Nov. 29
TEXAS:
Convicted El Paso serial killer loses appeal
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected a claim by convicted El Paso
serial killer David Leonard Wood that he should not be put to death because he
claims he is mentally disabled.
"The trial court held a hearing and made findings of fact and conclusions of
law recommending that his application be denied because applicant (Wood) has
failed to show that he is mentally retarded," according to the court order.
"This court has reviewed the record with respect to (Wood's) allegations. Based
upon the trial court's findings and conclusions and our own review, we deny
relief," the court justices said.
Bert Richardson, a visiting judge, presided over Wood's post-conviction appeal.
Richardson recommended that the appellate court not find Wood to be mentally
disabled.
According to Richardson's findings, multiple IQ tests were given to Wood over
the years, with dramatically different results, which complicated the mental
disability claim. Richardson submitted a formal recommendation, but it was up
to the appellate court to issue a final ruling on the appeal.
Richardson was elected in the Nov. 4 general election to serve as a new justice
on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
The Nov. 26 order handed down by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals does not
address Wood's other appeal related to his request for additional DNA testing,
nor does it state that a new execution date will be set.
Wood was convicted in 1992 of murdering s6 young women in El Paso in 1987, and
was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Wood, who is now 57, has denied
killing anyone.
The victims attributed to him were Angelica Frausto, 17; Dawn Smith, 14;
Desiree Wheatley, 15; Ivy Susanna Williams, 23; Rosa Maria Casio, 24; and Karen
Baker, 20. Their bodies were found in shallow graves near what is now the
Painted Dunes Golf Course in Northeast El Paso. The golf course did not exist
at the time. El Paso Police Department detectives said they also suspected Wood
in the disappearances of Cheryl Vazquez, 19; Melissa Alaniz, 14; and Margie
Knox, 14, of Chaparral. They were reported missing in the Northeast El Paso
area in 1987 and were never found.
"Hopefully, this brings us one step closer to finalizing the sentence that the
trial court gave Wood 22 years ago," said Marcia Wheatley Fulton, Desiree
Wheatley's mother. "A jury of his peers found him guilty in 1992, and here we
are, still waiting."
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Wood a stay of execution in 2009,
the day before he was scheduled to be executed to give him time to prepare his
mental disability claim.
The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in a separate case (Atkins v. Virginia) in
2002 that executing a mentally disabled person violates the Eighth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unjust punishment.
(source: El Paso Times)
******************
Scott Panetti should not be executed
There is no question that Scott Panetti brutally shot his in-laws to death in
1992.
And there is no question that Panetti, now 56, was mentally ill at the time he
committed the murders and remains mentally incompetent and in need of treatment
today.
But somehow, questions still linger over whether or not Panetti - who has been
on death row since his 1995 conviction and who is scheduled to die by lethal
injection on Wednesday - should be executed for his crimes.
The clear answer to those questions is no.
Panetti's tragic and sometimes bizarre case has been winding its way through
state and federal courts for more than 2 decades. His tortured life of mental
illness has gone on much longer.
In the years before the murders, Panetti was hospitalized or involuntarily
committed more than a dozen times. He collected federal disability checks
because he could not work.
Why his commitment was only temporary is one of many tragedies in Panetti's
twisted case. It was clear years before his crimes that his illness rendered
him capable of such atrocities.
Despite a 14-year history of emotional and psychological disturbances that
could fill volumes, including diagnoses of "fragmented personality, delusions,
and hallucinations" as well as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and
homicidal tendencies, he was found competent to stand trial.
He insisted on representing himself, calling as witnesses the pope and Jesus
Christ in his defense. He blamed the murders on one of his alternate
personalities - a man named "Sarge" - whom doctors had identified years prior.
His conviction and subsequent attempts to appeal his death sentence prompted a
U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2007 that changed the criteria under which
states can execute inmates whose mental competency is in question.
Defendants, the court said, must have a "rational understanding" of the reason
for their imminent execution and once an execution date is set, be permitted to
litigate their competency in court.
The Supreme Court stopped short of overturning Panetti's sentence, instead
leaving that to the lower courts, which have thus far insisted that Panetti is
competent enough to understand the reasons for his fate and his death sentence
must stand.
It's been 7 years since Panetti's last mental evaluation, but it seems obvious
that his mental state has not improved, only worsened. His attorneys have said
that he believes his execution is the result of his preaching the Gospel in
prison.
One wonders what harm could come from the state granting the opportunity for
doctors to reassess his mental state.
Still, on Tuesday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on procedural grounds
declined to halt his executionand refused to appoint mental health experts to
review his case again.
On Wednesday, it ruled a 2nd time, rejecting Panetti's appeal for clemency,
leaving his lawyers with few available legal options.
His attorneys have petitioned the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles to
recommend him for clemency - one of the last avenues for relief. Whether or not
Texas carries out Panetti's execution on Wednesday, there will have been fewer
state executions in Texas this year than in almost 2 decades.
It's clear the appetite for capital punishment is waning.
In his Wednesday dissent, Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Tom Price, a Dallas
Republican who is not returning to the bench next year, wrote that he has
"given a substantial amount of consideration to the propriety of the death
penalty as a form of punishment for those who commit capital murder, and I now
believe that it should be abolished." His comments reflect the sentiment of a
growing number of Texans.
Even those who support the death penalty should see that little good can come
of executing a man so delusional he cannot truly appreciate his crime or
understand its connection to his fate.
Panetti should remain imprisoned for life, separated from society, where he can
receive treatment and not pose a threat to others.
But he should not be executed for his crimes.
If the courts will not stay his execution, Gov. Rick Perry should.
(source: Editorial, Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
FLORIDA:
The view from the US county where death penalty invoked the most, per
capita----More than 1/2 of US death sentences come from 2 % of counties. Duval
County in Florida tops the list. By and large, residents there are death
penalty supporters.
Jacksonville, the site of early European settlements on the northeast Florida
coast, is a fine enough place - excellent sun, great crab shacks, sand
dollar-strewn beaches, and the classic Floridian melting pot of cultures and
accents.
But for those who do something really bad here in Duval County, this otherwise
hospitable place is likely to turn on them, quickly and efficiently.
Per capita, the people of Duval sentence more of their neighbors to death than
any other place in America. The equivalent of 1 out of approximately every
14,000 people who live in this urban county of 850,000 people has been
condemned to die by lethal injection.
While much of the United States has gradually backed off the ultimate sanction,
Duval County jurors have sentenced 14 people to death in the past 5 years for a
litany of crimes, and 60 since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital
punishment in 1976.
Death penalty critics tend to focus on wild-eyed prosecutors, vengeful judges,
and bumbling defense attorneys as the problem with a national death row that
runs 3,000 people deep. But interviews in and around Jacksonville indicate that
Duval's propensity for punishment by death comes in big part from the will of
the people. Such views of residents haven't been shaken by some 148 death row
exonerations in the US since 1973 - 25 in Florida alone - including 5 in the US
so far in 2014.
"If they done it, they done it, and it's time to go," says Buck Gergely, a bait
dealer, in a typical response.
In many ways, Duval County is an outlier, part of the approximately 2 % of US
counties that are responsible for sentencing 56 % of the nation's death row
inmates. Nevertheless, the attitudes here offer a window into some of the
arguments that shape the debate over the death penalty - a sanction that a
majority of Americans still support. The capital punishment debate has
continued to be a US flash point this year, in particular as the country saw
several botched executions in which convicts appeared to suffer.
In the South, deep-running honor codes, even an eye-for-an-eye culture, along
with a penchant for violence are certainly part of the equation, especially
here in Duval County, experts argue. "The sense of using violence and mob rule
and the death penalty was familiar in what we think of as the frontier, and I
think that the frontier never went away in the South," says William Ferris,
senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South in
Chapel Hill, N.C., and author of "The Storied South." "Tall talk, colorful
language, and violence never disappeared."
Amy Wood, a cultural historian at Illinois State University in Normal, adds a
moral dimension to the discussion.
"Why Southerners have retained a culture of vengeance within the
criminal-justice system is based in part on the idea of the criminal paying a
debt to society, but also [of us affirming] our own moral values by how
severely we punish that criminal," she says.
To be sure, America writ large is thinking twice about the death penalty. This
year so far has seen the least number of executions since 1994, and other
Southern states such as Virginia and North Carolina are backing off capital
punishment.
Some states with large death rows, most notably California and Pennsylvania,
are carrying out executions only rarely. And juries in other states that have
turned to the death penalty more often, including Texas, Virginia, and
Missouri, are sentencing fewer convicts to death.
"When it comes down to it, the fact that we can't figure out the right drugs to
[administer], in essence that we can't tie the noose right, that's what's
driving public opinion more than the big questions about guilt or innocence,"
says Seth Kotch, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
who is writing a book about the death penalty in the South.
But if political elites or enlightened juries are marginalizing the death
penalty in some places, it's a different story in states like Florida and
Alabama, where populism and democracy play a key role. Neither state requires a
unanimous jury decision to impose death, and both allow judges in some cases to
transform life-without-parole sentences to death sentences. Also, both states
elect judges and prosecutors, and Florida even elects public defenders, which
means counties like Duval usually have a small cadre of individuals who
directly reflect the will of the people in how they handle capital sentencing.
Jacksonville has become a unique place where residents "want the state, in the
name of the people, to come in and avenge particular crimes," says Ms. Wood,
who edited the chapter on violence in "The New Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture."
From rough-and-tumble fishing villages to the east to the startling poverty of
its Westside, Jacksonville is a lively Southern jewel where you might spot a
cowboy in a laundromat, fish-plant workers communing with pelicans, or a lumber
mill on Beaver Street. Beneath its sun-bleached veneer, however, lies a vexing
truth: The corner of the state with the greatest proclivity for vengeance is
also its most violent.
Instead of asking why so many death convictions, most local folks say, the real
question is, why is the violent crime rate so high? Indeed, Duval leads other
Florida metropolitan areas such as Miami-Dade and Tampa in nearly every
violence metric, from murder to rape, domestic violence to gun crimes. While
other jurisdictions have seen declines in violent crime, Duval County's rate
hasn't budged.
"There's deviance here," posits A.J. Johnson, outside his home in Mayport, a
nearly 500-year-old fishing community that was the site of a mass murder in
2003.
County residents cite other factors as contributing to the high rate of death
sentences: the influence of military culture from nearby Defense Department
installations, elected prosecutors, and Jacksonville's proximity to the Florida
State Prison in Raiford, where death row inmates wait.
To many critics, today's death penalty-prone corners are the continuation of a
Southern system of justice by lynching, originally set up largely to punish
blacks. At the very least, studies show a propensity by juries to punish black
defendants more harshly in capital cases, especially if they killed a white
person.
For many critics, the fact that death rows, including Florida's, are
disproportionately made up of black convicts affirms that propensity, although
supporters argue that death row demographics are largely commensurate with
broader violent crime statistics.
"In some of these counties where race plays a certain role, especially in white
flight areas, there's fear that crime is coming from poorer people or
minorities. It's a back-against-the-wall sort of feeling that we need to have
the death penalty to maintain law and order," says Richard Dieter, executive
director of the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.
Florida Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda is known for his courtroom
prosecution of George Zimmerman, but he also has a 31-year record of
prosecuting capital cases in the Fourth Judicial Circuit, which includes Duval
County. Prosecutors in the county, he says, know that a large majority of
residents don't have a problem with the high capital conviction rate.
"We live in a conservative county ... that values personal responsibility,
which means that people here also value personal accountability," he says.
Donna Cargill is among those who support the death penalty wholeheartedly.
"They need to kill them," says the biker bar waitress, pointing to news of
shootings and killings in the city's impoverished and largely African-American
Westside.
But Ms. Cargill later reveals that her son has twice been sent to Florida State
Prison for committing crimes against children. (She claims he is innocent.)
Until the US Supreme Court ruled otherwise, even Floridians who had not been
convicted of killing someone could face death for particularly heinous cases of
molestation.
Mr. Johnson says his estranged daughter, a gang member in Newport News, Va.,
has twice been accused, but not convicted, of murder. He hopes she will avoid a
3rd time, especially in Duval County.
"The punishment should fit the crime, but it's a fine line," he muses.
Although he supports the death penalty in general, he says the courts put too
much focus on the details of certain murders, and not enough on trying to
understand why those crimes happened.
Mr. Kotch sees use of the death penalty as part of longstanding patterns.
"We know that the best predictor of execution is previous execution, which
suggests that a courthouse or a county can get into a habit of doing things,
and those habitual behaviors are informed by cultural cues about crime and
punishment," he says.
Still, support for the death penalty in a place like Duval presents a bit of a
paradox, because such regions in the South tend to politically oppose
centralized power. "The fact that the death penalty is the most profound way a
government can intervene in the life of a citizen would seem to cut against
sort of [antigovernment] politics in the South," Kotch says. "Yet it somehow
manages to line up."
Yet things are changing somewhat.
While Texas still executes more people than any other state, the number of
death row convictions has gone down, with fewer such convictions this year than
executions - part of a 5-year trend. The election of the 1st black district
attorney in Dallas, some suggest, has led to a dwindling number of convictions
there. And mostly because of demographic and procedural changes, Virginia and
North Carolina have de facto moratoriums on executions.
Even Duval County has seen a slight dip in the number of death row convictions
in the past few years.
(source: Christian Science Monitor)
ALABAMA:
Convicted Huntsville cop-killer Benito Albarran in court next week bidding to
overturn death sentence
A Mexican man who is on Alabama's death row after being convicted in 2008 of
killing a Huntsville police officer has a court date set for next Friday.
Benito Albarran, 40, who received a death sentence for shooting officer Daniel
Golden on Sept. 20, 2005, is seeking to have his conviction overturned or be
granted a new trial.
Madison County Circuit Judge Karen Hall, who presided over Albarran's trial,
has set a status conference on Albarran's appeal at 11:30 a.m., Sept. 5, at the
Madison County Courthouse.
Albarran was convicted in 2008 of fatally shooting Huntsville Police Department
officer Daniel Golden, after Golden responded to a domestic disturbance call at
the El Jalisco restaurant on Jordan Lane, where Albarran worked.
According to trial testimony, Albarran walked toward Golden pointing a
.38-caliber revolver, prompting Golden to raise his arms. Albarran fired, and
Golden returned fire until his pistol misfired. 1 of Albarran's shots hit
Golden in the lower abdomen and he fell to the ground.
As the officer lay on the ground pleading for his life, Albarran walked up to
him and fired another gun at him, according to testimony. That bullet lodged in
Golden's protective vest. As Golden yelled: "Wait!" Albarran fired 2 more shots
into Golden's head, killing him.
Albarran's appeal is filed under Rule 32 of Alabama's rules of criminal
procedure. The Rule 32 appeal generally takes place after the defendant's
direct state court appeals have been exhausted and focuses on claims of
ineffective work by the defendant's trial attorneys, errors by the judge, jury
or prosecutors and other matters related to how the trial was conducted.
Newly discovered evidence can also be presented in a Rule 32 filing.
Albarran's volunteer attorneys argued in lengthy petition filed last year that
his conviction and death sentence should be overturned.
The filing cited a number of concerns the attorneys had, including a planned
effort to try the case in another county that never occurred, the defense's
failure to focus more on Albarran being mentally retarded as part of the effort
to show he should not receive the death penalty and insufficient efforts to
prove Albarran was incompetent to stand trial.
The filing also argues that the defense should not have called attention to
Albarran's immigration status during jury selection. Records indicate he
entered the U.S. illegally. The filing argues that references to his
immigration status prejudiced the jury pool against him and as a result,
Albarran should receive a new trial.
The Alabama Attorney General's office, which handles criminal appeals, rejected
those arguments in a court filing in July. The AG's office said the filings on
Albarran's behalf offer no reason why he should get a new trial.
(source: al.com)
OHIO:
Ohio Republicans push law to keep all details of executions secret ---- HB 663
would bar courts from access to essential information
Republican lawmakers in Ohio are rushing through the most extreme secrecy bill
yet attempted by a death penalty state, which would withhold information on
every aspect of the execution process from the public, media and even the
courts.
Legislators are trying to force through the bill, HB 663, in time for the
state's next scheduled execution, on 11 February. Were the bill on the books by
then, nothing about the planned judicial killing of convicted child murderer
Ronald Phillips - from the source of the drugs used to kill him and the
distribution companies that transport the chemicals, to the identities of the
medical experts involved in the death chamber - would be open to public
scrutiny of any sort.
Unlike other death penalty states that have shrouded procedures in secrecy, the
Ohio bill seeks to bar even the courts from access to essential information.
Attorneys representing death-row inmates, for instance, would no longer be able
to request disclosure under court protection of the identity and qualifications
of medical experts who advised the state on their techniques.
"This bill is trying to do an end run around the courts. When things aren't
going well, the state is making its actions secret because they don't want
people to see them screwing up," said Mike Brickner, senior policy director of
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Ohio.
The draft legislation, framed by Republican state lawmakers Jim Buchy and Matt
Huffman, has passed the state House of Representatives and now goes before the
Senate. Republican leaders, backed by Ohio's attorney general, Mike DeWine,
want to ram it through no later than 17 December.
The move to erect a wall of secrecy is particularly alarming in Ohio, a state
that has experienced no fewer than 4 botched executions in the past 8 years.
The most recent was the 26-minute death of Dennis McGuire in January, using an
experimental 2-drug combination. Eyewitnesses reported him gasping and fighting
for breath.
The most notorious incident was the 2009 attempted execution of Romell Broom,
which was called off after 2 hours after officials failed to find a vein.
One of the most contentious aspects of HB 663 is that it tries to break a
boycott that has been placed on sales of lethal injection drugs from foreign
manufacturers, following a 2011 ban by the European Commission. The bill seeks
to undermine strict distribution controls that have been introduced by
companies such as Lundbeck in Denmark, a major manufacturer of pentobarbital,
by declaring void any contract that prohibits distribution of the drugs to the
Ohio department of corrections.
Should the bill make it into law, that provision is certain to be challenged in
the courts as a potentially unconstitutional state intervention into commercial
contracts. Other legal challenges are almost certain to flow over the clause
that prevents the courts gaining access to key information.
Brickner, who opposed the new bill in front of a committee of the Ohio House on
behalf of the ACLU, said: "It's very unclear whether such secrecy would be
upheld in a court of law. Our courts don't look kindly on measures that stop
them doing their jobs properly."
Capital punishment is currently on hold in Ohio. Following the botched
execution of McGuire, the federal courts stepped in and imposed a moratorium
that runs until February, to give the state time to clean up its act.
(source: The Guardian)
*******************************************
Ohio death penalty secrecy bill should disappear: editorial
The Ohio House of Representatives has shown that the appearance of being tough
on crime is more important than being transparent about the way the state puts
someone to death.
Faced with an execution protocol fraught with problems, the House recently
voted 62-27 to allow the state to keep secret the name of lethal-injection drug
providers so that they won't be reluctant to participate.
House Bill 663, introduced by Republican legislators Jim Buchy of Greenville
and Matt Huffman of Lima, would also prevent doctors assisting in the
administration of the death penalty from having their state medical licenses
revoked.
Using surreptitious means to carry out the death penalty is unacceptable. The
Senate should refuse to take up House Bill 663, but if it does and the Senate
approves it, Gov. Kasich should veto it.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine claims that, without the protections, the
state would be unable to carry out executions. This editorial board has long
opposed the death penalty. But on practical grounds, if DeWine's statement is
true, Ohio should get out of the execution business. What this bill proposes is
wrong.
Not only would the bill shelter drug-supplying pharmacies from identification,
it also would void contracts that dictate the drugs sold cannot be used in
executions. The availability of lethal-injection drugs became an issue after
their manufacturers balked at their use to carry out the death penalty.
The bill also interferes with the medical community's longstanding pact about
preserving life.
The Ohio State Medical Association does not take a position on capital
punishment, but a letter to the House Policy & Legislative Oversight Committee
from OSMA president Mary J. Wall expresses concern about any law that
indemnifies doctors for assisting with the death penalty.
Licensed Ohio doctors must abide by the American Medical Association's Code of
Medical Ethics or the American Osteopathic Association Policy Compendium, which
forbid their members from participating in legal executions.
"These codes articulate the enduring values of medicine as a profession and are
a statement of the values to which physicians commit themselves individually
and collectively," Wall's statement reads.
As this editorial board has said before, the death penalty is not a
satisfactory deterrent to crime and can be abused by prosecutors who use it as
tool for garnering guilty pleas.
This bill is the wrong answer to the wrong question.
(source: Editorial, The Plain Dealer)
CALIFORNIA:
Why Hasn't the Government Killed This Man?
Darwin Hall couldn't contain himself as he watched Randy Steven Kraft, the man
just sentenced to death for torturing and killing Hall's son, being led out of
a southern California courtroom. Leaping to his feet, Hall shouted, "Burn in
hell, Kraft!"
As Hall later told the Los Angeles Times, "I hope this ends it." But it didn't.
Not by a long shot. Today is the 25th anniversary of Kraft's death sentence.
And Kraft is still alive.
Even when compared to other serial killers, Kraft's crimes were appalling. The
slightly built former computer programmer tortured, raped, and slaughtered
young men, many of them Marines, during the 1970s and '80s. He often picked up
his victims while they were hitchhiking near southern California's many
military bases. There's no real question about his guilt: He was caught in his
car with the half-naked corpse of a 25-year-old Marine in the passenger seat
next to him. Kraft was ultimately convicted of 16 murders. There's an excellent
chance he committed dozens more.
The death penalty is employed by 32 states and by the federal government and
military. Setting aside ethical and moral questions about the death penalty,
there has rarely been a case that more clearly merited it than Kraft's; he was
a plainly guilty and exceptionally cruel serial murderer and rapist. But thanks
to the fantastically convoluted legal machinery that has grown up around
capital punishment, Kraft has kept his execution at bay for decades. Now 69
years old, he's more likely to die in his cell in San Quentin State Prison than
in the execution chamber.
If the government can't execute someone like Kraft, who can it execute? The
answer is, almost no one. Despite having by far the nation's largest death row
- population 750 and counting - California hasn't put anyone to death since
2006. In fact, since 1978 the state has condemned more than 900 people but
executed only 13. And yet California's courts keep sending people to San
Quentin; 24 death sentences were handed down in the state last year alone.
This state of affairs is not unique to California. Across the country,
executions are the exception, not the rule. There are more than 3,000 condemned
inmates in the United States, and dozens more are added each year. But in a
typical year, only about 1 % are put to death. Even Texas, America's most
prolific executioner by a wide margin, has put to death 10 inmates so far this
year out of a death row population of nearly 300. The average time from
sentence to execution in the Lone Star State is over 10 years. Nationwide,
hundreds of prisoners have sat on death row for 20 years or more.
The wheels of justice are designed to slow down when the stakes are so high -
there is no rectifying the execution of an innocent person. So capital trials
take longer than those of other murder case because they are more complex and
more closely scrutinized.
In 1996, Congress passed a law aimed at speeding up executions. At the time,
the average time between sentence and execution was 10 years and 5 months. As
of 2012, it was 15 years and 10 months.
"As soon as someone says 'death penalty,' the battle is on," says Richard
Power, who was Kraft's appeal lawyer for several years. "There are a lot of
delays because of the all the special preparations that are required - forensic
stuff, background stuff."
After Kraft's arrest in 1983, investigators connected him to 1 body after
another; he was ultimately accused of 45 killings. It took 5 years for his
trial to even start, and many months more before a jury found him guilty.
In California - as in most states with the death penalty - a guilty verdict in
a capital trial triggers a subsequent phase in which a separate ruling is
required on what the penalty should be. All told, it took more than a year from
the trial's beginning until the day Darwin Hall listened as the judge sentenced
Kraft to die.
That's when Kraft's appeals began. In every state, death sentences are
automatically appealed to the state's highest court. The condemned prisoner is
guaranteed a state-funded defense attorney for this process, but finding
someone both willing and qualified to take on those jobs can be tough. 3 years
passed before Power stepped in as Kraft's appeals lawyer. It took Power several
more years to file his opening brief, and three more before the California
Supreme Court heard the appeal in 2000.
"This was a huge case," Power tells VICE News. "The records ran over 38,000
pages." Power, whose practice at the time was called Appeals Unlimited, added
his own 700-page opening brief.
Like most death row inmates, Kraft moved on to federal courts after he lost his
state-level appeals. Like all death penalty appellants, he was given a
government-funded lawyer.
"You just have to say, 'I want to file a federal appeal,' and they have to find
someone," says Richard Dieter, head of the Washington, DC-based Death Penalty
Information Center. "That can take time." Especially if the prisoner then fires
his lawyer - something Kraft has done repeatedly.
It's been clear for a long time that the glacial speed with which death penalty
cases proceed is problematic. In 1996, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act aimed at speeding up executions. At the time, the
average delay between sentence and execution was 10 years and 5 months.
As of 2012, it was 15 years and 10 months.
"The biggest reason for that is exonerations," Dieter says. Thanks in part to
DNA testing, 109 men and women have been released from death row since 1990.
"We know that mistakes happen. That means you have to look at everything more
carefully. That has slowed the whole system down."
All of which also means these cases cost a fortune. Orange Coast magazine
estimated last year that the full bill to California taxpayers for Kraft's
court cases and incarceration stands at about $15 million. A 2011 study found
that condemned inmates have cost California $4 billion since 1978. Those
figures point to the reasons why a growing number of prominent conservatives
have in recent years begun calling for capital punishment to be abolished.
Controversy over the methods used to kill prisoners has also delayed cases.
Since lethal injection was introduced in the 1970s, virtually every state
adopted a protocol using a combination of 3 drugs: 1 to put the condemned to
sleep, the next to paralyze his muscles, and the last to stop his heart. That
protocol has come under fire, however, thanks to a growing body of evidence
indicating the supposedly painless process is sometimes anything but. The
prisoner may remain conscious but paralyzed, unable to talk or move as his
heart is slowly squeezed to a stop.
Defense lawyers have used these findings in a barrage of motions claiming
lethal injection is unconstitutional because it amounts to cruel and unusual
punishment. As a result, in 2007 executions were put on hold nationwide. They
have since resumed, with occasionally gruesome results, in at least a
half-dozen states. California is not one of them.
This past July, the amount of time that elapses between sentence and execution
- if there ever is one - was addressed by a federal judge who ruled that the
decades-long waits on California's death row and the uncertainty about whether
condemned inmates will ever actually be put to death amounts to cruel and
unusual punishment. Therefore, he argued, the state's death penalty is
unconstitutional.
"The dysfunctional administration of California's death penalty system has
resulted, and will continue to result, in an inordinate and unpredictable
period of delay preceding their actual execution," wrote judge Cormac Carney.
"Indeed, for most, systemic delay has made their execution so unlikely that the
death sentence...has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or
legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of
death. As for the random few for whom execution does become a reality, they
will have languished for so long on death row that their execution will serve
no retributive or deterrent purpose."
Carney's ruling will be appealed. Until then, all executions are on hold in
California.
Meanwhile, Kraft reportedly spends his time listening to music and playing
cards in addition to filing legal briefs. He sent a petition to a federal
appeals court last summer, attempting once again to fire his court-appointed
lawyer.
(source: vice.com)
USA:
Death penalty in 2014: why US has seen fewest executions in 20 years; The
downward trend in executions has several explanations, but experts say it's
probably not because of death penalty debates about innocence and guilt.
Rather, they say, it's the details of how the state goes about ending a
condemned life.
In late November, a federal judge emptied Wyoming's death row of its last
remaining occupant, Dale Wayne Eaton.
His lawyers don't dispute that Mr. Eaton in 1988 raped and killed 18-year-old
Lisa Marie Kimmell after kidnapping her and holding her hostage in his
compound.
The problem, the court found, was that his defense team failed to present him
as a 3-dimensional human being at his sentencing, including pointing out the
severe beatings he received as a child and how he was evaluated to have low
intelligence.
The ruling seemed of the moment in a country that has seen sentiments about the
death penalty continue to shift in 2014. So far this year, America has seen the
fewest executions - 32 - in 20 years.
A US Supreme Court ruling from 2004 that mandates that capital juries be
presented with such details about defendants has probably played into the fact
that even juries in traditional death penalty states such as Missouri,
Oklahoma, and Texas have increasingly abandoned the death penalty. Those
states, however, continue to execute large numbers of death row inmates.
"As soon as courts take crime into context in order to explain what happened,
that makes the accused not a monster but a real person, and all of a sudden an
abstract belief in the death penalty melts away in most people," says Robert
Smith, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A series of botched and disturbing executions in Oklahoma, Ohio, and Arizona
has also contributed to the shifting debate, argues Rick Garnett, a law
professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Death penalty states are
being forced to come up with new lethal injection drug formulas as traditional
suppliers of the drugs stop distributing them to states.
The downward trend in executions has several explanations, but experts say it's
probably not because of debates about innocence and guilt. Rather, they say,
it's the details of how the state goes about ending a condemned life, including
the issues surrounding the lethal injection drugs.
The fact that the application of the death penalty has become more random also
means that people "can increasingly imagine they could be in that situation,
which creates a degree of empathy that can cross racial and class lines," says
Seth Kotch, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
(source: Christian Science Monitor)
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