[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, N.C., CALIF., MD.

[Rick Halperin]

May 5



USA:

Sky-High Costs - But Few Executions


Forget the ethics of capital punishment in the United States. Forget the
disproportionate number of blacks on death row, or the possibility of
executing an innocent victim. The death penalty may really be just too
expensive, according to a report released by the American Civil Liberties
Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC).

In its 43-page report "The Hidden Death Tax", the organisation estimates
that Californian taxpayers pay at least 117 million dollars a year seeking
the executions of those already on death row. This averages out at roughly
175,000 dollars a year for each death row inmate. A major part of these
costs is the extra 90,000 dollars a year to keep an inmate on death row
rather than locked up in a general prison.

According to the report, if California abolished capital punishment today
and allowed all 669 inmates to die a natural death in prison, the state
would save 4 billion dollars in future costs.

Of the 36 states which still have the death penalty, California has the
largest number of death row inmates at 669, although only 13 have been
executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. The ACLU-NC
estimates that each capital trial costs an average of 1.1 million dollars
more than a non-death penalty case. This is the organisation's minimum
estimate.

"California has the broadest death penalty statue in the country," said
Natasha Minsker, who began working on the report for ACLU-NC last June.
"It gives prosecutors a lot of discretion, and as a result we've
overloaded our system with too many cases."

"(The report) identifies issues of growing importance," Richard Dieter,
the executive directory of the Death Penalty Information Centre, told IPS.
"States are feeling economic constraints. The cost becomes important
because you realise you can't shorten the process. There's either an
expensive death penalty or no death penalty. There's no third option."

But the extra spending on litigation after a capital conviction is
critical for the death row inmates. Since 1977, more than 130 death
penalty sentences in California have been reversed.

"Essentially what you're getting is life without parole at an expensive
price," said Dieter, commenting on the long process. "You have a build-up
of people on death row."

Expenses in maintaining the complex death penalty system accrue in a
variety of forms. U.S. Supreme Court rulings require higher, lengthier
trial processes when seeking a sentence which is irreversible. Judges and
lawyers must be specially qualified, as well as jurors selected during a
drawn-out questioning process.

Prosecution and defence costs are also significantly higher due to the
rigorous investigation requirements. There is also a post conviction phase
entailing a direct appeal and a habeas corpus challenge.

Usually there are 2 trials -- 1 to determine guilt and another to decide
whether to implement capital punishment.

"I was shocked by the amount of money it took, and how quickly that amount
is growing," Minsker told IPS.

California is not the only state spending exorbitant amounts of money in
the pursuit of capital punishment.

In Washington State, the Death Penalty Subcommittee of the Committee on
Public Defence determined in 2007 that capital punishment cases cost
467,000 dollars more to try than ordinary murder cases. In Texas it is
estimated that a death penalty trial costs an additional 2.3 million
dollars, according to Dieter.

In Florida in 2000, The Palm Beach Post estimated the state paid out 51
million dollars annually enforcing the death penalty. Recently, in New
Mexico prosecutors were unable to press two death charges when the
money-strapped state legislature failed to provide adequate funding for
defence attorneys in a prison riot case that had already cost millions of
state dollars.

The cost factor in maintaining the death penalty is undoubtedly playing a
role in the recent attempts in state legislatures to repeal capital
punishment.

Last year, New Jersey, which spent 10.9 million dollars annually on
maintaining the death penalty, became the first state to abolish the
practice since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court
in 1976.

Similar legislation was attempted -- but failed -- in Nebraska, New Mexico
and Montana. Last year, Colorado came close to repealing the death penalty
when a bill that would have banned capital punishment in the state, using
the money saved for investigating unsolved murder cases, was narrowly
struck down.

"The extra money spent on the death penalty could be spent on other means
of achieving justice and making the community safer: compensation for
victims, better lighting in crime areas, more police on the streets, or
... funds for pursuing cold homicide cases," Dieter had said during
testimony to the Colorado House of Representatives Judiciary Committee
before the vote.

Earlier, polls in Colorado conducted by RBI Strategies and Research found
that voters were in a dead heat when asked whether they preferred the
death penalty or life without the possibility of parole. However, when
asked if the estimated 3 million dollars annually spent on the death
penalty in the state could be better used solving open-murder cases, 70 %
agreed.

Despite the legislative disappointments, both Dieter and Minsker believe
that capital punishment will eventually be banned throughout the U.S.

Recommendations from Minsker for California included a comprehensive
system for tracking all expenses involving death penalty cases at every
level of the process, from court and prosecution expenses to jury fees and
additional costs incurred by sheriffs. "Most of these costs fall on the
local counties," Minsker wrote in the report. "Prior to annual budgeting
decisions, the actual costs of death penalty cases should be reported to
the board of supervisors and the public so they may assess whether, in
light of other county needs, this use of resources makes sense."

Adopting such recommendations -- not only in California but in all other
death penalty states -- would undoubtedly reveal many, until now, hidden
costs of maintaining the death penalty. This could emerge as a powerful
factor in eventually swinging the vote in favour of the abolitionist
lawmakers' future bills, death penalty opponents clearly hope.

(source: IPS News)

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

Death-penalty folly


In deciding which of the three toxic chemicals most of the states with the
death penalty use to dispose of convicted inmates, the Supreme Court
decided April 17 by an overwhelming 7-2 vote that this common method of
termination is constitutional. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted
disquietedly, 1 of the 3 terminating chemicals paralyzes the unsedated
prisoner, who is conscious but unable to move, breathe or utter his last
cry. Delivering the main opinion of our highest court, Chief Justice John
Roberts, with language as bland as if he were ruling on an
intellectual-property case, wrote: "Simply because an execution method may
result in pain, whether by accident or as an inescapable consequence of
death, does not establish the sort of objectively intolerable risk of harm
that qualifies as cruel and unusual (under the Eighth Amendment) ... Some
risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution no matter how humane."

Agreeing with Justice Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice
Antonin Scalia, was more bluntly concise. "This is an easy case," he said,
because the only method of execution that would violate the Eighth
Amendment, barring cruel and unusual punishment, would be a method
"deliberately designed to inflict pain." Considering the inmate is
paralyzed yet conscious, doesn't this deliberate infliction of horror in
the final moments of an American's life violate the Eighth Amendment's
"cruel and usual punishment," by design? No, say Justices Roberts, Thomas
and Scalia.

Also disagreeing is the rest of the Supreme Court majority, including
Justice Stevens himself, who went along with the majority because he felt
bound by the court's previous precedents. But after 33 years on the court,
Justice Stevens did, however, scandalize Justices Thomas and Scalia by
calling for the actual abolition of the death penalty! "I have relied," he
said, "on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition
of the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of
life with only marginal contributions to any discernible or social public
purpose. [Such a penalty] is patently excessive and cruel and unusual
punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment."

His colleague, Justice Scalia, exploded: "What prompted Justice Stevens to
repudiate his prior view and to adopt the astounding position that a
criminal sanction, the death penalty, expressly mentioned in the
Constitution, violates the Constitution?" Has Justice Scalia, an
"originalist" to whom the Constitution's language, as written, is strictly
determinative, forgotten that our founding document does not include Negro
slaves as "free Persons" with constitutional protections? That no longer
being the case, the Constitution is not entirely frozen in time.

That the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court continues by contrast with most civilized
nations to justify the death penalty brings me inexorably to Justice Harry
Blackmun's dissenting opinion in Callins v. Collins (Feb. 22, 1994). I
hope that if this April's Baze v. Reese decision is discussed in any of
our secondary schools or colleges and universities, attention is paid to
Justice Blackmun's awakening after long service on the court to his
responsibilities under the Eighth Amendment in this century: "I shall no
longer tinker with the machinery of death. For more than twenty years I
have endeavored indeed, I have struggled to develop procedural and
substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of
fairness to the death penalty. ... [I recognize] the problem is that: The
inevitability of factual, legal and moral error gives us a system that we
know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the
fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the
Constitution," Justice Blackmun concluded.

And, as you have witnessed the Roberts court tinkering with whether the
three toxic chemicals used by state executioners around the country are
well within the Constitution, keep in mind that in the 1994 words of
Blackmun, the Supreme Court still continues to "substitute constitutional
requirements" concerning the death penalty "with mere aesthetics." That's
the Roberts Court in Baze v. Reese: deciding the chemical aesthetics of
killing human beings! The late Justice William Brennan used to tell me: "I
can't believe that the leader of the free world is going to keep on
executing people. I still believe that eventually we become more
civilized. It would be horrible if we didn't." On Oklahoma State
Penitentiary's death row, convicted killer Paris Powell said the day after
the decision on Baze v. Reese (Newsday): "It's just official that the
death penalty is here to stay forever, really."

That could depend on how the next president fills vacancies on the Supreme
Court. Does Sen. John McCain still regard Justice Scalia as his model for
a Supreme Court Justice? Does he know that Chief Justice John Marshall
declared "a Constitution ... is intended to endure for ages to come, and
consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs"?

(source: Column, Nat Hentoff, Washington Times)

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

Supreme Court, state wrong on death penalty


Where are you, Bill Wiseman, when we need you?

If the former Tulsa lawmaker, University of Central Oklahoma administrator
and Episcopal priest was with us, he might be able to convince
blood-thirsty Gov. Brad Henry and Attorney General Drew Edmondson that the
death penalty is unChristian and only God has authority to take a human
life.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 7-2, that lethal injection executions
are legal, Edmondson signaled the end of our death penalty moratorium
while the court was deliberating the Kentucky case.

He called for execution dates for two Oklahoma County killers who will be
our 87th and 88th executions by lethal injection since the electric chair
was found to be cruel and unusual punishment. 84 more to go on death row
unless freed by DNA evidence.

Other than finding that lethal injection of three drugs was not an
unconstitutional risk of pain, Edmondson said the court ruling "has no
impact."

But how do the attorney general and high court know it is painless? Their
dead men tell no tales.

Edmondson should pay attention to Justice John Paul Stevens, 88, who
concluded for the 1st time in his 33 years on the court, that capital
punishment should be abolished.

"The death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of
life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social and public
purposes," wrote Stevens.

Before his death in a recent private plane crash, Wiseman confessed his
writing of a 1976 bill that made Oklahoma the 1st jurisdiction in the
world to adopt lethal injection executions and made it easier for
squeamish judges and juries to hand down the ultimate punishment.

"I'm sorry for what I did," said Wiseman. "I hope someday to offset it by
helping us realize that capital punishment is wrong and self-destructive."

Virginia Blue Jeans Jenner----Wagoner

(source: Letter to the Editor, Muskogee Phoenix)




NORTH CAROLINA:

Former death row inmate wants prosecutor scrutinized

A former prison inmate who was released Friday after 15 years on death row
says the district attorney who won his 1993 conviction needs to be
prosecuted himself.

"That justifies the law, and that makes the law fair, and that brings
justice upon all," Levon "Bo" Jones said during a news conference Monday.
"And the people that come after him  that teaches them also to obey the
law. You've got a case, you don't have sufficient evidence? Don't
prosecute the case."

Jones was sentenced to death in 1993 for the slaying of Leamon Grady, a
bootlegger who was robbed and shot in his Duplin County home in 1987.

A federal judge overturned the conviction in 2006, declaring poor attorney
performance had violated Jones' rights. District Attorney Dewey Hudson
planned to retry Jones on May 12, but decided to drop charges after a key
witness  Jones' former girlfriend, Lovely Lorden, who was the only witness
accusing Jones of the murder  recanted her story.

Hudson said Friday he still believes Jones was involved in Grady's death
and that Jones "received a fair and just trial and that he was rightfully
convicted."

"I've always been innocent, still innocent," Jones said Monday. "(I)
always will be innocent. And that's the way I carry from this day on."

Jones's attorney, Ernest Connor, said his client was a victim of a
problematic justice system.

"He was poor, and he was of color, and that made him far more likely to
get a death sentence," Connor said. "And that's exactly what happened. He
and his family are a victim of this justice system, and we all need to
just recognize that there are inherent problems."

(source: WRAL News)

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

Freed inmate wants others held accountable


Freed death-row inmate Levon "Bo" Jones said today that the prosecutors
and police in his case should themselves be prosecuted for withholding
favorable evidence at his 1993 trial.

"They should be accountable for everything they did," Jones, 49, said at a
Raleigh news conference. "They should be prosecuted for the wrong they've
done, I feel like. Justice should be done."

But the district attorney who prosecuted Jones at trial -- and dropped all
charges against him last week -- said Jones should instead blame his trial
lawyers for doing such a poor job that a federal judge ordered a new
trial. "I've had an open-file policy for 15 or 20 years," District
Attorney Dewey Hudson said Monday. "Anything I had, all they had to do was
walk into my office and look at my file."

A Duplin County jury convicted Jones of first-degree murder in the 1987
shooting death of bootlegger Leamon Grady.

The prosecution's case rested largely on the testimony of Lovely Lorden,
Jones' girlfriend at the time. But as Jones' appellate lawyers later
discovered, Lorden had given investigators conflicting statements -- which
had not been provided to his trial lawyers. Lorden later recanted her
incriminating trial testimony.

After a federal judge ordered a new trial 2 years ago, Hudson on Friday
dismissed all charges against Jones, saying Lorden's recantation was the
main reason. But Hudson also said he believed Lorden's trial testimony was
true, not her recantation. And he said he wasn't persuaded that Jones is
innocent.

Under state and federal law, however, citizens are presumed innocent
unless proven guilty.

"From the day I was locked up, August 14, 1992, I said I was innocent,
until this day," Jones said. "I've always been innocent. I hope you all
believe the same."

(source: The News & Observer)






CALIFORNIA:

Unanimous California Supreme Court Reverses Death Penalty Because Los
Angeles Prosecutors Withheld Evidence of Innocence, Notes Quinn Emanuel
Partner George Hedges


Today in a rare unanimous decision the California Supreme Court found that
San Quentin inmate Adam Miranda was wrongly sentenced to death because
district attorneys, including senior District Attorney Curt Hazell and now
sitting judges Lance Ito and Frederic Horn, withheld confessions to the
killing by the prosecutor's star witness. Miranda's lead counsel George R.
Hedges of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges and Kerry Bensinger of
Bensinger Ritt Tai & Thvedt were elated with the result.

"The Miranda case represents yet another indictment of the death penalty.
We have been through a 20-year struggle to locate evidence the DA's office
intentionally withheld that showed our client did not commit the murder
that placed him on death row 26 years ago," said Mr. Hedges. "The case
reveals an outrageous miscarriage of justice."

"It took us years to force the DA's office to turn over the Miranda files,
and there in the back of one of the files was an envelope containing a
confession to the murder by the star witness the prosecutors used to
condemn our client to death," added Mr. Bensinger. "It shows just how
corrupt the system is. Without an all-out legal assault our client would
have been put to death years ago for a crime he didn't commit."

On three prior occasions the California Supreme Court denied efforts by
Mr. Miranda's counsel to obtain relief. "What if we had just given up?"
remarked Hedges, "The reversal has to make anyone wonder how many more are
there wrongly sentenced to death because the prosecutors simply withheld
evidence of innocence."

Mr. Miranda was convicted in 1982 for the murder of Gary Black. In order
to obtain a death sentence, prosecutors charged him with a 2nd murder
involving the stabbing death of Robert Hosey. The star witness on that
charge against Mr. Miranda was Joe Saucedo. At the time that Mr. Saucedo
was testifying against Mr. Miranda, the prosecutors had in their
possession a letter in which Mr. Saucedo confessed in detail that he had
committed the crime. It was this letter that then District Attorney Lance
Ito placed in Mr. Miranda's file without ever disclosing its contents to
Mr. Miranda's counsel. Ultimately Mr. Miranda's counsel found 4 more
witnesses who testified that Mr. Saucedo had confessed to them that he was
the murderer. The District Attorneys' office had knowledge of each of
these confessions while seeking the death penalty against Mr. Miranda. The
California Supreme Court found in the face of this evidence the imposition
of the death penalty was improper.

Mr. Hedges took on the Miranda case in 1988. At that time Mr. Miranda had
lost his appeal and 2 additional efforts under habeas corpus to have his
death sentence commuted by the California Supreme Court. Mr. Bensinger
joined with Mr. Hedges in 1994 and recommenced efforts to obtain Mr.
Miranda's files. At that time Mr. Miranda's defense team had no idea that
the Saucedo confessions were out there. It was only after a 2-year fight
in federal court that the team was able to look at the DA's files.

"It took a federal judge's order to force the DA to turn over files they
originally claimed didn't even exist," said Mr. Bensinger. He added, "And
at the time there was even an effort by the DA's office to have all files
in death penalty cases destroyed."

"The most fundamental problem with the death penalty is that the system is
too flawed to allow it to be carried out fairly and without innocent
people being put to death," said Hedges. "This case proves the point in
the strongest possible terms."

(source: Business Wire)

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

Ninth Circuit Reinstates Death Sentence in Tarzana
Burglary-Murder-----Better Representation Would Not Have Resulted in
Lesser Penalty, Panel Says


The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday reinstated the death
sentence imposed on a Van Nuys resident for killing 2 men during the
botched burglary of a Tarzana home in 1982.

A divided panel ruled that while Scott Lynn Pinholster's trial counsel may
have conducted an inadequate investigation and failed to present available
mitigating evidence in the penalty phase of the 1984 trial, a better
defense would probably not have resulted in a lesser sentence.

U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor of the Central District of California
ruled in 2003 that Pinholster had received ineffective assistance from his
appointed trial lawyers, Harry Brainard and Wilbur Dettmar. Brainard was
disbarred in 1990 and Dettmar is now deceased.

Dual Slaying

Robert Beckett, 29, a Canoga Park resident and medical technician, and
Thomas Johnson, 25, a student at Pierce College from Tarzana, were killed
during the burglary at Michael Kumar's residence. Kumar, who was convicted
of dealing marijuana on several occasions, both before and after the
killingsone of the cases was prosecuted in the early 1990s by then-Deputy
District Attorney Stephen Cooleywas allegedly on a buying trip to Northern
California when Pinholster and 2 companions came upon Kumars friends
during the burglary.

The 2 were stabbed to death, and jurors found that Pinholster personally
used a knife in the commission of the crimes.

They found him guilty on 2 counts of 1st degree murder with
multiple-murder, robbery-murder, and burglary-murder special
circumstances. The jury returned a death penalty verdict after a penalty
phase that featured testimony that Pinholster had a long history of
criminal violence, including a kidnap conviction, several attacks on
police officers and jailers, a domestic violence incident in which he
broke his wife's jaw, and a threat to kill the prosecution's star witness.

The witness, Art Corona, was an accomplice who turned himself in 2 weeks
after the killings. The defendant's other accomplice, David Paul Brown,
was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

The California Supreme Court affirmed Pinholster's death sentence in 1992.

Mitigation Claims Debatable

Judge Richard Tallman, writing for the Ninth Circuit, said there was no
reasonable probability that Pinholster's trial lawyers could have saved
him from the death penalty, because his mitigation claimsthat his
childhood was marred by serious abuse and that he had a history of mental
illnesswere debatable and would not have persuaded the jury to overlook
"the damage Pinholster did to himself when he took the stand in the guilt
phase and testified to an unrepentant life of violent crime."

Tallman added that the defendant "was openly disrespectful of the deputy
prosecutor and ignored the seriousness of his underlying murders" and "was
either laughing or smirking during numerous stages of the deputy
prosecutor's cross-examination."

The judge also rejected the argument that counsel was ineffective in
advising Pinholster to testify. The record, Tallman explained, shows that
there was overwhelming evidence that Pinholster had been in the house on
the day of the murders and that he was eager to testify that he had broken
into the house and stolen some marijuana hours before the killings and did
not confront the victims or ransack the premises.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski concurred separately, saying he would reverse
the district judge on an alternative ground, "that petitioner's counsel
weren't deficient, because they made a rational decision to pursue what
was essentially a 'pity' mitigation case, rather than try to make out a
case of mental defect."

Judge Raymond Fisher dissented. He argued that Taylor's decision to grant
relief from the death sentence was consistent with U.S. Supreme Court
decisions.

Fisher also contended that defense counsel should have advised Pinholster
not to testify, rather than to offer a "highly suspect" alibi while
opening himself up to damaging cross-examination. But he agreed that there
was no prejudice with respect to the guilt phase, since Pinholster would
have been convicted whether he took the stand or not.

Attorneys on appeal were Deputy Attorney General Kristofer Jorstad for the
prosecution and Federal Public Defender Sean Kennedy for Pinholster.

The case is Pinholster v. Ayers, 03-99003.

(source: Metropolitan News Company)






MARYLAND:

Death Row Inmate Wants Sentence Overturned


Fighting death for the 4th time. A death row inmate convicted of killing
an Eastern Shore theater manager is fighting to get his sentence
overturned. 3 times before, attorneys for convicted murderer Jody Lee
Miles have tried unsuccessfully to overturn his death sentence.

On Monday, attorneys for Miles tried for a 4th time to get his sentence
overturned, taking their case to the Maryland Court of Appeals. Miles has
been on death row for 10 years. In 1998, a jury sentenced him to death for
robbing and murdering Edward Atkinson, a theater manager.

Robert Biddle says, "His death sentence was imposed illegally. That's what
we contend." His attorneys point to a 2007 Supreme Court case they say
sets a new precedent for this appeal. They argue jurors need to use the
highest standard of proof when weighing aggravating circumstances with
mitigating factors in a death penalty case. "It requires a much greater
level of certainty to say something has been found beyond a reasonable
doubt."

Attorneys are seeking a new sentence for Miles. And they want all jurors
in future trials to be instructed that there must be proof beyond a
reasonable doubt to impose the death penalty. Biddle says, "To execute our
client, he would need to be resentenced. There would have to be a new
sentencing hearing where the jury would be properly instructed."

Even if the court rejects this 4th appeal, it's unlikely miles will be
executed anytime soon because of Maryland's current moratorium on the
death penalty. In 2006, the Maryland Court of Appeals declared a
moratorium on executions. Efforts to ban the death penalty failed this
session in Annapolis, despite support from the Governor.

Miles is awaiting execution at Supermax. It could take months before the
court makes a ruling.

(source: ABC News)