Dec. 2
DECEMBER 2, 2011:
USA----3 new execution dates set
Michael Dale St. Clair has been given an execution date for January 19, 2012,
in KENTUCKY
Beunka Adams has been given an execution date for March 8, 2012, in TEXAS
Eric Dale Roberts has been given a date for the week of May 13-19, 2012, in
SOUTH DAKOTA
--
A convicted serial killer is on death row, again.
On Wednesday morning, Special Judge Geoffrey Morris set a January 19 execution
date for Michael St. Clair.
Wednesday's sentencing and most recent verdict are the latest developments in a
more than 20 year legal saga. St. Clair was has already been convicted of
murder in Oklahoma.
In Kentucky, higher courts reversed the death sentence, twice for retrials or
re-sentencing because of overturned cases by the Kentucky Supreme Court.
In October, a Bullitt Circuit Court jury recommended the death sentence in the
execution-style killing of Frank Brady in 1991. St. Clair escaped from prison
in 1991 and then criss-crossed state lines on a crime spree when Frank Brady
was shot to death.
St. Clair's attorneys have already filed an appeal.
Brady's widow said after 20 years, she hopes this is the last time he faces
sentencing in Bullitt County.
"There will never be closure. When you lose a loved one, there is no closure.
You never get over it," Merle Brady said.
St. Clair also faces a retrial in Hardin County.
(source: WAVE News)
--
Judge Bentley set Adams’ execution date
Convicted killer Beunka Adams, 28, of Rusk was back in Cherokee County Monday
to appear before District Judge Bascom Bentley III, who then set Adams’
execution date for Mar. 8. Mr. Adams and Richard Aaron Cobb both received the
death penalty for the Sept. 3, 2002, murder of Kenneth Vandever of Rusk.
(source: The Cherokeen Herald)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Group launches bid to repeal N.C. death penalty
With the spotlight again on North Carolina's death penalty, a group of
religious leaders announced Friday the start of a new campaign aimed at
repealing capital punishment altogether.
People of Faith Against the Death Penalty is modeling the effort on a similar
campaign a decade ago that drew more than a thousand resolutions from local
governments and religious groups and 50,000 petition signatures in favor of a
temporary moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina.
But with Republicans in control of the General Assembly, which passed this week
a bill that would repeal a law giving death row inmates another avenue of
appeal, the campaign's goal is a tall order, with one top lawmaker saying there
is effectively zero chance of repeal.
The advocates for repeal, though, who on Friday included representatives from
about a dozen different churches and religious groups at news conference in
Raleigh, say they don't expect immediate results from lawmakers.
"The legislature is never going to act until they have constituencies behind
them," said Sister Helen Prejean, a nationally known death Roman Catholic
penalty opponent who wrote the book "Dead Man Walking" that later became a
successful film. Prejean is serving as the chairwoman of the new effort, which
the group has dubbed the Kairos Campaign, after a Greek word meaning the right
time or opportune moment.
"I'm not sure it's a good time, but I'm not sure there's ever been a good
time," said the Rev. Frank Dew, pastor of New Creation Community Presbyterian
Church in Greensboro. "But it's the right time."
Members of the group are hoping to present lawmakers with overwhelming evidence
of grass roots support for a repeal, which they say would save the state
millions of dollars and prevent the chance of ever mistakenly executing an
innocent person. Although there are currently 158 people on death row,
according to the state Department of Correction, no one has been executed in
North Carolina since 2006.
But at least in the General Assembly, debate seems to be shifting in the other
direction. On Monday, the state Senate voted to send Gov. Beverly Perdue a bill
that would effectively repeal the 2009 Racial Justice Act, a law that allows
death row inmates to appeal their sentences by using statistical evidence to
argue that racial bias played a role in their cases. Perdue has not said yet
whether she'll veto the bill.
House Majority Leader Paul Stam said Friday there's "zero" chance that the
Legislature will abolish or place a moratorium on the death penalty now that
the House and Senate have Republican majorities. Democratic proponents of
ending the death penalty were usually about five or six votes away from being
successful when their party was in charge at the Legislative Building, he said.
Today, according to Stam, they are about 30 votes short.
The Wake County Republican did say he appreciated the campaigners being
forthright about their intentions, saying many supporters of the Racial Justice
Act backed the law as backdoor way to create an unofficial moratorium on
capital punishment.
"At least that's an honest effort," Stam said of the Kairos Campaign. "They're
trying to do what they say what they want to do."
Stephen Dear, executive director of the Carrboro-based People of Faith Against
the Death Penalty, disagrees with that interpretation, saying that while the
group hopes Perdue preserves the Racial Justice Act with a veto, that law
doesn't go far enough.
"The Racial Justice Act is not about repealing the death penalty," he said.
"Instead, we are about repealing the death penalty."
(source: Associated Press)
****************
Gov. Perdue "thinking hard" about capital punishment and the Racial Justice
Act?
In the Indy this week, I wrote about the N.C. Senate's vote to repeal the
Racial Justice Act, a law meant to prevent executions in murder cases where the
death sentence was a product of racial bias. The bill to repeal it, Senate Bill
9, passed both houses on party-line votes, with nearly every Republican voting
yes and every Democrat voting no.
So now Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, is "thinking hard" about whether the RJA
should be repealed or not? That's what she says. As quoted in the N&O:
"I'm a real strong supporter of the death penalty," Perdue said. "We should not
allow discrimination based on race, poverty or any other factor to infect the
criminal justice system. I'm thinking about it hard."
A couple of things.
First, Perdue may be a "strong" death penalty proponent, but most North
Carolinians aren't. I say this not because of polls, which show public
sentiment on the death penalty split. Rather, I would point to the jurors in
North Carolina capital trials, all of whom must declare in advance their
support for the death penalty and their willingness to vote a death sentence in
the case they're about to hear.
I repeat: To be on a jury in a capital case — a case in which the defendant, if
convicted, is subject to the death penalty — you must be a death-penalty
supporter. If you so much as hint that the death penalty is something that most
of the civilized world has put in the past, you are summarily "excused" from
the jury pool, thank you very much ...
... and yet ...
... over the past 3 years in North Carolina, in 25 capital trials which
resulted in 1st-degree murder convictions that might have led to a death
sentence, the pro-death penalty jurors decided 17 times out of 25 on a sentence
of life imprisonment without parole instead of the death penalty.
In other words, there aren't too many "strong" death-penalty supporters in
North Carolina even among those who say they're supporters.
***
But wait. Only 25 murder convictions went to the jury for a possible death
sentence in the last three years?
Yes, and that's the 2nd thing. This state has 44 District Attorneys, and all
but two of them support the N.C. Conference of DA's call for repeal of the
Racial Justice Act. They, too, are "strong" supporters of the death penalty,
supposedly, and yet they rarely practice what they (if you'll pardon the
expression) preach.
In the vast majority of murders, the D.A.'s take the death penalty off the
table before the case even goes to trial.
And make no mistake. Until capital punishment is abolished in North Carolina,
It isn't Gov. Perdue who decides if we have a death penalty, or the General
Assembly or even the juries. It's the District Attorneys. God-like, they decide
whether an accused murderer, if tried and found guilty, should live or be put
in jeopardy of dying. In almost every case, their answer is: Live.
According to the N.C. Department of Justice crime statistics, there are
400-plus murders a year in the state — 487 last year, 468 the year before. Some
go unsolved, of course. Some result in a plea bargain to a manslaughter or
second-degree murder conviction. Only a handful go to court on a 1st-degree
murder charge.
Just 32 murder cases did so in the last 3 years, according to statistics
supplied by the state's Center for Death Penalty Litigation. Of the 32, 7 cases
ended with a plea bargain during the trial ... or with a judge's decision to
bar a death sentence because of prosecutorial or police misconduct ... or in
one case, with a not-guilty verdict.
That leaves the 25 cases that resulted in a 1st-degree murder conviction. And
to repeat, in 17 of the 25, the death-penalty supporting jury did not impose a
death sentence.
So of the more than 1,000 murders in North Carolina in the last three years,
just eight — 8 — sent the killer to death row.
Did those 8 involve racial bias? Proponents of the RJA say it's vital to find
out before any of the 8 are executed.
***
But whether racial bias or something else — these were perhaps the "easy" cases
involving poor defendants with no family support and a victim's family
thirsting for blood? — the 8 death-row sentences are, almost by definition, the
leavings from a process of capital punishment so misguided that even its
"strong" proponents don't have the stomach for it any more.
I've only covered one capital trial from start to finish. To me, it put the lie
to the idea that only the most heinous murders will result in a death sentence.
And it reinforced my impression that the bias in the system is against poor
black or Hispanic men who, for reasons of mental illness and/or drug addiction,
kill a white woman in a spasm of violence.
In the case I covered, a rich white guy murdered his fiance because he had a
hot new lover and didn't want to go through with the marriage. The killing was
premeditated, cold-blooded, planned-out and, but for the man's stupidity, he
might've gotten away with it. Heinous? I can't think of anything worse.
I will say that the D.A. — in Wake County — sought the death penalty. But at
the very end of the trial, the man confessed and pleaded for his life, and the
supposedly death-penalty supporting jury, after convicting him of 1st-degree
murder, spent less than 1 hour on his sentence before deciding to let him live.
Bias?
Even people who say they support the death penalty are biased against it. Only
a deep bias the other way — something like a racial bias — ever causes them to
actually resort to it.
(source: Bob Geary, Independent Weekly)
GEORGIA:
Giving Thanks for a Sister and Prophet: Martina Davis Correia
Our friend and fellow warrior for human rights, Martina Davis Correia, has
passed on. She stopped breathing at about 6:28pm on December 1st in Savannah,
Georgia while I stood near her hospital bed along with family and friends. She
passed in peace, though she endured a painful struggle following the failure of
a liver that had taken a severe beating in the course of a decade’s worth of
cancer treatments.
Martina changed us and she changed our world. She spoke truth to power in the
way that a prophet does: bringing a timely message out of the margins and to
the masses with a conviction that we wish our leaders in power had. But while
millions would come to hear her story, she began as a voice crying in the
wilderness speaking to very small groups. The first rally we organized for her
brother Troy Davis in 2007 at the state capitol in Atlanta drew a crowd of just
forty people. This year, when the state set a fourth execution date for Davis,
thousands came out and marched with us through the streets of Atlanta and
thousands more gathered in about 300 locations around the world in solidarity.
Traditional and social media coverage of the Davis story expanded the audience
to hundreds of millions of people and about a million signed the petitions for
clemency. No exaggeration.
Martina needed us, the human rights movement, to lift her up where she could be
seen and to hand her a powerful microphone so that she could be heard. And we
needed her, a modern-day prophet for human rights who inspired so many people
to get involved with the effort to abolish the death penalty as an important
imperative within the larger struggle for human rights. She motivated us when
the struggle seemed difficult and insurmountable. She compelled us to fight
hard for justice; after all, if this odds-defying woman was battling cancer,
raising a son and working hard to save her brother, in a hostile environment,
there was nothing we could not do.
It was indeed a privilege to work side-by-side with her in our campaign for her
brother’s life. Through hard, persistent and inspired work, we built this
movement together. For over a decade, Martina was a volunteer leader with
Amnesty International, working on a variety of issues, though specializing in
death penalty abolition work. She came to Amnesty because she believed in her
brother and wanted to help him and countless others who faced injustice. It was
never just about her brother – her vision was always bigger.
Martina fought her deteriorating body every step of the way to hold onto life
and to be in this world for her family and for the human family. Her body
finally gave out, living eleven years longer than doctors predicted she would.
It is unimaginable what stress and hardship she and her family faced having a
loved one on death row who was almost executed three times, then finally killed
by the state she called home and in the country she served as a military and
civilian nurse. Martina’s mother, though in perfect health, died shortly after
Troy Davis’ final appeal was denied and a few months before his execution. The
families of murder victims and the families of death row prisoners endure
enormous pain. The death penalty is horrifically destructive, creating a
downward spiral of violence that drags so many people down in its wake. We must
end it so that an authentic justice that brings us accountability, healing and
a better future can take root and blossom.
When I was in the hospital on Martina’s final day, I asked her sister Kim if
the crowd of visiting friends jammed in the hospital room should leave to give
her and her family some time alone with Martina. Kim said without hesitation,
“No, that’s Ok, we’re all family here.” And that’s exactly what Martina, Troy
and the other Davises believed too. We’re all part of one human family. Our
destinies are connected. Our rights, our dignity and our well-being are
connected. Martina, sister warrior, we love you, we are deeply thankful you
were here. We know your spirit is still joined with ours to carry on the
struggle for the rights of everyone in the human family.
(source: Amnesty International USA blog)
***************
Remembering Martina Correia
When Martina Correia was first diagnosed with breast cancer, her son, DeJaun,
was 6 years old. The doctors gave her only six months to live. But more than
ten years later, she was still alive. Death was not an option for her. She was
on a mission, not just to raise her son but to save her brother’s life, even as
her own life hung in the balance.
It was not just the shocking facts of Troy Davis’s case—the total lack of
physical evidence, the recanted witness statements—but his sister’s strength
and story that inspired a global movement against the death penalty. People all
over the world cried out against the execution of Troy Davis. Not once, not
twice, not t3 times. But 4 times.
“De’Jaun remembers the 1st execution date vividly,” Martina said earlier this
year, as the state of Georgia again readied itself to kill her brother. “It was
July 17, 2007. He was 13 years old. We went to go see Troy, and Troy wasn’t
really worrying about himself. He was mostly worried about his family—about us.
I was looking at my mother. She was praying, praying, praying.”
Troy gave DeJaun parting advice. “Just do good in school, do what’s right, pick
the right friends, watch over the family, and just respect the family. Respect
your mom, your grandmother, and your aunties. Do what you love and have a good
profession.”
Miraculously, Troy would live to see another day. And his sister would be by
his side every time they tried to kill him again. In a letter to the Campaign
to End the Death Penalty in 2009, Troy wrote: “As I look at my sister Martina,
I am marveled by the love she has for me—and of course, I worry about her and
her health. But as she tells me, she is the eldest, and she will not back down
from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of
this terrible crime.”
Martina never paused, never put herself first. It was always about the fight.
When I wrote to a dozen activists, lawyers and former prisoners this past
February asking for a short contribution to an anti-death penalty article for
The Nation, she was the first to respond, even though she had been very sick.
“I am not yet 70% of myself,” she wrote, as explicit an acknowledgment of her
health struggles than she would generally allow. Yet she urged me to call her
cell rather than e-mail in the future; it was a better way to reach her.
As a board member of the CEDP, Martina would join our lengthy Sunday night
conference calls—no matter where she was or what was going on. She spoke to us
from the car, on her way back from the hospital—she was always there. So it was
easy to convince ourselves she always would be.
Even when things looked grim for her brother, Martina shared in the joy of
other family members who welcomed their loved ones home. When one of our fellow
board members saw her husband released from a Texas prison after ten years
after being wrongfully convicted, she wrote jubilantly: “PRAISE GOD, WE ARE
WINNING THIS FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE!”
In person, Martina stood tall, a veteran of Desert Storm, where she had worked
as a nurse. It was painful this September to see her looking so frail as she
watched the state of Georgia prepare to kill Troy once and for all. Too weak to
walk, she nevertheless rose from her wheelchair in a show of strength and
solidarity. “I’m here to tell you that I’m going to stand here for my brother
today,” she said as reporters looked on. And she did.
Soon after that, her brother was gone. After so many last-minute reprieves, it
was a reality that was too hard to accept.
Just as it is difficult to accept that Martina is gone.
“I never thought this day would come,” DeJaun tweeted earlier this week, as he
heard from the doctors that she didn’t have much time. Along with Martina, he
had spoken to the CEDP over the phone at our annual convention last month, and
told us his Twitter address. It was his feed that told me she would be gone
soon.
As the news spread last night, another tireless activist, my friend Marlene
Martin, former executive director of the CEDP, sent out an e-mail describing
one of her last conversations with Martina.
“She told me someone in France had e-mailed her to say they were sorry that
despite all of their efforts and protests for Troy, they had failed. Martina
said, ‘I want people to know that we didn’t fail. As long as we keep hammering
away at this thing, as long as we refuse to give up, we haven’t failed. We’ll
be doing what Troy would have wanted us to do. Our efforts made an impact and
we’ll continue to make an impact.’ That is always how she was. She refused to
be defeated. She always looked to the positive, she always looked to ways we
could mobilize to win.”
Laura Moye spoke with Martina at a CEDP event in Harlem a couple years back.
She fought hard alongside her and was at the hospital when she died. In a
moving post about her friend—“ a modern-day prophet for human rights”—on the
Amnesty International website, she wrote:
Martina fought her deteriorating body every step of the way to hold onto life
and to be in this world for her family and for the human family. Her body
finally gave out, living eleven years longer than doctors predicted she would.
It is unimaginable what stress and hardship she and her family faced having a
loved one on death row who was almost executed three times, then finally killed
by the state she called home and in the country she served as a military and
civilian nurse. Martina’s mother, though in perfect health, died shortly after
Troy Davis’ final appeal was denied and a few months before his execution.
The families of murder victims and the families of death row prisoners endure
enormous pain. The death penalty is horrifically destructive, creating a
downward spiral of violence that drags so many people down in its wake. We must
end it so that an authentic justice that brings us accountability, healing and
a better future can take root and blossom.
(source: Liliana Segura, The Nation)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Prosecutor wants death penalty case file sealed
A prosecutor wants to keep the public from seeing the motions and other
information in the file of a man charged with murder and rape in the deaths of
a Richland County mother and daughter 4 years ago.
Prosecutor Dan Johnson would not tell The State newspaper why he wants to seal
Julian Whatley's file in the death penalty case, saying the reasons will come
out at a hearing on the matter.
Documents already filed show Whatley is willing to plead guilty in exchange for
a life sentence and that 2 relatives of the victims are willing to accept a
plea bargain.
Investigators say Whatley raped 45-year-old Crystal Ferguson and her 9-year-old
daughter, Hillary Wright, then threw gasoline in their home and burned them to
death in 2007.
(source: Associated Press)
OREGON:
Oregon’s governor did the honorable thing by halting executions
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) did the honorable thing in preventing the
execution of Gary Haugen and effectively declaring a moratorium on executions
in his state while he remains in office. While Charles Lane [“A death penalty
cop-out,” op-ed, Nov. 29] sees some inconsistency in the governor’s halt of
executions while not immediately commuting Oregon’s 37 current death sentences,
Mr. Kitzhaber’s call for a statewide reexamination of capital punishment and
his endorsement of its repeal was indeed a principled stand.
In January 2000, Illinois Gov. George Ryan (R) declared a moratorium on
executions in his state, disturbed by the fact that more people had been
exonerated from death row than executed. Mr. Ryan took a principled stand, too,
and after more study he commuted all Illinois death sentences in 2003. Illinois
finally abolished the death penalty this year. In Oregon, and indeed everywhere
in the United States that capital punishment is carried out, the punishment has
been shown to be flawed, arbitrary and without constructive purpose.
The morbid spectacle of Mr. Haugen continuing to push the state of Oregon to
kill him is just the latest example of the moral bankruptcy of capital
punishment. The actions of Mr. Kitzhaber are a welcome example of positive
political leadership.
Laura Moye, Washington
The writer is director of Amnesty International USA’s death penalty abolition
campaign.
(source: Letter to the Editor, Washington Post)
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