Aug. 24
NEBRASKA:
Bruning confident state can restore death penalty
Nebraska's attorney general says the state's corrections department has been
too busy dealing with other problems to focus on resolving drug shortages that
have halted executions in the state, which hasn't carried out the death penalty
in 17 years.
Attorney General Jon Bruning told The Associated Press he's confident Nebraska
will resume executions but it could be years before officials can work out a
new approach using different drugs or a new supplier.
He notes the corrections department has been busy with other issues, including
questions over the early release of some inmates.
Nebraska lost its only approved method to carry out executions when its supply
of one drug used in the process expired in December.
Bruning says the state can manufacture the missing drug or change its execution
protocol
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Erin Corwin Murder: Suspected Killer Admits He Searched for 'How to Dispose' of
Body
Christopher Lee, the former Marine accused of murdering Erin Corwin, told
investigators that he searched the Internet for "how to dispose of a human
body," arrest records reveal.
The revelation is just part of the evidence that San Bernardino County
prosecutors have amassed against Lee, 24, who police contend was having an
affair with Corwin and killed her out of fear his wife would learn of the
relationship.
Several days before her disappearance, Corwin, 19, told a friend that she and
Lee were planning on taking a "special" trip together, according to court
documents.
An additional murder charge might be filed against Lee pending the outcome of
Corwin's autopsy, which won't be finalized for the next 4 to 6 weeks.
"There's still an ongoing investigation to determine if she was pregnant at the
time of the murder," San Bernardino District Attorney Michael Ramos tells
PEOPLE. "If we find that to be true and the fetus was far enough along, there
could be another kind of murder charge filed."
Corwin's body was located at the bottom of a 125-foot gold-mine shaft on
Sunday, seven weeks after her husband, Marine Cpl. Jon Corwin, reported her
missing. Detectives also discovered .22-caliber casings and pieces of rebar at
the mine shaft that matched those found in Lee's Jeep.
Lee, who is awaiting extradition from Alaska, where he recently moved with his
wife and daughter, told police he was "collecting tires" on the morning Corwin
disappeared. Detectives found a tire at the mine shaft. A witness also informed
investigators that Lee asked him "the best way to dispose of a human body,"
according to court documents.
The authorities are also curious to learn whether Lee's wife, Nichole, may have
played a role in the murder.
"Investigators would like to interview her at some point," says Cynthia Bachman
with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, "to determine her
involvement, if any."
Prosecutors are still "a couple months" away from deciding whether or not
they'll ask for the death penalty for Lee, added Ramos.
"I was only able to speak with him briefly the day before he waived
extradition," Lee's lawyer David Kaloyanides told The Desert Sun. "He's not
pleased that the case has gone in this direction, but seems to be doing okay."
USA:
Government's ultimate power: Executing Americans, with atrocities
I have been reporting for years on the kinds of executions that led Justice
Harry Blackmun to declare in a Feb.22, 1994, dissent (Callins v. Collins) that
he would no longer vote for the death penalty.
"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."
And Justice William Brennan told me more than once: "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."
In addition to the increasing revelations that some prisoners on death row are
innocent, there is the increasing shock - and I mean "shock" - of how some
states carry out executions with the approval of the courts, including our
highest court.
I knew Justice Brennan well, and I have no doubt how he would react to this
July 24 press release from the always-carefully documented Washington,
D.C.-based Constitution Project:
"Yesterday, Joseph R. Wood III was pronounced dead after a nearly two-hour long
execution by the state of Arizona. Media witnesses, some of whom have observed
previous executions, reported that Wood gasped for air more than 600 times
during the execution.
"The process was so prolonged that Wood's attorneys filed for a stay of
execution in the midst of it, which was then rendered moot once Wood was
pronounced dead" ("Transparency Needed Before Executions Continue," The
Constitution Project, July 24).
I asked if Wood's 600 gasps was a typo and was assured it was not.
Quoted in the release is the former governor of Texas, Mark White, co-chair of
The Constitution Project's Death Penalty Committee:
"This was the 4th reported botched execution of the year. And in each one of
these cases, the government has concealed vital information concerning the
source, safety, and efficacy of the drugs to be used in the execution, refused
to reveal information concerning the training and skill of the personnel
involved in carrying out the execution, while also using drugs never before
used to kill humans. Meanwhile, the courts continue to look the other way."
Keep in mind: "Using drugs never before used to kill humans."
But an execution in Kentucky that I'd previously reported on used a way of
killing that many states have adopted: lethal injection.
In "Sanitizing The Death Penalty" (May 7, 2008), I wrote: "The U.S. Supreme
Court - by a walloping 7-to-2 majority in Baze v. Rees - declared
constitutional Kentucky's method of death penalty by lethal injection - a
combination of three toxic chemicals used as a method of execution in 35
states."
And dig this:
"As Justice John Paul Stevens noted disquietly, 1 of the 3 terminating
chemicals paralyzes the unsedated prisoner, who is conscious but unable to
move, breathe or utter his last cry."
I described Chief Justice John Roberts' main opinion as written "with language
as bland as if he were ruling on an intellectual property case." In it, he
wrote:
"Some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution - no matter how
humane."
Humane? "Unable to move, breathe or utter his last cry"?
Furthermore, Roberts argued: "Simply because an execution method may result in
pain, either 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)."
Coming to a conclusion directly opposite that of the chief justice, Justice
Stevens, citing Justice Byron White, said that after 33 years on the court, "I
have relied 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 social or public purposes.
"'A penalty with such negligible returns to the state (is) patently excessive
and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.'"
Nonetheless, Justice Stevens agreed with the chief justice and voted with the
majority.
Yet so long as this nation continues to execute human beings, there is a small
but growing movement across party lines to at least bring the Eighth Amendment
back to life in these cases.
The Constitution Project has published a well-bound, 165-page, deeply
documented report, "Irreversible Error: Recommended Reforms for Preventing and
Correcting Errors in the Administration of Capital Punishment." (To obtain a
free copy of "Irreversible Error," go to constitutionproject.org.)
I have a copy and am continually learning from it, ranging from such chapters
as "Ensuring Effective Counsel" to "State-by-State Execution Procedures."
I expect that across the nation, reporters, assignment editors and other
participants in print and digital media will be interested in this report -
along with concerned citizens.
Maybe even one or two 2016 presidential candidates will be interested - or am I
being overly optimistic?
Defendants in death penalty cases certainly will be profoundly interested.
(source: Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment
and the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom
of the Press, and the Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow----Digital
Journal)
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