and
carrying a pistol without a permit in the death, according to court
records. The case is pending.
Jury recommends death for Lazale Ashby in
Hartford Conn. murder
February 1, 2008
Lazale D. Ashby's own words, in a note he wrote in
prison last spring, played a crucial part in at least one juror's
decision to convict him of the rape and murder of a young mother in
her Hartford apartment -- and to condemn him to death.
"A big deal was the note," jury foreman Thomas
Gallagher of Windsor Locks said in a telephone interview Thursday
evening, several hours after the 12-member Hartford Superior Court
jury decided that Ashby should be executed for killing Elizabeth
Garcia, 21, in December 2002.
Gallagher said the note was important in the jury's
decision last June to convict Ashby of the murder because it gave
details of the crime, identifying a tank top as the weapon used to
strangle Garcia and saying Ashby had burned the knife used to stab her
repeatedly.
The jurors removed a bloody tank top from an
evidence bag and examined it, Gallagher said.
"I think it was what he used," the jury foreman
said. "The straps and the area around the straps seemed like it could
have been twisted."
Gallagher said a knife with a burned handle was
found in Garcia's apartment on Zion Street in Hartford, where she was
killed, although no blood was found on it.
In Gallagher's view, the note also undermined
arguments by Ashby's public defenders that his mental capacity was
impaired.
"To me it showed that he was of sound mind," the
jury foreman said. "It was almost like he was trying to trick the cops
and trick us."
...A crazy schemer?
An inmate, Kenneth N. Pladsen Jr., testified about
the note. In his final argument to the jury in the trial's penalty
phase, public defender M. Fred DeCaprio stressed Pladsen's role in the
note's creation. DeCaprio called Pladsen crazy but suggested that he
was a schemer as well.
"Pladsen was pretty messed up," Gallagher conceded.
"I don't know how much Pladsen had to do with it, but it was in
Ashby's handwriting."
During the penalty phase of the trial, the defense
presented extensive evidence about Ashby's life as he grew up in
Hartford, which included abandonment by his mother at age 6 and
subsequent neglect by an aunt who gained custody of him.
"I feel for this kid," Gallagher said. "His life
was horrible. It does not excuse what he did to Elizabeth.
"I don't care what her life was like," he
continued. "She was trying to take care of her daughter. And he
snuffed her out, and he didn't do it quick."
During the trial's penalty phase, prosecutors
presented evidence that Ashby also had committed two other violent
crimes: the rape of a young woman identified only as C.M. on a
Hartford street and the fatal shooting of Nahshon B. Cohen, a 1998
Manchester High School graduate.
"If we didn't know about C.M. or Nahshon, it might
have gone a different way," Gallagher said.
...Temporary deadlock
The jury deliberated for more than a week before
deciding on the death penalty.
In a note to Judge Carmen E. Espinosa late Tuesday
afternoon, Gallagher said the jury was deadlocked. But, at Espinosa's
urging, the jurors resumed deliberations the next day.
Gallagher said some jurors already had changed
their minds overnight. "Our minds were open," he said.
He described an emotional deliberation among jurors
who had gotten to know each other extremely well during the trial's
guilt and penalty phases, which lasted a total of some four months.
"It was very, very difficult for people," Gallagher
said. "People were crying."
The courtroom was crowded, but mostly with court
personnel, when the jury of six men and six women delivered its
penalty verdict after 3:30 p.m. Thursday.
Six friends and relatives of Garcia's -- including
her mother and aunt, who had attended much of the lengthy trial -- sat
in the front of the spectators galley on the prosecution side of the
courtroom.
Ashby's mother, Carmen, a tall, thin woman who has
struggled with drug addiction for much of her adult life, was the sole
person other than professionals on his side of the courtroom aisle.
Ashby, 23, sat looking down, as he has throughout
the death-penalty hearing, while a court clerk read the verdict form
announcing the jury's decision to have him put to death.
Garcia's family reacted emotionally when it became clear that the jury
had opted for a death sentence.
Later, as Ashby was led out of the courtroom, his
mother called to him, "I love you, Lazale."
...A mother's apology
Outside the courtroom several minutes earlier --
when it was known that the jury had reached a verdict but not what the
decision was -- Carmen Ashby looked over at Garcia's family and said,
"I want to tell them I'm sorry."
She borrowed a pencil and paper from a reporter and
wrote several lines, then looked up and said she wasn't sure it was a
good idea. She tore the paper in small pieces and threw it in a
trashcan.
But after the announcement of the verdict, she
said, "I still would want somebody to tell that family that I'm still
sorry, that I apologize that this had to happen to their child. I'm
not a villain. I'm not cruel."
Outside the courthouse later, a reporter read that
message to Garcia's mother, Betsy Rodriguez. She didn't immediately
respond.
But Rodriguez did say, "I wish I could thank all
the jurors, every single one individually. I know this was very, very
hard for them."
In addition to the note he wrote in prison, the
evidence against Ashby at the trial's guilt phase included a match
between his DNA and DNA found in Garcia's body, as well as a
confession he signed after being arrested some nine months after the
crime.
Although Ashby will be formally sentenced at a
later date, Espinosa has no choice as to what to do. Unless she finds
legal grounds to set aside the jury's verdict, a rare event, state law
requires her to impose the sentence directed by the jury.
After the verdict, Cynthia Ayres, the "mitigation
specialist" who spearheaded the defense investigation of Ashby's
background, accompanied Carmen Ashby to the door of the courthouse to
shepherd her through any media crowd that might have formed. There was
none.
Carmen Ashby said her goodbyes and walked down
Hartford's Lafayette Street alone.
