[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, GA.

[Rick Halperin]

June 29



USA:

USA: Supreme Court tightens standard on 'competence' for execution


A prisoners awareness of the States rationale for an execution is not the
same as a rational understanding of it. ---- US Supreme Court, Panetti v.
Quarterman, 28 June 2007


In a 5-4 decision issued on 28 June 2007, the United States Supreme Court
blocked the execution of Scott Panetti, a Texas death row inmate who
suffers from severe delusions. Amnesty International welcomes the ruling
as a step towards ending the use of the death penalty against this and
other criminal offenders with serious mental illness in the USA.(1) The
Supreme Courts ruling also drew attention once more to the shoddy
standards of capital justice in Texas, which accounts for more than 1/3 of
executions in the USA and has routinely contravened international
standards in sending prisoners to its death chamber.

The central question asked of the Supreme Court by the Panetti case was,
in effect, to clarify a ruling it made 21 years earlier. In Ford v.
Wainwright in 1986, the Court had affirmed that the execution of the
insane violates the US Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and
unusual punishments". However, the Ford ruling neither defined competence
for execution, nor did a majority mandate specific procedures that must be
followed by the individual states to determine whether an inmate is
legally insane. The result over the ensuing two decades has been the
adoption of different standards in different states, judicial uncertainty,
and minimal protection for seriously mentally ill inmates.(2) The Panetti
ruling has the potential, at last, to provide additional protection.

Scott Panetti shot his parents-in-law to death in 1992, several years
after he was first diagnosed with schizophrenia. He had been hospitalized
for mental illness, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, in
numerous different facilities before the crime. There is compelling
evidence that he was psychotic at the time of the shootings, and that he
was incompetent to stand trial. Not only was he tried, however, he was
allowed to act as his own lawyer, which he did dressed as a cowboy and
presenting an often rambling narrative in his defence. His trial has
variously been described as a "circus", a "joke", a "farce", "not moral",
and a "mockery", by various lawyers, doctors and family members who
attended.

On 4 February 2004, Scott Panetti was 24 hours from execution in the Texas
death chamber when a federal court issued a stay to give the state judge,
who had set the execution date, time to consider Panetti's mental state.
The judge had earlier, without a hearing, dismissed a defence motion
claiming that Panetti was incompetent for execution. The Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals had refused to intervene on the grounds that under state
law  enacted some 13 years after the Ford ruling  it would only have
jurisdiction to review such a case after the lower court had determined
the prisoner to be incompetent. Such are the obstacles faced by lawyers
seeking to stop the Texas conveyor belt of death.

With the case back in his court, the state judge again failed to hold a
hearing. Instead he appointed two mental health experts who reported back
to him that Scott Panetti was competent for execution, and claimed that
the prisoners bizarre behaviour was calculated and manipulative. Ignoring
the defence lawyer's objections, and his motions requesting a competency
hearing and funding to hire his own mental health expert, the judge
dismissed the case with a finding that Panetti had failed to show that he
was incompetent for execution.

The case went back to the federal courts. A District Court judge ruled
that the state proceedings had been constitutionally inadequate, but ruled
that, under the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals precedent relating to Ford
claims (the Fifth Circuit is the federal circuit which has jurisdiction
over Texas cases), Panetti had not shown incompetence. The judge held that
under the Fifth Circuit standard it was sufficient that Panetti knew that
he had committed two murders; that he would be executed; and that the
reason the state had given for that execution was his commission of the
murders. The court rejected the defence lawyer's argument that, under the
Ford ruling, the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution of a prisoner who
lacks a rational understanding of the States reason for the execution.
According to various experts presented by the defence, Panetti had no such
rational understanding and believed instead that, notwithstanding the
States purported reason for the execution, its real motivation was to
punish him for preaching the Gospel. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the
District Courts ruling on 9 May 2006.

The Supreme Court agreed to take the case and, after rejecting the state's
argument that the Ford claim was procedurally barred from federal
review,(3) it overturned the Fifth Circuit's ruling. Firstly, however, it
levelled strong criticism at Texas. It found that the Texas court had
failed to provide Scott Panetti with the minimum process required by Ford
v. Wainwright. It appears, the Supreme Court wrote, that "the state court
on repeated occasions conveyed information to petitioner's counsel that
turned out not to be true; provided at least one significant update to the
State without providing the same notice to petitioner; and failed in
general to keep petitioner informed as to the opportunity, if any, he
would have to present his case." The Supreme Court also found that the
state court made a constitutionally impermissible error in failing to
provide Panetti with "an adequate opportunity to submit expert evidence in
response to the report filed by the court-appointed experts". These
state-level procedural deficiencies "constituted a violation of
[Panetti's] federal rights", and meant that the Supreme Court would not
defer to the state court's finding of competency.

The Supreme Court then turned to the question of the federal Fifth
Circuit's standard for competency, and found that it "rests on a flawed
interpretation of Ford" and that it "is too restrictive to afford a
prisoner the protections granted by the Eighth Amendment". The Court
acknowledged that its Ford decision 21 years earlier had "not set forth a
precise standard for competency" and had discussed the standard "at a high
level of generality". However the Court noted that the various Justices
opinions that made up the Ford ruling "nowhere indicate that delusions are
irrelevant to comprehension or awareness if they so impair the prisoners
concept of reality that he cannot reach a rational understanding of the
reason for the execution."

The Fifth Circuits standard, the Supreme Court stated, puts at risk the
principles that lie behind the Ford ruling:

"A prisoner's awareness of the State's rationale for an execution is not
the same as a rational understanding of it. Ford does not foreclose
inquiry into the latter [Panetti's] submission is that he suffers from a
severe, documented mental illness that is the source of gross delusions
preventing him from comprehending the meaning and purpose of the
punishment to which he has been sentenced. This argument, we hold, should
have been considered To refuse to consider evidence of this nature is to
mistake Ford's holding and its logic. Gross delusions stemming from a
severe mental disorder may put an awareness of a link between a crime and
its punishment in a context so far removed from reality that the
punishment can serve no proper purpose."

The Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit's judgment and remanded the
case for further proceedings consistent with the Panetti ruling. The
majority wrote: "The underpinnings of [Panettis] claims should be
explained and evaluated in further detail on remand. The conclusions of
physicians, psychiatrists, and other experts in the field will bear upon
the proper analysis. Expert evidence may clarify the extent to which
severe delusions may render a subjects perception of reality so distorted
that he should be deemed incompetent".

The State of Texas, approaching its 400th execution since 1982 (no other
state has yet executed 100 inmates since resumption of judicial killing in
the USA in 1977), does not give up easily in death penalty cases. Perhaps
emboldened by the four dissenting Justices who accused the majority of
"bend[ing] over backwards to allow Panetti to bring his Ford claim", and
of issuing a "half-baked holding that leaves the details of the insanity
standard for the District Court to work out", the Texas authorities have
said that they will continue to seek Scott Panetti's execution. The
Solicitor General of Texas, the official responsible for the state's
appeals before the state and federal courts, is quoted as saying that the
Supreme Courts ruling "will invite abuse from capital murderers, subject
the courts to numerous false claims of incompetency and even further delay
justice for the victims families. Texas will now return for further
proceedings, where we will continue working to carry out the jury's
unanimous capital sentence for Scott Louis Panettis premeditated double
homicide".(4)

The suggestion that the defendant or inmate is faking or exaggerating
their mental illness is a position that has frequently been adopted by the
state. Texas adopted this approach, for example, in the case of Monty Delk
before putting him to death in February 2002. If Monty Delk was indeed
faking his serious mental illness, as the state claimed, he fooled many
mental health professionals. He also maintained the "act" for many years
and right up to the point of his death. The Texas prison authorities
recorded his final statement before being executed as "Ive got one thing
to say, get your Warden off this gurney and shut up. I am from the island
of Barbados. I am the Warden of this unit. People are seeing you do this".

The international community will now watch to see how Texas responds to
the Panetti ruling. Amnesty International urges the state to use this
opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

The 5 Justices in the Panetti majority noted that there is "much in the
record to support the conclusion that [Panetti] suffers from severe
delusions". However, it also acknowledged that "a concept like rational
understanding is difficult to define". In the Ford ruling 2 decades
earlier, four of the Justices had similarly noted that although "the
stakes are high", the evidence of whether a prisoner is incompetent for
execution "will always be imprecise". A 5th Justice had added that "unlike
issues of historical fact, the question of [a] petitioner's sanity calls
for a basically subjective judgment." In 2005, the US Court of Appeals for
the Fourth Circuit reiterated this when it said "undoubtedly, determining
whether a person is competent to be executed is not an exact science". In
other words, there will always be errors and inconsistencies, at least on
the margins. Arbitrariness in the application of the death penalty should
be abhorrent even to those who do not oppose this punishment. In the end,
there is only one solution  abolition.

And in the end, the Panetti ruling is one more example  albeit this time a
rights-protective one  of a Court "tinkering with the machinery of death",
in the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. The USA
should recognize, as Justice Blackmun did 15 years ago, that the USAs
modern experiment with the death penalty has failed.(5)

INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT, 1 EASTON STREET, LONDON WC1X 0DW, UNITED
KINGDOM

********

(1) The organization has been campaigning on Scott Panetti's case since
2004. See USA: 'Where is the compassion?' The imminent execution of Scott
Panetti, mentally ill offender, AMR 51//011/2004, January 2004,
http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/AMR510112004ENGLISH/$File/AMR5101104.pdf.

(2) Also, USA: The execution of mentally ill offenders, AMR 51/003/2006,
January 2006,
http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/AMR510032006ENGLISH/$File/AMR5100306.pdf.

(3) The state argued that, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996, the Ford claim was procedurally barred from
review as a successor appeal that should have been raised earlier. The
Panetti ruling noted that acceptance of this argument would force
prisoners either to forgo the opportunity to raise a Ford claim in federal
court, or to file such a claim in their first federal habeas petition,
even if it was premature (e.g. their mental illness could subsequently
deteriorate). "Instructing prisoners to file premature claims", the
Supreme Court stated, "does not conserve judicial resources, reduce
piecemeal litigation, or streamline federal habeas proceedings", the
purported aims of the AEDPA.

(4) Supreme Court blocks execution of delusional killer. New York Times,
28 June 2007.

(5) See USA: The experiment that failed. A reflection on 30 years of
executions (AMR 51/011/2007, January 2007,
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510112007.

(source: Amnesty International)

*******************

NAMI Praises Supreme Court Decision: Mental Illness & Death Penalty


The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has praised today's
decision by the U.S. Supreme Court blocking the execution of a Texas man
who suffers from severe mental illness.

In Panetti v. Quarterman, the court held that an individual's
understanding of the reasons why he or she is to be executed must be
considered in determining whether application of the death penalty is
constitutional -- rather than merely understanding the link between
execution and death.

"For once, law has caught up with medical science," said NAMI Director of
Policy and Legal Affairs Ronald S. Honberg. "The circumstances of this
case are tragic and no one minimizes the gravity of the crime or the
suffering of the victims. However, execution of someone who is profoundly
ill would only compound the original tragedy and represent a profound
injustice for us all."

"Severe delusions mean severe illness. Rational understanding and judgment
are severely compromised. Application of the death penalty becomes
meaningless."

NAMI previously filed an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief in
the case with the American Psychological Association and the American
Psychiatric Association.

The Supreme Court's decision can be found at
http://scotusblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/06-6407.pdf. The NAMI amicus
brief is at http://www.nami.org/policy/panetti.

Despite a long history of schizophrenia, Scott Panetti was allowed to
represent himself at his trial on charges of murdering his parents-in-law
15 years ago. He frequently spoke irrationally and issued subpoenas to
John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ, and Pope John Paul II before being
sentenced to death.

Continuing to experience delusions and other symptoms of severe mental
illness throughout incarceration on death row, Panetti believed his
planned execution was part of an evil conspiracy between Texas and demonic
forces to stop him from preaching the gospel.

[SOURCE National Alliance on Mental Illness]

(source: PR Newswire)

***********************

New Study Shows How Often Juries Get It Wrong


Juries across the country make decisions every day on the fate of
defendants, ideally leading to prison sentences that fit the crime for the
guilty and release for the innocent. Yet a new Northwestern University
study shows that juries in criminal cases many times are getting it wrong.

In a set of 271 cases from four areas, juries gave wrong verdicts in at
least 1 out of 8 cases, according to "Estimating the Accuracy of Jury
Verdicts," a paper by a Northwestern University statistician that is being
published in the July issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

"Contrary to popular belief, this study strongly suggests that DNA or
other after-the-fact evidence is not the only way to know how often jury
verdicts are correct," said Bruce Spencer, the study's author, professor
of statistics and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at
Northwestern. "Based on findings from a limited sample, I am optimistic
that larger, carefully designed statistical studies would have much to
tell us about the accuracy of jury verdicts."

Spencer cautions that the numerical findings should not be generalized to
broader sets of cases, for which additional study would be needed, but the
study strongly suggests that jury verdicts can be studied statistically.
If such studies were conducted on a large scale, they might lead to better
understanding of the prevalence of incorrect verdicts -- false convictions
and false acquittals, he said.

To conduct the study, Spencer employed a replication analysis of jury
verdicts, comparing decisions of actual jurors with decisions of judges
who were hearing the cases they were deciding. In other words, as a jury
was deliberating about a particular verdict, its judge filled out a
questionnaire giving what he or she believed to be the correct verdict.

"Consider the analogy to sample surveys, where sampling error is estimated
even though the true value may never be known," Spencer said. "The key is
replication. To assess the accuracy of jury verdicts, we need a second
opinion of what the verdict should be."

By comparing agreement rates of judges and juries over time and across
jurisdictions, and even across types of cases, Spencer's statistical
analysis could give insights into the comparative accuracy of verdicts in
different sets of cases.

For his analysis, Spencer utilized a study with a special set of cases
that was recently conducted in the United States by the National Center
for State Courts (NCSC). An earlier study was conducted by Kalven and
Zeisel in the 1950s.

The agreement rate was 77 % in the NCSC study and 80 % for the earlier
study. Allowing for chance agreement, the agreement rates were not high.
(With chance agreement, for example, if two people tossed coins heads or
tails independently to see if they matched, one would expect agreement,
heads-heads or tails-tails, 50 % of the time.)

To obtain a numerical estimate of jury accuracy, some assumptions were
made, as is the case for virtually any statistical analysis of social
groups or programs. A key assumption of Spencer's study is that, on
average, the judge's verdict is at least as likely to be correct as the
jury's verdict.

Without assumptions, a 77 % agreement rate could reflect 100 % accuracy by
the judge and 77 $ accuracy by the jury, or 100 % accuracy by the jury and
77 % accuracy by the judge, or 88 % accuracy by both, or even 50 %
accuracy by both if they often agreed on the incorrect verdict.

With the assumption of the Spencer analysis that judges are at least as
accurate as jurors after completion of all testimony, we can get an
estimate of jury accuracy that is likely to be higher than the actual
accuracy. Thus, the 77 % agreement rate means that juries are accurate up
to 87 % of the time or less, or reach an incorrect verdict in at least one
out of eight cases.

"Some of the errors are incorrect acquittals, where the defendant goes
free, and some are incorrect convictions," Spencer said. "As a society can
we be satisfied if 10 percent of convictions are incorrect" Can we be
satisfied knowing that innocent people go to jail for many years for
wrongful convictions""

Spencer envisions that statistical studies would complement nationwide
efforts to expose wrongful convictions, including the work of the Center
on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. The
center's work in exposing flaws in Illinois' capital punishment system
played a significant role in former Gov. George Ryan's decision to commute
Illinois death row inmates' pending executions to sentences of life in
prison.

The NCSC study is not representative of a larger set of cases, Spencer
stressed. He hopes that nationally representative studies will be carried
out in the future.

Using additional assumptions and statistical models, the extent of
wrongful convictions and wrongful acquittals also can be estimated,
according to Spencer. The methods also could be extended to estimate
accuracy of verdicts in non-jury trials.

While the studies on verdict accuracy will not tell whether the verdict
for a particular case was correct or not, they will help assess what
proportion of verdicts are correct.

"If you were on trial and not guilty, you certainly would want the jury to
do the right thing," Spencer said. "Now, subject to these assumptions,
studies could be employed to give us an idea of how often that happens."

A technical report is available at
http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2006/wp0605.pdf .

(source: Science Daily----Note: This story has been adapted from a news
release issued by Northwestern University.

*******************

US judges, juries regularly convict innocent: study


A new study has found juries in the United States get the verdict wrong in
one out of six criminal cases and judges do not do much better.

According to an upcoming study out of Northwestern University, when they
make those mistakes, both judges and juries are far more likely to send an
innocent person to jail than to let a guilty person go free.

"Those are really shocking numbers," Jack Heinz said, a law professor at
Northwestern, who reviewed the research of his colleague Bruce Spencer, a
professor in the statistics department.

Professor Heinz says recent high-profile exonerations of scores of death
row inmates have undermined faith in the infallibility of the justice
system.

But these cases were considered relative rarities given how many checks
and balances - like rules on the admissibility of evidence, the
presumption of innocence and the appeals process - are built into the
system.

"We assume as lawyers that the system has been created in such a way to
minimise the chance we'll convict the innocent," Professor Heinz said.

"The standard of proof in a criminal case is beyond a reasonable doubt -
it's supposed to be a high one. But judging by Bruce's data the problem is
substantial."

The study, which looked at 290 non-capital criminal cases in 4 major
cities from 2000 to 2001, is the 1st to examine the accuracy of modern
juries and judges in the United States.

It found that judges were mistaken in their verdicts in 12 % of the cases
while juries were wrong 17 % of the time.

More troubling was that juries sent 25 % of innocent people to jail while
the innocent had a 37 % chance of being wrongfully convicted by a judge.

The good news was that the guilty did not have a great chance of getting
off. There was only a 10 % chance that a jury would let a guilty person
free while the judge wrongfully acquitted a defendant in 13 % of the
cases.

But that could have been because so many of the cases ended in a
conviction - juries convicted 70 % of the time while the judges said they
would have found the defendant guilty in 82 % of the cases.

But Professor Spencer cautioned that the study did not look at enough
cases to prove that these numbers are true across the country.

But it has provided insight into how severe the problem could be, and has
also shown that measuring the problem is possible.

The study will be published in the July edition of the Journal of
Empirical Legal Studies.

(source: AFP)

*******************

We need to ensure justice


My wife and I don't watch a lot of TV, but one of our favorite types of
shows is the "true crime" docudrama often seen on NBC's "Dateline," CBS's
"Hours" and elsewhere.

These programs usually deal with complicated murder cases where the weight
of the evidence shifts back and forth with each dramatic revelation about
the accused, the victims, the physical evidence and so on. The defendant
is found guilty in almost every one of these cases - but the truth is, I
can never make up my mind.

Did this guy throw his wife down the stairs, or did she slip and fall? Did
that guy push his wife off the boat dock or did she crash through a rotted
railing by accident? Did this other guy stab his wife and two kids or were
they killed by drug-crazed, hippie invaders?

After sitting through two or more hours of eyewitnesses, blood splats,
hair fibers, possible motives, means and opportunities - I am still
stumped. Maybe he (or more rarely, she) did, and maybe he didn't.

Luckily, I have never been on the jury in any case like this (or any case
at all), because I would probably have had a nervous breakdown - caught
between wanting to see justice done and not wanting to send an innocent
man to jail for the rest of his life.

Of course, no system of justice is perfect and tragic mistakes are made in
both directions, and maybe I'm just a weak-willed wimp - but a new study
set to appear in the July issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
only increases my queasiness about our system of determining guilt and
innocence.

The study was conducted by Bruce Spencer, a statistics professor at
Northwestern University. He looked at 271 non-capital, criminal cases that
had been tried in state courts in 4 different cities. What he found is
that juries gave wrong verdicts in at least 1 out of 8 cases and possibly
in as many of one out of six cases. Perhaps even more troubling is
Spencer's claim that juries convicted about 25 % of innocent defendants,
while acquitting only about 10 percent of defendants who were actually
guilty.

"Those are really shocking numbers," Jack Heinz, a law professor at
Northwestern who reviewed Spencer's research, said in an interview with
the wire service AFP. "The standard of proof in a criminal case is beyond
a reasonable doubt - it's supposed to be a high one. But judging by
Bruce's data the problem is substantial."

Spencer's study did not include all those recent death-penalty cases where
condemned prisoners were freed after DNA evidence proved they were
innocent. We know for sure that horrifying mistakes are made at that
level.

Spencer is also careful to say that he did not look at enough cases to
prove that this 13 to 17 % error rate is true for the criminal justice
system nationwide, but his findings are certainly disturbing enough to
demand more attention.

"People have to have some faith in the court system," Spencer told AFP.
"We have to know how well our systems are working."

Amen to that.

You can look at Spencer's study for yourself
(http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2006/wp0605.pdf) and
decide whether you find his conclusions valid.

If you accept the findings, the big question is whether we can do anything
to reduce the number of mistakes. Heinz told AFP that's going to be very
hard.

"The sources of the errors are quite resilient to correction," he said.
"They have to do with all sorts of biases and the strong presumption of
guilt when someone is arrested and brought to trial."

The problem here is that juries figure the police and prosecutors must
have had a good reason to bring someone to trial, so you get that "strong
presumption of guilt" right out of the gate.

But we've also seen so many instances of police misconduct and
prosecutorial overzealousness that you would think that people could shed
that bias.

The notorious case involving the Duke lacrosse players is just the latest
example of a prosecutor gone berserk. In the end, that case collapsed
entirely and all the charges were withdrawn - but it is not hard to
imagine that former Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong, now disgraced
and disbarred, might have been able to string together enough "evidence"
and "witnesses" to win guilty verdict against a group of innocent
students. If we take Spencer's findings seriously, it happens all the
time.

On top of that, numerous studies have shown that testimony from
"eyewitnesses" is unreliable - especially children and the elderly. Yet,
juries place a great deal of faith in this kind of "evidence." Spencer is
now looking for funding for a much larger study that might give us a
clearer picture of the overall system of justice in the United States.

That would certainly be money well spent.

As Spencer said in a news release issued by Northwestern University: "Can
we be satisfied knowing that innocent people go to jail for many years for
wrongful convictions?"

The answer to that is plainly no - and no jury in America would disagree.

(source: Carlisle Sentinel----Rich Lewis)

********************

Death Penalty Gets New Airing The Nation


The death penalty is finally beginning to remerge as an issue inside the
halls of Congress--and it only took the second Congressional power shift
in 50 years and the unprecedented Department of Justice dismissal of 8 or
9 US attorneys to make it happen.

Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold on Wednesday held a hearing of the Senate
Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Constitution that drew attention to the
lack of information available about when the Justice Department seeks
capital punishment and the financial and social costs involved when it
does. Fired US Attorney Paul Charlton testified that even he did not know
death penalty protocol under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and told
the committee that he was fired after refusing to authorize the death
penalty for a case with no corroborating forensic evidence.

"It is fitting that we will hear from some of the same organizations that
testified at that last hearing in June 2001," Feingold said, in reference
to the last time the Senate held a hearing on the subject. "That is
because in some respects, we know little more today than we did 6 years
ago."

The US is the only Western democracy that still employs the death penalty.
Yet since 2000 the Justice Department has not released any data on how
many capital cases it has decided to prosecute, the success rate of its
prosecution, the race and ethnicity of the defendants and the cost of
pursuing a death penalty case. This is not merely another instance of the
Bush administration keeping the public in the dark--the department itself
apparently does not keep track.

"A lot of resources go into prosecuting a death penalty case," Feingold
said to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Barry Sabin, who represented
embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "Now, does the department
track monetary cost in any way?"

"I don't believe we do that," Sabin said.

"Do you have any sense of what it costs for the US attorney's office to
pursue a death penalty case?" Feingold asked.

Sabin replied he did not and when Feingold requested the Department look
into the matter, Sabin said he could not promise that such information is
readily obtainable. In preparation for the hearing, Feingold had learned
from DOJ that in one-third of all cases where the Department sought the
death penalty the Attorney General overruled a prior decision from a US
Attorney that capital punishment should not be pursued.

One such overruling has played a starring role in the scandal surrounding
Gonzales's dismissal of Arizona prosecutor Paul Charlton. Charlton
concisely told the committee that in United States v. Ricos Rio, he defied
the Justice Department's authorization of the death penalty in a murder
case after the Department declined to fund exhumation of the victim's
body, which likely would have determined the defendant's guilt. Charlton
had requested to meet with the Attorney General about Ricos Rio and was
denied. He was told by former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's staff
that "McNulty had spent a significant amount of time on this issue with
the Attorney General, perhaps as much as 5 to 10 minutes."

Stunningly, that's more time than Congress spent on the issue over the
past 6 years.

(source: Opinion, The Nation)






GEORGIA----new and impending execution date

Convicted cop killer set for July 17 execution


Troy Anthony Davis, convicted of killing a Savannah police officer in
1989, is set to be executed the week of July 17, according to a death
warrant signed Friday by a Chatham County judge.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Davis' final appeal. He
was sentenced to death for killing Officer Mark Allen MacPhaill, 27, who
responded to a fight outside a bus station and was shot repeatedly.

Since Davis' 1991 trial, 6 of the 9 prosecution witnesses who implicated
or named Davis as the killer have renounced much of the testimony used to
convict him. This includes some who identified Davis at trial as the
triggerman but who have since said they did not see him pull the trigger
and were pressured by police to say otherwise.

In Davis' latest round of appeals in federal court, his lawyers have been
stymied in their attempts to get this testimony considered.

Davis' death warrant was signed Friday by Perry Brannen Jr., chief judge
of Chatham County Superior Court.

On Tuesday, triple murderer John Washington Hightower became the 1st
Georgia death-row inmate to be executed by lethal injection in almost 2
years.

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)