April 24 TEXAS: Texas lawmakers push possible death penalty for repeat sex offenders The Texas Senate on Tuesday passed a bill targeting sexual predators that includes a possible death penalty for those who are twice convicted of raping children under 14. "I can think of no more solemn duty than the protection of our most innocent and vulnerable citizens," said state Senator Bob Deuell, who sponsored the measure. Texas already has the most active death row in the United States. If the bill becomes law, Texas would be the sixth state to allow some child sex offenders to be sentenced to death. The others are Florida, Montana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina. To become law, lawmakers from the state Senate and House must agree on a version of the bill, and Governor Rick Perry must approve it. Perry has called the passage of a child sex offender bill a legislative emergency. The House has approved a diferent version of the bill. The bill creates new categories of sexually violent offenses against children under 14, including categories for crimes committed involving kidnapping, date-rape drugs and deadly weapons. Such crimes, or any aggravated sexual assault on a child under 6, automatically carry a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. A second offense of those crimes could carry the death penalty. Critics have asked whether the death penalty in cases where the victim does not die would be unconstitutional. In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the death penalty in a Georgia rape case. Louisiana has one inmate on death row in a child sex crime, but the case is still subject to appeals in state and federal courts. "We want to deter people. We don't want victims. But if a crime happens, we want to give our prosecutors the tools to make convictions," Deuell said. (source: Associated Press) NORTH CAROLINA: Poll: Death penalty support wanes in N.C. More than 1/3 of North Carolina adults now believe life in prison is the most appropriate punishment for 1st-degree murder as support for the death penalty wanes, according to a poll released Tuesday. The poll found that 58 % of adults support the death penalty, but only 48 % said it's always the most appropriate punishment for those convicted of 1st-degree murder, according to researchers at Elon University. Another 10 % said the sentence depends on the circumstances. About 38 % of respondents said they believe life in prison is the most appropriate sentence for murderers. Those numbers indicated a significant shift from a November 2005 Elon poll that showed nearly 2/3 of adults supported the death penalty, and 61 % said it was always the most appropriate punishment for 1st-degree murder. Just 27 % preferred life in prison. Poll director Hunter Bacot said North Carolinians are reviewing their positions on the death penalty in light of several exonerations and the botched case against three Duke University lacrosse players, in which a zealous prosecutor charged the men with rape despite flimsy evidence. Attorney General Roy Cooper declared the players innocent earlier this month - a year after they were charged. "There's always been the sentiment that the system is fair for the most part," Bacot said. "But people are now looking back and wondering if people are truly getting a fair shake in the courts." Mark Kleinschmidt, executive director of the Durham-based Fair Trial Initiative, said the poll is "another measure of the public's growing distaste for the death penalty." "I find it remarkable," Kleinschmidt said. "Those are some of the lowest numbers I've seen in the long time. I was actually surprised that the numbers dropped that much." But Lee Peacock, whose grandmother was killed in Trinity in 1991, said victims' families need to start rallying together to tell their stories. "Over the last several years, it's the victims and the families of the victims who are not getting heard," Peacock said. "We need to speak out more about our daily suffering." In 1993, James Williams was convicted of murder in the death of Peacock's grandmother, Elvie Rhodes. He's still on death row. The poll, which surveyed 476 adults from households in North Carolina last week, has a margin of error of 4.6 percent. It comes as North Carolina's top officials try to figure out how to break a legal stalemate that has placed an effective moratorium on the death penalty. The North Carolina Medical Board declared in January that any doctor who participates in an execution violates medical ethics and could face sanction. The decision triggered a series of legal actions, and a state judge has placed five executions on hold. No other executions have been scheduled. Elon pollsters also questioned respondents about their support for corporal punishment in schools, which is also getting a new review in the General Assembly. A House committee approved a ban earlier this month. But nearly 55 % of adults said in the poll they support corporal punishment in schools, and nearly one quarter of respondents said they strongly support the form of physical punishment. "It reflects truly the cultural demeanor of North Carolina," Bacot said. "It's just part of the fabric of this conservative state." (source: Charlotte Observer) USA: Lethal Injections Dont Kill Instantly, Causing Excruciating Pains A recent report shows that the concoction of drugs used in the execution of inmates and considered to offer a painless death might not be as effective as one might think. Lethal injection is now virtually the universal method of execution in the United States, with all but one of the 53 executions carried out there during 2006 being by this method. Of the 1,057 executions in the US to the end of 2006, 889 have been by lethal injection, including those of 9 women. It is also used by China, which is progressively replacing shooting with it, although it is impossible to know how many people have died by this method so far. Guatemala and the Philippines have also used this method. Thailand has adopted lethal injection as its sole method, to replace shooting from October 2003, and carried out its first executions in December 2003 when 4 men were put to death in Bang Khwang prison for drug trafficking and murder. 3 men were executed in Taiwan during 2005. 37 American states now use lethal injection either as their sole method or as an option to one of the traditional methods. These being Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming. Alabama offered lethal injection as an option to electrocution from July 1st, 2002. Texas has carried out the vast majority of lethal injections in the US, with 379 to the end of 2006. Many states have modified their old execution chambers to save the cost of building a new facility California carries out injections within the gas chamber at San Quentin, Washington in the area under the trapdoors of the gallows. Execution by lethal injection takes much longer from start to finish than any other method, typically 30-45 minutes depending on the execution protocol and ease or otherwise of locating a vein. However, not everyone is of the opinion that death by lethal injection is painless - Dr. Edward Brunner, chairman of the Department of Anaesthesia at Northwestern University Medical School, submitted an affidavit on behalf of death row inmates in Illinois in which he states that lethal injection, "create[s] the substantial risk that prisoners will suffocate or suffer excruciating pain during the three chemical injections but will be prevented by the paralytic agent from communicating their distress." Recent data has also proven that lethal injection is far from the status of humane, painless death attributed to it. A lethal injection is composed of three main ingredients: sodium thiopental (an ultra-short acting barbiturate, often used for anesthesia induction and for medically induced coma; the lethal dose is 5 grams, which induces unconsciousness in 10 seconds) pancuronium bromide (a non-depolarizing muscle relaxant- a paralytic agent- that blocks the action of acetylcholine at the motor end-plate of the neuromuscular junction; lethal dosage: 100 miligrams) and potassium chloride (lethal dosage: 100 mEq/milliequivalents). A research which gathered data about 41 deaths induced through lethal injection since 1984 revealed that the anesthetic used in the protocol before the lethal injection was often not enough to render the inmate completely unconscious. The report, based on published data about the three aforementioned drugs used and public records of executions in North Carolina and California, also showed that potassium chloride did not always stop the heart of those sentenced to death. Combining the two findings, the scientists concluded that lethal injection can cause excruciating pains to inmates, who, because of the faulty dosage of anesthetic, can sometimes be very aware of what is happening with them. The execution of Angel Nieves Diaz in Florida on the 13th of December 2006 was badly botched as the needle was found to have gone through his vein causing the chemicals to go into his arm muscles and taking him 34 minutes to die. A 2nd injection had to be given to kill him and chemical burns were observed on his arm by the medical examiner afterwards. State Governor Jeb Bush has suspended further executions in Florida and lethal injection executions are also suspended in California and Missouri with legal challenges being mounted in several other states against their lethal injection protocols. Angel Nieves Diaz, 55, was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m., despite his protests of innocence and requests for clemency made by the governor of his native Puerto Rico. He appeared to move for 24 minutes after the 1st injection. His eyes were open, his mouth opened and closed and his chest rose and fell. "This raises the possibility people are being tortured and you can't see it because they are paralyzed," said University of Miami surgery professor Leonidas G. Koniaris, who led the analysis released yesterday. "I'm not sure a civilized society should be doing this." I find it very disturbing," said Teresa A. Zimmers, a University of Miami research assistant professor who helped write the report. "There is very little science behind this protocol, and the picture of lethal injection being a humane way to execute someone is completely wrong," she said. "It's horrifying to read this," said Deborah W. Denno of Fordham University law school. "What states are supposed to do is execute inmates in a humane way. There is clearly pain and suffering occurring." "The argument that's always been given about lethal injection is that in theory, a well-trained person could give it humanely," said Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, who has studied lethal injection for 15 years and is a death penalty opponent. "This casts doubt on even that." The study, published today in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine, provides scientific data for a debate that has largely lacked hard evidence regarding the medical underpinnings of lethal injection. In the minds of the American public and of jurors in capital cases, the perception of lethal injection is of a clean, clinical and painless end. 71% of those responding to my 2001 survey considered injection to be the least cruel form of execution. This perception is a great advantage to the state because the public are much more willing to accept execution in this form and jurors more willing to convict and pass the death sentence. The media interest in the eventual execution is also diminished. Texas, which has carried out around 1/3 of all post 1977 executions, finds that there is now very little interest in them unless the criminal is particularly notorious and thus avoids much of the protest that attends other methods. In a related editorial the PLoS Medicine editors discuss the study's findings and their reason for publishing it in the journal. They state that "It is not our intention to encourage further research to "improve" lethal injection protocols. As editors of a medical journal, we must ensure that research is ethical, and there is no ethical way to establish the humaneness of procedures for killing people who do not wish to die," and note that "the data presented by Koniaris and colleagues adds to the evidence that lethal injection is simply the latest in a long line of execution methods that have been found to be inhumane." They argue that the evidence presented in this paper "will further strengthen the constitutional case for the abandonment of execution in the US." "As a moral society, the U.S. should take a leading role in the abandonment of executions worldwide," they wrote. (source: Playfuls.com)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., USA
Rick Halperin Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:51:31 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
