Jan. 13 ALABAMA----impending execution State opposes execution delay while major groups and leaders around the state, including the Alabama New South Coalition, Alabama Arise and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP urge Governor Riley to halt all executions Prosecutors have urged the Alabama Supreme Court not to delay the planned execution of James Harvey Callahan, whose attorneys are seeking to block his lethal injection set for Thursday at Holman Prison. Callahan, now 62, was convicted twice of the Feb. 3, 1982, slaying of Rebecca Suzanne Howell of Jacksonville, who was abducted from a coin-operated laundry. The body of the 26-year-old woman was found weeks later, dumped in a creek. State prosecutors contend Callahan has exhausted his state and federal appeals. But Callahan's lawyers filed a petition Friday for a stay with the state Supreme Court. In the filing, the lawyers claim the conviction and death sentence were obtained unconstitutionally because the trial judge in Calhoun County refused to recuse himself after participating in the questioning of Callahan in jail. The judge questioned Callahan about his constitutional rights, then later presided at his trial after rejecting a defense request that he step down from the case because he could be called as a witness to the interrogation. In a response Monday, prosecutors said the judge did not participate in Callahan's interrogation, but acted to ensure that the lawyer who told him that he might represent Callahan was able to talk to Callahan. Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw also said in his court filing that Callahan's claim about the trial judge was settled during the inmate's unsuccessful appeal in 2005. The state Supreme Court did not immediately rule on the bid for an execution delay. Callahan's 1st conviction was overturned by the state Supreme Court over questions as to whether Callahan's statements about the killing were coerced or not, according to his lawyers. The court ruled that one of those statements was improperly admitted because prosecutors had failed to prove that his prior statements were properly taken. That reversal led to a retrial and his 2nd conviction in 1987. Callahan is 1 of 5 inmates scheduled for execution in the first 5 months of this year, an unusual cluster of executions for Alabama. (source: The Gadsden Times) GEORGIA: Fixing Georgia's death penalty To legal mavens and armchair jurists alike, the November verdict in the Brian Nichols trial offered stunning evidence that the death penalty in Georgia is broken. If a remorseless, mad-dog killer like Nichols is able to escape death row after boastfully confessing to a day-long murder-and-car-jacking spree then how can the state rationalize the planned execution of men whose decades-old convictions rest on circumstantial evidence and recanted testimony? Anne Emanuel, for one, believes it can't. "The death penalty is justifiable for certain crimes, but in Georgia we've got huge inequities," says Emanuel, a criminal law professor at Georgia State University who chaired an American Bar Association committee that spent 2 years studying the death penalty in Georgia. That committee's 2006 report recommended that the state suspend executions until it was able to repair cracks in the legal system to ensure that capital punishment is being applied fairly. A subsequent 2-year investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution determined that, over the previous decade, the process that produces death sentences in Georgia is largely arbitrary often resulting in wildly different punishments for similar crimes. "Getting the death penalty in Georgia is as predictable as a lightning strike," the newspaper concluded. Emanuel believes the recent Nichols verdict and the never-ending appeals of longtime death row inmate Troy Davis whose innocence claims and evidence of faulty eyewitness accounts have attracted international attention serve to underscore the need to halt executions while the state determines whether its even possible to salvage the legal integrity of its death penalty. There is, however, 1 major drawback with this approach: It ain't gonna happen. This is Georgia, after all. We led the country in executions until the 1960s. When the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional for part of the early '70s, it was because the death penalty in Georgia was proven to be a crapshoot with the odds stacked against anyone who killed a white man. While other states recently have suspended or even repealed their death penalty laws including Illinois, Kansas and New York some Georgia pols are determined to double down in the condemnation game. The death penalty process is indeed flawed, they argue, and the way to fix it is to lower the standards for sentencing a killer to death. "The Brian Nichols verdict has brought to public view the problem of jurors not telling the truth when they say they'd be willing to impose the death penalty," explains Barry Fleming, the former Republican state representative who first introduced a bill in 2006 to allow a judge to send convicted murderers to death row even if the jury does not unanimously vote for death, as the law now requires. Fleming's original bill would have allowed a simple majority of jurors to dole out a death sentence. The version that passed the House last year following an endorsement speech by Speaker Glenn Richardson but failed in the Senate would have set the jury hurdle at 10-2. That last measure already has been revived as a pre-filed bill, but Fleming is certain other lawmakers will up the ante by pushing to allow a death sentence despite three jury holdouts, as was the case in the Nichols meltdown. "I think the Nichols verdict could influence the number that's proposed," says Fleming, who, as the newly appointed legal counsel to Richardson, is expected to wield considerable influence over House legislation. But doing away with the death penalty or greasing the path to death row aren't the Legislature's only options for addressing the obvious inequities in Georgia's legal system. Republican state Sen. Preston Smith has re-introduced a bill he penned last year that would allow a district attorney to seek life without parole against murderers. "It ought to be an available sentence," he says, "because it's more appropriate in some cases." Current law requires prosecutors to choose between pursuing life with the possibility of parole which can be granted after 25 years or death. Should a jury disapprove of a death sentence, then life without parole becomes an option. Life without parole is also mandatory in Georgia if a defendant is convicted a 2nd time of one of the seven deadly sins, including murder. Smith's bill, which passed the Senate last year, but got held up in the House, isn't directly influenced by the Nichols case for starters, there's likely not a DA in Georgia who wouldn't have sought the death penalty. But the courthouse killer's train-wreck prosecution showed just how expensive and ultimately uncertain capital cases can be. Giving prosecutors the option to seek and plea-bargain for life without parole will probably result in huge cost savings for Georgia because DAs will feel less compelled to try capital cases they aren't certain of winning, says Smith, who adds that the bill enjoys deep support from prosecutors. Still, the bill is a double-edged sword, he acknowledged. Some DAs could feel political pressure to seek life without parole against defendants they might otherwise have offered a chance for parole. But, as Georgia amply demonstrates, no system is perfect. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research and education group based in Washington, D.C., says the prevailing winds in criminal justice are blowing against the death penalty. Among the 36 states that have capital punishment, he says, the overwhelming majority requires a unanimous jury to impose a death sentence. Influenced by tales of death row exonerations, juries nationwide have become much less likely to apply the death penalty. And several states including neighboring North Carolina have opted to allow prosecutors to seek life without parole. "In virtually every state, the number of death sentences is dropping," Dieter says. "Life without parole is becoming the go-to option." And even if Georgia does lower the jury standards for death sentences, he says, the experience of Florida and other death penalty states suggest the state would need to spend more money defending the law against constitutional challenges and could even see an increase in overturned sentences. In a budget-challenged future, Dieter says, many states have decided that whatever one's ideology the death penalty has become too costly. "The case of Troy Davis is symbolic of the problem," he says. "Even if you do it carefully and with due process, it's very expensive to put someone to death." (source: Creative Loafing) ************************** Diet drug blamed for psychosis in man who killed officer----Kenneth Gerald Reese sentenced to life in prison Superior Court Judge Alfred Dempsey sentenced a cop-killer to life in prison without parole Monday, saying the defendants psychiatric evaluations made seeking the death penalty unnecessary. "This is an inexplicable tragedy," he said. "I've read over these (psychiatric reports) that the public will not necessarily see that I will say justifies the plea we're taking here today." Atlanta and Fulton County news Kenneth Gerald Reese, 31, confessed to ambushing 26-year-old Fulton County Police Officer Aaron Blount nearly 6 years ago when he was pulled over for a traffic stop. Until the murder, Reese had no history of violence or criminal behavior, Dempsey said. Investigators quickly arrested Reese in the April 2003 killing in the Red Oak community in South Fulton, but said they did not know why Reese killed Blount, who had stopped him for erratic driving. Reese emptied one 9mm pistol into Blount's patrol car, hitting him once in the shoulder and once in the head, as it pulled into a service station on Roosevelt Highway. He then got a 2nd 9mm pistol from his car and pressed it against Blounts head and shot him again, according to the autopsy report. District Attorney Paul Howard said he agreed to the life sentence after a state-hired psychiatrist reported that Reese who weighed more than 300 pounds had been taking a now-banned diet drug linked to causing psychosis. The psychiatrist contended that Reese wasn't legally insane because he knew right from wrong at the time of the killing. But he said the drug could have been partly to blame for the violence, according to Howard, and that would mitigate against a death penalty decision when a jury decided the punishment. "It was problematic for us because that report was presented by our own psychiatrist," Howard said. "If it is true, then that is bizarre and it was the only thing presented as a motive." He said he only got the psychiatric report last week, saying his office had Reese evaluated last fall after defense lawyers told Dempsey they planned to present a mental health defense. A defense-hired psychiatrist said Reese's brain had a damaged frontal-lobe that caused him to be become psychotic which Howard didn't believe. Howard blamed the judiciary for letting the Reese case languish for 6 years. He said judges kept recusing themselves because of conflicts with the defense team. The DA said his office did not set the case aside to focus its resources on the Brian Nichols case, which ended in December. Blount's old boss, former Fulton County Police Chief George Coleman, said he was disappointed that Howard didn't seek the death penalty. Coleman said Howard may have been influenced by the life sentence given Nichols after his jury hung 9-3 in the penalty phase. The decision favored the death penalty but fell short of the unanimity required by law to impose it. Many people believed the jury would impose the death penalty on Nichols because he killed a judge, a court reporter, a sheriff's deputy and a federal agent after he escaped from custody during his rape trial at the Fulton County Courthouse in March 2005. "We have to rely on the wisdom of the district attorney we have to go along," Coleman said. "A lot of people in the community dont like to hand down the death penalty." (source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution) CALIFORNIA: We all pay the price for death penalty GOV. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared that we are facing "financial Armageddon," yet California continues to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on a dysfunctional death penalty. This year's budget already makes deep cuts to drug treatment, struggling schools and mental health programs. The very real prospect of a $40 billion budget deficit by June 2010 may require even more cuts. This puts every one of us at risk. We are cutting the very programs that help reduce violent crime and without them, violent crime may well increase. Meanwhile, we continue to waste more than $250 million on an ineffective and broken death penalty, and it's a price we can no longer afford. In these times of unprecedented budget shortfalls and financial crisis, it's important to understand how the state is spending that $250 million on the death penalty: - $117 million is for the extra costs of death row housing, attorneys for the prosecution and defense, and court costs. These are the extra expenses we pay every year to have the death penalty in California-expenses that would disappear if we replaced the death penalty with permanent imprisonment (which has no opportunity for parole), but expenses that are required as long as we have a death penalty. - $136 million is to begin construction of a new death row facility. We are forced to build a new death row because our current facility is overcrowded and broken down. The total estimated cost for completing the project is now $400 million and the costs for running the facility are estimated at $1 billion for the first 20 years. While we waste more than $250 million on a death penalty that everyone agrees is flawed, we are slashing funding for education and vital services for the neediest Californians. Our escalating budget deficit and the failing economy will undoubtedly lead to even deeper cuts. These budget cuts hit the programs that we most need to prevent violent crime: funding for struggling schools, drug treatment, mental health services, and assistance to the working poor; programs to reduce methamphetamine use and prevent domestic violence; programs that seek to protect our children from lead poisoning and the effects of parental drug use. We are cutting programs that actually do result in fewer murders and reduce violent crime by protecting and assisting the most vulnerable: poor children. The impact of these cuts will last for a generation or more. But we have a choice: If we simply replace the failing death penalty with condemning the worst offenders to permanent imprisonment, we could restore funding for all of these programs. That's right, all of these programs. In tight budget times, we must all make tough choices. This choice should be easy. Do we pay $250 million this year for a death penalty that does no good, or do we provide food and health care to poor children, treatment to drug addicts and the mentally ill, support for struggling families and protection for the elderly? For Californians who want to live in safe and healthy communities, the answer is clear. The time has come to replace the death penalty with permanent imprisonment. (source: Opinion, Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, represents Marin in the state Senate. He is chairman of the senate Public Safety Committee; Marin Independent Journal) ************* State closes restitution centers for white-collar prisoners----Group homes allowed nonviolent offenders to work, contribute to their detention costs and pay back their victims. The program cost too much, the state said, and participants are now back in prison. The program seemed a model of corrections reform in tight fiscal times: The mostly white-collar criminals who were enrolled saved taxpayers moneyby living in group homes instead of in state prison and held jobs that helped cover rent and restitution to victims. Among the graduates of the state's two restitution centers, both in Los Angeles, is former Compton Mayor Omar Bradley, who provided job training for the disabled in Carson while serving time for using his city-issued credit card for personal expenses. But on Thanksgiving Eve, state officials shut down the program and sent the 74 enrolled offenders to prisons, not even giving them time to tell their employers. Corrections department officials, ordered to cut their budget by $800 million this year, said California could no longer afford the program. The decision perplexed prison-reform advocates, who called it a bureaucratic blunder born of government inefficiency. "It's pretty stupid," said Robert Pratt, executive director of Volunteers of America's Los Angeles branch, which ran the 2 centers. "These are people who were working and paying for their upkeep and paying back victims. It is counterproductive to put them back in prison, where the taxpayer has to foot the whole bill." The news came to the nonprofit Nov. 20 in a terse notice that the corrections department had "determined at this time that only contracts for services and functions of state government deemed critical and exempt will be utilized. Your contract is not exempt, therefore performance under contract . . . is hereby immediately suspended." Scott Kernan, undersecretary for operations at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, pointed out that the centers had about 3 dozen empty beds, and said the state could not afford to carry a program not operating at full capacity. To be eligible, inmates had to owe restitution to their victims and have sentences of three years or less for nonviolent and nonsexual offenses. Kernan said the state could not find enough eligible volunteers to fill all 110 beds. Closing the centers will eliminate $500,000 in contract costs for the state this year, he said. "Faced with the overall budget situation and the underutilization of those beds, I still think it was a good common-sense decision by the department," Kernan said. Pratt said the problem could have been solved by consolidating the 2 centers or expanding eligibility. Kernan said his office tried to fill the beds, but negotiations with the Volunteers of America to expand eligibility failed. He said that most of the contract cost would have been deferred by income from the convicts, and that the contract cost is far less than the expense of putting the inmates back in prison cells. The group-home contract cost the state $50 per inmate per day, Pratt said. Now those inmates are costing the state at least $97 per day in prison, according to corrections officials. The difference, based on the number of inmates, is about $1.2 million per year. A third of the offenders' earnings went to the state to help cover their upkeep; another 3rd went to victims and the final 3rd went into an account to cover job-related costs such as transportation. Beth Watson's husband, who was convicted of a securities crime involving an illegal business scheme, lived in one of the restitution houses for 72 days. During that time, he earned $15 an hour as a customer service representative. He and some 30 other men were transferred from the house on La Cienega Avenue in West Los Angeles to a men's prison in Chino. "It's ludicrous," Watson said. "It makes no sense." Kernan said the restitution center participants will be considered for other programs such as firefighting camps that cost taxpayers less than keeping them in prison. Watson said her husband is 49 years old and just survived a bout with cancer, and does not feel suited to fighting fires. Prison-reform advocates say the decision to close the centers appears to run counter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's mandate that many more inmates be sent to community centers to reduce the prison population and the cost of housing them. There are some 171,000 inmates in California prisons built to handle 100,000, and a panel of three federal judges is considering whether to cap the population and possibly release up to 52,000 inmates. The governor has proposed shifting up to 7,000 offenders from prisons to "reentry facilities," to smooth the transition of offenders back to society in a way that addresses the state's 70% recidivism rate. "You are going to need more programs like this, not less," said Joan Petersilia, a criminologist who studies prisons at UC Irvine and has advised the Schwarzenegger administration on corrections issues. Harriet Salarno, chairwoman of Crime Victims United California, said she supported the opening of the centers as a way to make amends to victims of nonviolent crime and is concerned about how the closures might affect restitution. Alleging that the suspension violated a contract provision requiring 30 days' notice of cancellation, Pratt said he has filed a claim against the state. (source: Los Angeles Times) USA: Capital punishment Unlike some life and death issues that I believe are intrinsically wrong, the death penalty falls into the debatable category. It is in fact a matter under much debate in our system of justice. As a Catholic, I look to my bishops for guidance. They clearly want to close the door on the death penalty, but they leave the door unlocked when they collectively concede: "The state has the recourse to impose the death penalty upon criminals convicted of heinous crimes if this ultimate sanction is the only available means to protect society from a grave threat to human life." Arguments I have seen opposing the death penalty strike me as not overwhelmingly convincing. Take for example the argument that we can protect society from grave threats to human life in other ways. That reasoning falters when I read in The Frederick News-Post that Maryland recently charged 3 inmates of the Roxbury Correctional Institution in a 4th inmate's death. Guards and prisoners alike face a daily challenge of avoiding serious injury or death from dangerous inmates. I understand that life in prison can drive people over the edge, particularly those who have nothing more to lose. Besides, prisoners sometimes escape and parole boards sometimes make mistakes, freeing dangerous people. Advances in forensic science have established the innocence of some death row inmates. So, some might argue that our system of justice is prone to error, resulting in the death penalty being imposed on innocent people. However I could rebut the argument with the fact that advances in forensic science can now significantly reduce the incidence of error. When I consider what constitutes cruel and inhuman treatment, I wonder if spending a lifetime in prison is a blessing or a curse. Does not facing certain death have a sobering effect on a person? As a Christian I find it interesting that when a woman was about to be stoned to death for adultery, Christ did not judge the law unjust. He suggested that individuals judge themselves before stoning the woman. It is also interesting to note that my salvation is the direct result of the death penalty. A legitimate civil authority put Jesus, an innocent man, to death; and Jesus did not dispute the authority or the judgment. Then too, with 2 others crucified at his side, Christ only welcomed into his kingdom the one who acknowledged Christ's innocence while accepting his own crucifixion. We do not know the fate of the other wanting to avoid the death penalty. These muses may argue for the death penalty, but the death penalty is an aspect of a broader culture that I see and oppose, a culture that denigrates rather than elevates the value of life -- a culture that also embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, unbridled warfare and yes, even sexual relationships outside the marriage of a man and woman both open to begetting new life. While the death penalty may be justifiable at times I would not exclude it from my blacklist. If I had my druthers I would imprison rather than put a dangerous individual to death. My reasons are personal, a result of self examination. I could not be an executioner, and I would not vote in such a way as to require someone else to do what I myself refuse to do. (source: Opinion, Jim Devereaux, The Frederick News Post) *************** Letting Go of the Death Penalty Most states are facing drastic cuts in vital services because of the recession. Schools, health care, and law enforcement will have to get by with less. Death penalty cases, however, stand out, demanding more money even as executions become less likely. In this economic climate, they may be a luxury we can no longer afford. According to a recent report released by the Death Penalty Information Center, the death penalty is being used less and executions are being carried out in only a few states. Yet the costs are becoming more of an issue as the pressure to avoid the mistakes of the past has grown. There were 37 executions in 2008; 95% of them were in the South and almost half were in just one state -- Texas. Executions and death sentences have been steadily dropping throughout the current decade. But millions of taxpayer dollars have to be spent to keep the vast apparatus of capital punishment in place. California, for example, has 670 people on death row. Each one of them costs the state about $90,000 per year over what it would cost to keep them in prison if they were condemned to permanent imprisonment instead. In total, the state is spending $138 million per year, but only executes less than one person every 2 years, according to a recent state commission report. In fact, it's been almost 3 years since the state carried out any executions. California is now planning a new death row that will cost an additional $400 million. At the same time, the state is facing an unprecedented deficit of billions of dollars and is cutting many vital services. The state commission called the death penalty system "broken," "dysfunctional," and "close to collapse." Only more expenditures, they said, could possibly save it. Almost every state is facing a financial crisis and 36 states have the death penalty. In Maryland, a state commission heard testimony that the costs of the death penalty over the past 28 years amounted to $37 million per execution. In Florida, home to the 2nd largest death row in the country, the cost estimates are $24 million per execution. The Los Angeles Times estimated that California spends $250 million per execution, when all the system's costs are taken into account. There is no easy solution to this problem. Speeding up the appeals process or not paying lawyers adequate fees will end up costing states even more as trials will have to be done over a second time, or worse, result in the execution of innocent people. One hundred and thirty people have been exonerated from death row since 1973, including four in 2008. It took over 9 years on average between the conviction and the exoneration in these cases. With all of these mistakes, the death penalty system has become slower and shows no signs speeding up. The average time between sentencing and execution increased to 12.7 years for those executed in 2007, the third year in a row in which the time has been over 12 years. For some cases in California, it took 25 years for a capital case to be completed, according to the state commission. All of this expense and delay might be justified if there were some tangible benefit resulting from the death penalty. But for many victims' family members and representatives of law enforcement, the frustration and uncertainty of the death penalty make the option of a sentence of permanent imprisonment more reasonable. Only about 1% of the murders committed in this country result in a death sentence, and only a small percentage of those sentenced to death are ever executed many years later. Such a system makes little sense financially, or even retributively. In the past, people were often scared into believing that the death penalty was needed to be tough on crime. Today, the death penalty is more like a bridge to nowhere--an expensive government program that does not advance the general good. It may be time to let this extravagance go. (source: Huffington Post; Richard C. Dieter is the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center) ************** Our Existential Death Penalty: Judges, Jurors, and Terror Management Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker explored the impacts of the subconscious fear of death upon humans. In recent years, experimental psychologists have conducted studies related to Becker's theories. This "terror management theory" research has found that human beings become more punitive and hostile toward other groups when they are reminded of their own mortality. For example, in one study of municipal judges, the judges who were reminded of death set an average bond of $455 in a fictional case, while judges in the control group who were not reminded of their mortality set an average bond of $50 for the same case. This study, and others like it, provides significant lessons for the legal system, especially in cases involving death. This Article begins with a brief introduction into the existential theories about the fear of death discussed by Ernest Becker and others, and then it provides an overview of the recent empirical terror management theory research. The following sections give a brief overview of the capital punishment system and discuss how the terror management studies explain several inherent problems with the capital punishment system. These theories and experiments provide an important understanding of the subconscious influences upon jurors and upon other participants in the legal system such as judges, attorneys, and defendants. For example, terror management theory helps explain why death-qualified jurors are more punitive. The article concludes by explaining how attorneys and judges should work to lessen the death denial influences in capital cases because these existential influences contribute to the arbitrariness of the application of the death penalty. In addition to providing advice for capital defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges, the article proposes areas of further study for experimental existential psychologists. The conclusion appeals for more education in the legal community and for further interdisciplinary study in the scientific community. (source: Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, CUNY School of Law-----Law & Psychology Review, Vol. 32, p. 55, 2008) MONTANA: End death penalty The Montana Association of Churches is calling on the Legislature to abolish the death penalty in Montana and I am writing in strong support of its efforts. Statistics show that the death penalty is not a deterrent to homicides, in fact, quite the contrary. Its been shown that homicides are higher in states with the death penalty. In 1996 the American Bar Association called for a suspension of the death penalty. That in itself should tell us something. It would be better to allow a guilty person to live than to condemn an innocent person to death. According to the Montana Association of Churches, more than 124 condemned prisoners were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit and at least 23 have ultimately been executed. What a shame on our society! We can sentence convicted murderers to life without the possibility of parole, and, surprisingly, its been shown that executions are more expensive than life imprisonment. Fifteen to 20 years of appeals are not uncommon. I urge the Montana Legislature to join with the many other states in this country that have already abolished the death penalty and remove this barbaric uncivilized form of retribution from our state. Annabelle Richards (source: Letter to the Editor, Helena Independent Record)
