RI man, Jason Pleau, asks that death penalty be taken off table

http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode-island/2013/04/02/man-asks-that-death-penalty-taken-off-table/gmJ88sADazY6X54sJKrZlL/story.html

RI man asks that death penalty be taken off table

By MICHELLE R. SMITH

Associated Press /  April 2, 2013

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Rhode Island man who faces execution if he’s convicted of killing a Woonsocket gas station manager is set to ask a federal judge Wednesday to take the death penalty off the table. His lawyers say capital punishment is unconstitutional and that the so-called aggravating factors that make him eligible for it are not sufficiently relevant, among other arguments.

Jason Pleau, 35, is one of three people charged in the killing of David Main, 49, outside a bank in 2010 as Main was headed to make his Shell station’s dailydeposit, around $12,000 on that day. Prosecutors say Pleau was wearing a ski mask and approached Main armed with a .38-caliber revolver, demanded that Main hand over the money and then fired four to six times times as Main ran toward the bank. Main was killed by a bullet to the head.

The other two defendants, Jose A. Santiago and Kelley M. Lajoie, are not facing the death penalty. Prosecutors say all three plotted the crime, and Lajoie acted as a lookout while Santiago drove the getaway truck.

Pleau’s case has gotten widespread attention because Gov. Lincoln Chafee fought to keep him in state custody so he did not have to face the death penalty, citing the state’s rejection of capital punishment. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year the state must surrender Pleau to federal officials, and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Chafee’s appeal in January.

Pleau was expected to be in U.S. District Court in Providence for the hearing Wednesday morning, according to the U.S. Marshal’s Service.

His lawyers, David Hoose and Robert Mann, have argued in court papers that the death penalty aspects of the indictment should be dismissed. Among their arguments are that the grand jury that handed up the indictment did not know it was authorizing prosecutors to pursue the death penalty, and that since the state has rejected capital punishment, the case should not be permitted to proceed.

The lawyers cite Chafee’s fight to keep Pleau out of federal custody in one filing.

‘‘The current governor of the state has spoken in clear and unmistakable terms, that as the elected executive of the people of the Rhode Island, his obligation is to oppose one of her citizens being subjected to a sentence of death,’’ they write.

Prosecutors have replied in court papers that Pleau’s arguments are a ‘‘sprawling facial attack’’ on the federal death penalty that lack support in the law. They say federal courts have rejected claims that grand juries must be informed the death penalty was a possible punishment, and that the federal government is within its power to prosecute crime that affects interstate commerce. Among the reasons in this case, are that the shooting death happened at the door of a federally insured financial institution.

Pleau’s trial is scheduled to begin in September.