November 15, 2002

Jury convicts Dawson of 4 murders

By Steve Visser Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A Fulton County jury found Timothy Carl Dawson guilty today on all counts in the murder of four men in 1998.

Superior Court Judge Wendy Shoob ordered jurors to return Thursday to begin hearing evidence in the penalty phase of the trial to decide whether Dawson should face imprisonment or death by lethal injection. That phase is expected to last into next week.

Some family members of victims wept or crossed themselves after the verdict. They had become nervous about a mistrial after the jury -- which deliberated 19 hours -- announced Monday it might be deadlocked.

Maple Bronner, whose fiance Gerrold Shropshire was one of three men slain in a multiple murder in the Atlanta Hilton & Towers in 1998, kept her stoic visage but said it had been tough bearing up as jurors entered their fourth day of discussing the evidence.

"After two days went by, I got real nervous," she said. "I was praying we wouldn't have to do this again."

Law officers found driver's licenses, credit cards and other property belonging to victims in the trunk of Dawson's car when they pulled him over in Memphis in 1998.

Ballistic tests tied Dawson's pistol to all five killings. DNA tests tied miniscule blood droplets found on the gun to the four Fulton County slaying victims.

Dawson, however, claimed he was framed by a mysterious gang of drug dealers and by police and prosecutors.

Besides Shropshire, 50, of Altamonte Springs, Fla., the jury convicted Dawson of killing Ronald Gutkowski, 51, of Leesburg, Fla.; and Phillip Dover, 31, of Gainesville, Ga., at the downtown hotel during a robbery on Oct. 18, 1998.

The jury also convicted him of killing LaDarius Hawkins, 19, during another robbery at a College Park Days Inn a few days earlier.

Dawson, 42, is suspected of killing a fifth man during a robbery in DeKalb County and of robberies at hotels in Marietta and Stockbridge although he wasn't on trial for those crimes.

The case, in which testimony began Oct. 15, took a long time to get to trial partly because it was delayed for nearly a year while courts waited for the Georgia Supreme Court to decide the constitutionality of the electric chair, and it was delayed again last spring after lead defense lawyer Tom West suffered a long-term hospitalization from illness.

Gutkowski's widow, Alice, attended the trial as a newlywed. She said she had justice now that Dawson was convicted after "a long, long four years." Her new husband Tim Stanley, who had trouble containing his frustration with the long deliberation Tuesday, nodded in agreement that the death penalty wasn't a requirement

"He is where we want him to be," Stanley said. "That's the main thing. He can't hurt anybody else."

Bronner, who four years ago said Dawson stole her future with Shropshire, said death was the penalty Dawson needed to pay.

"If it was good enough for them," she said of the victims. "It's good enough for him."

Judge tells deadlocked Dawson jurors to try again

By Steve Visser Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

The jury deciding the death penalty case of a man accused of murdering four people may be deadlocked.

After seven hours of deliberation, the Fulton County jurors sent a note to Superior Court Judge Wendy Shoob on Monday saying they were unable to decide whether Timothy Dawson is guilty of killing three guests at the downtown Atlanta Hilton & Towers and another man at a Days Inn in College Park in October 1998.

Shoob questioned the foreman, who said six jurors had firmly decided Dawson was guilty, while the other six had differing opinions. Shoob asked if all jurors were fully participating in deliberations. The foreman said some jurors were less involved than others.

The participation question is critical because the judge could dismiss any juror found to be refusing to discuss the evidence. Such a juror would be replaced by one of the four alternates who are waiting in another room.

Shoob told jurors to continue deliberating. The jury is to return Tuesday.

The jury's division seemed to surprise prosecutors and defense lawyers because of the extensive circumstantial evidence in the case. "Who would have thought it?" said Tom West, the lead defense lawyer. "But there is plenty of room for reasonable doubt in this case

Judge Denies Lethal Injection Hearing

Fulton County Daily Report

November 20, 2001

The Fulton judge who was the first jurist in Georgia to declare electrocution unconstitutional refused Monday to schedule a hearing on a similar challenge to lethal injection.

An attorney for Timothy Carl Dawson, accused of the 1998 killings of three men at the Atlanta Hilton and Towers, argued to Fulton Superior Court Judge Wendy L. Shoob that a hearing was needed to examine Georgia's use of lethal injection.

Defense lawyer Thomas M. West said events during two of Georgia's three recent executions by lethal injection raised "serious questions" about the state's protocols for carrying out the procedure.

But Senior Assistant District Attorney Peggy A. Katz said such a hearing would be expensive and frivolous. In Dawson's own case, Katz reminded the judge, the Georgia Supreme Court recently struck down the electric chair in favor of lethal injection. And implicit in that decision, she added, was that lethal injection "is an accepted, humane procedure."

Shoob agreed. The Supreme Court, in an Oct. 5 decision, she noted, had before it evidence of the new lethal injection protocols and found lethal injection to be a minimally intrusive procedure that didn't produce the mutilation generated by electrocution. Dawson v. State, No. S01A1041 (Sup. Ct. Ga. Oct. 5, 2001).

"The Supreme Court [of Georgia] has been quite clear that lethal injection is the acceptable method of carrying out the death penalty," Shoob said.

The justices could have stayed any of the last three executions, but didn't do so, she said. "If the Supreme Court doesn't want to look at a case that is about to experience lethal injection, why look at it in a case where it is years away if at all?"

Shoob said West could submit evidence for her to consider, but denied his request that she conduct an evidentiary hearing.

Less than a month after the Supreme Court, ruling in Dawson and a second case consolidated with it, found the electric chair to be cruel and unusual punishment, defense lawyers began to assail lethal injection on the same grounds. Moore v. State, No. S01A1210 (Sup. Ct. Ga. Oct. 5, 2001). (Daily Report, Oct. 25, 2001)

Their biggest obstacle, however, appeared to be their victory in the Supreme Court electric chair ruling.

Unlikely Test Vehicle

That ruling-coupled with Shoob's Jan. 11 ruling in which she found lethal injection to be "a less cruel and more humane means of execution"-makes it unlikely that the Dawson case will be the vehicle of change on lethal injection that it was on electrocution.

She originally had agreed to let West and co-counsel Robert H. Citronberg stage a hearing on the matter and had scheduled it for Wednesday. But prosecutors objected, filing a motion to bar such a hearing.

Katz told Shoob Monday that there was no reason to conduct a hearing "when the Supreme Court has spoken just months ago, when this court has spoken."

But West argued that the legality of lethal injection wasn't an issue before the Supreme Court, although he conceded that the justices did cite its availability as a less barbaric method of execution than electrocution.

No Review of Execution Protocols

"Perhaps a properly administered, properly established protocol might be a constitutional way to do it, but we don't know [that] because no court in Georgia has reviewed the protocols," West said.

Two of the three executions carried out in Georgia in the past month have been "botched in some manner," West said. Chemicals that were supposed to "knock out" condemned killer Jose High, didn't work, West said, leaving High to cry out and thrash about during the procedure. And prison officials, after having trouble finding a suitable vein, made deep cuts in High's hand to reach one and inserted a catheter in his neck, West said.

"We're not saying it's per se unconstitutional," he told Shoob. Carried out properly, lethal injection is probably the most humane method, he said. He asked Shoob for a chance to show that Georgia's protocols need adjusting to ensure that the procedure does not involve the infliction of needless pain or mutilation.

Katz said that an inability to find a vein immediately doesn't mean the execution was botched. And, she argued, a defendant isn't entitled to a "pain-free or instantaneous death." Nor can West show that cruelty is inherent in lethal injection-a requirement to find that method unconstitutional, Katz said.

Furthermore, she added, there is no available alternative to lethal injection and no reason to devote the resources of the court to a lengthy hearing on protocols that may not even be in place when and if Dawson faces execution.

Shoob said she had agreed with West on the electric chair. Now, however, she said, "Here you are back, telling me what's wrong with lethal injection."

West protested that he had never hidden his intent to challenge lethal injection.

Dawson's trial is scheduled for March 18. He is accused of shooting Phillip Dover, Gerrold Shropshire and Ronald Gutkowski repeatedly in their heads in what police said was a robbery.

Suspect In Atlanta Killings Linked To Another Death

Evidence Mounts As Bullets In 5 Shootings Match

By Karin Meadows and Rich McKay - The Orlando Sentinel

November 03, 1998

ATLANTA - An ex-convict charged with killing four men, including two sports fans from Central Florida, has been linked to a fifth killing in suburban Atlanta, police said Monday.

Marks on the bullets recovered from the bodies of the four victims slain at area hotels match those used to kill a 44-year-old Decatur, Ga., man at his home Oct. 5.

Like the other men, Raycell Herman Mason, was shot execution-style during an apparent robbery, DeKalb County Police Capt. C.R. Maddox said.

The suspect, Timothy Carl Dawson, 37, was expected to arrive in Atlanta with police late Monday. It was unclear whether he would be arraigned in court today or whether authorities would first take the case to a grand jury.

Fingerprints revealed Dawson's identity. He had given the name Harry Lee Johnson when arrested in a traffic stop about 3 a.m. Saturday near Memphis, Tenn. Police said his car contained a small amount of cocaine and marijuana, a 45-caliber handgun similar to those used in the shootings and property from several victims.

Georgia's state crime lab will determine whether the gun was used to kill Gerrold Shropshire, 50, of Altamonte Springs; Ronald Gutkowski, 51, of Leesburg; Phillip Dover, 31, of Gainesville, Ga.; and Ladaris Hawkins, 19, of College Park, Ga. Each was shot in the head.

Shropshire, Gutkowski and Dover were found dead in their room at the downtown Atlanta Hilton Hotel & Tower on Oct. 18. Hawkins was shot in a College Park Days Inn three days earlier.

Atlanta police say the motive for the killings appears to be robbery. Although the crimes might appear to be random, police say the killer chose victims carefully.

"We've got a robber that kills people,'' Atlanta police spokesman John Quigley said. "He was deliberate. He knew he was going to do it, how he was going to do it. But what he didn't know was who he was going to do it to.''

The exception may be the slaying of Hawkins, who was found in the hotel room he rented by the week. Quigley said police think Hawkins and his killer had "some sort of relationship'' and that the gunman may have stayed at the hotel recently.

Detectives are continuing to comb through records of other crime scenes to see whether there could be connections to Dawson.

Court and police records show Dawson has a lengthy criminal record dating back 14 years, but he has served little prison time.