Page 6 - ARUBA TODAY

A6 U.S. NEWS
Monday 9 october 2017

NC high court reviews death penalty of man who beheaded wife

By EMERY P. DALESIO North Carolina is rare
Associated Press among southern states in
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North that it hasn’t had an ex-
Carolina’s highest court is ecution in more than a
reviewing whether justice decade because of vari-
means the death penalty ous legal challenges. While
for a survivor of El Salva- the state has continued to
dor’s blood-soaked civil suffer 500 to 600 murders
war of the 1980s who stran- a year, prosecutors have
gled and then decapitat- sought the death penalty
ed his estranged wife. only a handful of times
The state’s Supreme Court each year and juries have
hears oral arguments Mon- condemned killers in only a
day on whether the state fraction of those cases.
can execute 41-year-old Rodriguez’s children told
Juan Carlos Rodriguez of investigators their father
Winston-Salem for the 2010 beat and bloodied Maria
murder of his wife, Maria. Rodriguez after she told
The high court automati- them she was leaving in
cally reviews death cases. November 2010. He tossed

This Feb. 10, 2014, photo shows Juan Carlos Rodriguez entering the courtroom in Winston Salem,
N.C. The state’s Supreme Court hears oral arguments Monday, Oct. 9, 2017, on whether the state
can execute Rodriguez for the 2010 murder of his wife, Maria.
(Lauren Carroll/Winston-Salem Journal via AP)
the woman’s still-breathing tions three weeks later, af- after the U.S. Supreme
body over his shoulder, ter Juan was already jailed Court ruled this spring that
placed her in his vehicle, for her kidnapping.Justices states needed to use cur-
and said he was taking her are holding hearings in the rent medical standards in
to a hospital. Maria’s body case for the second time deciding whether a killer
and severed head were in almost exactly a year. is so mentally disabled he
found at different loca- Monday’s hearing comes can’t be executed. q
Marshals:

1972 prison escapee may have fled to Canada

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — damage in 1972. Van Sco- fingerprints from authorities
Federal marshals think they ten, who was 43 years old, in Canada.
may finally know what hap- was two years into a 10- to The Trentonian newspaper,
pened to a state prison in- 20-year sentence on a bur- of Trenton, New Jersey, re-
mate who escaped from a glary conviction. ported that Van Scoten’s
work detail after a devas- Officials said Friday that a son Dave Hudson said Van
tating flood almost a half- family member told them Scoten told him about his
century ago. that Van Scoten assumed past in the summer of 2002
The U.S. Marshals Service the name of David Paul after he returned home to
says William Van Scoten Hudson and was living in Canada following service
was working on a State Ontario, Canada, and with the U.S. Marines. Hud-
Correctional Institution- died in August 2003 in Wa- son told the paper that
Dallas prison detail aiding terford, Ontario, of emphy- David Paul Hudson would
relief efforts in the Wyo- sema and heart disease. watch “America’s Most
ming Valley after Hurricane Marshals said they hoped Wanted” with rapt atten-
Agnes caused widespread to get confirmation through tion when it aired.q