May 4 URGENT ACTION APPEAL ---------------------------------- 3 May 2005----UA 106/05 Death penalty USA/Oklahoma: Garry Thomas Allen (m), black, aged 48 Garry Allen is scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma on 19 May 2005. He was sentenced to death for the 1986 murder of Gail Titsworth, with whom he had had two children. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has recommended that Governor Brad Henry commute Garry Allen's death sentence. Garry Allen shot Gail Titsworth on 21 November 1986; three days after she had moved out from their home with their two sons, aged six and two. The shooting occurred outside a day care center in Oklahoma City where she had gone to pick up the two boys. The two adults argued, culminating in Garry Allen pulling out a revolver and shooting Gail Titsworth. Allen walked away, but as a day care center employee was helping Gail Titsworth into the center, he returned and shot Titsworth in the back despite her pleas for mercy. A police officer in the area responded within minutes to the shooting. There was a struggle between the officer and suspect, during which Allen was shot in the face with the officer's gun. Allen was taken to hospital where he remained for the next two months. As a result of the gunshot wound, Garry Allen lost his left eye, the hearing in one ear, and suffered permanent brain damage. Doubt was raised about Garry Allen's competency to stand trial, that is, about his ability to appreciate the nature of the charges against him or to consult with his lawyer and to assist in his defense. After a hearing, the trial court found him incompetent to stand trial but capable of achieving competence. He was committed to Eastern State Hospital where he remained for the next four months and was treated, including with anti-psychotic medication. At competency proceedings in October 1987, a jury heard evidence of the brain damage Allen had suffered as a result of the gunshot wound, and evidence from an Eastern State Hospital psychiatrist who testified that although Allen suffered long-term depression, with an associated history of substance abuse, and some short-term and long-term memory loss, he was competent to stand trial. The jury found that Garry Allen had not met the burden of proving his incompetence by clear and convincing evidence, thus finding him competent to stand trial. Less than a month later, on 10 November 1987, Garry Allen entered a ''blind plea'' of guilty to first degree murder. Under a blind plea, no sentence is negotiated with the prosecution, and the court is free to impose any sentence up to the maximum. A blind plea abandons all defenses, including a conviction on a lesser offence that does not carry the death penalty. It abandoned a jury sentencing at which all 12 jurors would have had to agree to a death sentence before one could be imposed. The court found him competent to make such a plea. At a later post- conviction evidentiary hearing, his trial lawyer testified that, in her view, Gary Allen was incompetent to make such a plea and had not fully understood what he was giving up by so pleading. Allen was sentenced to death, but this first sentencing hearing was overturned because the available option of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole had not been considered. A second sentencing hearing was held, and he was again sentenced to death. At this second sentencing hearing before a judge, Garry Allen explained his decision to plead guilty. He said that he had already put his and Gail Titsworth's family through enough suffering: ''I just thought, you know, that if I committed the crime and admitted committing the crime that that would end it for everybody because to stretch things out does nobody any good... I just didn't want to put people through this. I just didn't want to do that. Man, the people might look at my family and they might associate that my family has been in some way responsible for what happened, but it was solely my actions. It was something that I did and I don't want people to have misconceptions about my family, you know... It just didn't seem to me to be necessary to be dragging other people in because I am the one responsible for this crime.'' The defense presented an expert to detail mitigating evidence. Dr Nelda Ferguson testified that Garry Allen had been raised in poverty in an unstable family environment, that he had been rejected by his alcoholic mother, and that he himself had suffered debilitating mood swings which resulted in numerous suicide attempts. In his late teens Garry Allen began to abuse alcohol and drugs. He was treated for psychological problems, including while serving in the Navy. The mitigation expert concluded that Garry Allen had a personality disorder related to schizophrenia. At the sentencing, his parents also appeared as witnesses, testifying that there was mental illness on both sides of the family. The defendant himself testified that he drank as much alcohol as he could as often as he could. He testified that around the time of the murder, he was ''drinking a lot'' and ''drinking just about every day at that point''. Garry Allen has epilepsy, which has apparently worsened during his time on death row. He has frequent seizures and doctors have said that he is so confused for periods after these seizures that he would not understand the reality of or reason for his impending execution. In 1993, Garry Allen's IQ was measured at 111, above average. By 1999, it had dropped to 75. Doctors have reportedly put this down to his ongoing epileptic seizures combined with head injuries. After having been presented with such evidence at a clemency hearing on 20 April 2005, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended by four votes to one that Governor Brad Henry commute Garry Allen's death sentence to life imprisonment. An Assistant Attorney General, pursuing the execution for the state, was quoted as saying that he believed that Garry Allen was faking his mental impairments: ''It is easier to act stupider than you are. It's impossible to act smarter than you are. This guy now knows, play up my seizures, play down my IQ.'' BACKGROUND INFORMATION Oklahoma has the highest rate of execution per capita of its population of all the US death penalty states. It ranks 27th of the 50 US states in terms of population and third in the number of executions carried out since the USA resumed judicial killing in 1977. It accounts for 76 of the nationwide total of 962 executions since that year. Oklahoma has violated international law and standards in its pursuit of judicial killing and its prosecutors have earned a reputation for misconduct in capital cases (see AI report Old habits die hard: The death penalty in Oklahoma, AMR 51/055/2001, April 2001). RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in your own words: - expressing sympathy for the family and friends of Gail Titsworth, and explaining that you are not seeking to excuse the manner of her death or to downplay the suffering that it will have caused; - opposing the execution of Garry Allen; - welcoming the recommendation for clemency by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board; - urging the Governor to accept the recommendation and to commute Garry Allen's death sentence. APPEALS TO: Governor Brad Henry State Capitol Building 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Room 212 Oklahoma City, OK 73105 Fax: 1 405 521 3353 Salutation: Dear Governor To send an email, go to: http://www.governor.state.ok.us/message.php PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal. Urgent Action Network Amnesty International USA PO Box 1270 Nederland CO 80466-1270 Email: u...@aiusa.org http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/ Phone: 303 258 1170 Fax: 303 258 7881 ---------------------------------- END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL ---------------------------------- ***************************** URGENT ACTION APPEAL ---------------------------------- 3 May 2005----UA 107/05 Death Penalty USA/Connecticut: Michael Bruce Ross Michael Ross (m), white, aged 45, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Connecticut on 13 May 2005, after dropping his appeals against his death sentence. The State of Connecticut has not carried out an execution for 45 years. Michael Ross was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder of four teenagers, all female, in 1983 and 1984: Robin Stavinsky, 19; Wandy Baribeault, 17; Leslie Shelley, 14; and April Brunais, 14. He is also serving life sentences for the murder of Tammy Williams, 17, and Debra Smith Taylor, 23, and up to 25 years for the murder of 16-year-old Paula Perrera. He admitted to killing another woman, Dzung Ngoc Tu, 25, in 1981, but has not been prosecuted in that case. Most of the victims were raped. Michael Ross's death sentence was overturned by the state Supreme Court in 1994 because the jury had not been able to consider evidence that the murders were the result of sexual sadism, a psychiatric disorder. At a re-sentencing in 2000, the jury rejected the sexual sadism claim as a mitigating factor and he was once again sentenced to death. Michael Ross was scheduled to be put to death earlier this year, but the execution was stayed after the issue of Ross's competency to waive his appeals was raised in the courts ( UA 330/04 issued 6 December 2004, and re-issued 7 December 2004; 7 January 2005; 27 January 2005; and 1 February 2005). Efforts are continuing in the courts to stop the execution. In April 2005, a court found that Michael Ross was competent to waive his appeals. That ruling is currently being appealed. BACKGROUND INFORMATION The last time a prisoner was executed in Connecticut was on 17 May 1960, when Joseph Taborsky was put to death in the state's electric chair. In 1960, nine countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Today, 84 countries are abolitionist for all crimes, and a total of 120 are abolitionist in law or practice. While the USA has bucked this abolitionist trend, with 962 executions carried out since judicial killing resumed in the USA in 1977, the rate of death sentencing and executions has nevertheless slowed over the past five years as national concern about the death penalty has grown. At least 113 of the people executed in the USA since 1977 were so-called ''volunteers'', prisoners who had dropped their appeals and ''consented'' to execution. The first execution carried out in the USA after the US Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that judicial killings could resume was that of Gary Gilmore, who had dropped his appeals. His was the first execution in Utah since 1960 and the first in the USA since 1967. Since then 10 other states - Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania - have resumed judicial killings with a ''consensual'' execution. In 2001, the US Government carried out the first federal execution since 1963: that of Timothy McVeigh, who had dropped his appeals. Perhaps these ''volunteers'' have made it easier for US society to stomach state-sanctioned killing. As Amnesty International illustrated in an April 2001 report entitled The Illusion of Control (AI Index: AMR 51/053/2001, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510532001) any number of factors may lead a prisoner not to pursue appeals against his or her death sentence, including mental disorder, physical illness, remorse, bravado, religious belief, the severity of conditions of confinement, including prolonged isolation and lack of physical contact visits, the bleak alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, pessimism about appeal prospects, a quest for notoriety, or simply a desire to gain a semblance of control over a situation in which the prisoner is otherwise powerless. Rational or irrational, a decision taken by someone who is under threat of death at the hands of others cannot be consensual. What is more, it cannot disguise the fact that the state is involved in a premeditated killing, a policy that is a symptom of a culture of violence rather than a solution to it. Whether or not a prisoner who ''asks'' to be executed is deluding himself or herself about the level of control they have gained over their fate B after all, they are merely assisting their government in what it has set out to do anyway B the state is guilty of a far greater deception. It is peddling its own illusion of control: that, by killing a selection of those it convicts of murder, it can offer a constructive contribution to efforts to defeat violent crime. In reality, the state is taking to refined, calculated heights what it seeks to condemn B the deliberate taking of human life. Such executions could be perhaps be characterized as ''prisoner-assisted homicide'' rather than ''state-assisted suicide''. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, regardless of the gravity of the crime, the guilt or innocence of the condemned, or the method used to kill the prisoner. The death penalty has not been shown to have a unique deterrent effect, risks brutalizing society and undermining respect for fundamental human rights, and consumes resources that could otherwise be used towards constructive strategies to combat violent crime and to offer assistance to its victims and their families. History shows that countries have not waited for public opinion to turn against the death penalty before abolishing it. Principled human rights leadership is required for such a step. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, using any of the above information or your own arguments, using the following as a guide: - expressing sympathy for the families of the murder victims in this case, and explaining that you are not seeking in any way to excuse the manner of their deaths or to minimize the suffering caused; - welcoming the fact that the State of Connecticut has not carried out an execution since 1960, during which time more than a hundred countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; - noting that recent years have seen growing national concern in the USA about the death penalty; - urging the Governor to do all in her power to see that Connecticut does not take the backward step of resuming executions, but instead offers an example of leadership on this fundamental issue. APPEALS TO: Governor M. Jodi Rell Executive Office of the Governor State Capitol 210 Capitol Avenue Hartford, CT 06106 Email: governor.r...@po.state.ct.us Fax: 1 860 524 7396 Salutation: Dear Governor PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal. Urgent Action Network Amnesty International USA PO Box 1270 Nederland CO 80466-1270 Email: u...@aiusa.org http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/ Phone: 303 258 1170 Fax: 303 258 7881 ---------------------------------- END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL ----------------------------------
