Feb. 3
OKLAHOMA:
Media Has No Right to Watch Executions
A federal judge dismissed a media lawsuit against Oklahoma officials over the
censored execution of Clayton Lockett, unpersuaded by the media's First
Amendment claims.
The Oklahoma Observer and others sued Oklahoma Department of Corrections
Director Robert Patton and Oklahoma State Penitentiary Warden Anita Trammell in
August 2014 in Federal Court. They claimed that witnesses to Lockett's botched
execution were deprived of the right to observe when a window shade in the
death chamber was lowered.
Lockett, 38, was convicted in 2000 of raping and murdering 19-year-old
Stephanie Neiman. He was convicted of shooting her with a sawed-off shotgun and
watching 2 accomplices bury her alive.
Lockett's execution, described as a gruesome, bloody mess by execution team
members during the state's subsequent investigation, resulted in changes to the
state's execution protocols.
The changes include visual confirmation of intravenous line placement and a
substantial increase in the dosage of execution drugs .
U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton dismissed the media's lawsuit on Jan. 9, citing
his December opinion granting the defendants' motion to dismiss.
"Plaintiff's federal claims are dismissed with prejudice," the dismissal order
stated. "Plaintiffs' claims under the Oklahoma Constitution are dismissed
without prejudice."
The plaintiffs claimed their qualified right to see the entirety of executions
is not outweighed by a state interest. Heaton disagreed. He said the U.S.
Supreme Court has treated such a right in the criminal adjudication process
differently than in the "implementing" of a court's judgment.
"That conclusion is consistent with the court's different treatment of access
issues in the prison context, where the implementation of criminal sentences
normally occurs," the 25-page opinion states. "Unlike the tradition of openness
which exists as to criminal trials, the court has emphasized the closed nature
of prisons. Recognizing that difference, the court has upheld limits on access
to penal institutions even where serious issues as to inmate welfare have
existed. This suggests the court would not take principles directed to the
process of determining guilt and superimpose them in a different context - the
implementation of the sentence."
Prisons officials argued that the press has only "state-granted, qualified
permission" to be at executions. They claimed the plaintiffs had no
constitutional right of access to executions beyond what is extended to the
general public, which has no such rights of access to prisons or executions.
Heaton found the plaintiffs "make a compelling argument" for more open access
in the state. "But in the circumstances of this case, the question of the
appropriate policy is just that - a policy judgment," the opinion states. "It
is therefore a matter for Oklahoma's decision-makers, rather than 1 for
resolution by this court."
Oklahoma officials could not be reached for comment Sunday evening.
They resumed carrying out lethal injections this month, beginning with Charles
Warner, 47, on Jan. 15. Warner was convicted in 1999 of the rape and murder of
Adrianna Waller, the 11-month-old daughter of his girlfriend.
Warner's execution was delayed for an hour as prison officials awaited word
from the Supreme Court on his application for a stay. In a 5-4 ruling, the
court declined to rule on whether the sedative midazolam would make him
unconscious during the execution.
Warner unsuccessfully argued that the state's replacement 3-drug execution
cocktail would subject him to unconstitutional pain and suffering. Several
states have resorted to replacement execution drugs due to shortages of
traditional drugs caused by anti-death penalty activists successfully asking
large drug manufacturers to stop making them.
The high court reversed course two weeks later, granting a review of midazolam
that halts further executions in the state until a hearing in April.
(source: Courthouse News)
UTAH:
The death penalty for sex traffickers? Utah Lawmaker says yes
A Davis County Republican wants to give convicted child sex traffickers the
ultimate punishment - the death penalty.
Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, is pushing to make child sex trafficking a capital
offense. He says he accompanied the Salt Lake City vice squad on patrol a few
years ago. He's realized how big an issue child trafficking is in Utah. He said
he's been working on bills to target prostitution and trafficking for years.
"I got so fed up with what I've seen," Ray said. "It's time to take the
ultimate jump and say if you traffic a kid for sex, we're going to kill you."
Marina Lowe, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of
Utah, said the group opposes capital punishment in all forms. Lowe cited some
of the current botched lethal injections as ways that America is finding out
that the death penalty is not effective.
"At the end of the day it's our position that the state shouldn't be in the
business of killing its citizens," said Lowe. Lowe added she thinks Ray's
proposal is unconstitutional.
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled child rape is not punishable by death,
striking down a Louisiana law as unconstitutional because the punishment was
"cruel and unusual."
Ray acknowledged that the bill could be challenged in the court. He said he was
50/50 on whether it would stand up, but he said he's willing to take the
chance. He said that he would love to fight for this law at a federal level.
"I'm going turn the tables on them, and say prove to me why you can execute for
treason and I can't execute for a crime that in my world is 10 times worse than
treason," Ray said.
Ray added he would have to add a constitutional note to the bill. A
constitutional note sends a message to legislators that the bill may be legally
challenged in the court system.
Parker Douglas, chief of staff of the Utah Attorney General's office, said it's
the office's policy to defend laws that are legally passed in Utah, whether
they personally agree with the them or not.
Ed Smart, the director of prevention and rehabilitation of Operation
Underground Railroad, a organization that works with victims of the sex trade,
said he needed more time to decide whether he supports the bill. Smart said
child sex trafficking is prevalent in Utah but it's hard to pin down the
numbers because of its secretive nature.
"I have not met one of those who have been prostituted or trafficked who have
chose to be there," Smart said.
Smart, kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart's father, said he would like for Utah to
follow after Sweden and start cracking down on those who visit prostitutes. He
said he believes the (solicitors) now only get a slap on the wrist. He said the
key is to cut down on the demand for the services, noting Sweden cut their
prostitution on the street in half. Smart said there's need to have a deterrent
to participating.
Ray said that he thinks the death penalty would deter child sex trafficking. He
said murder is a crime of passion and people dont really think of the
consequences. He said the traffickers premeditate their crimes and go to a lot
of work to avoid the law.
(source: Standard Examiner)
MONTANA:
Montana bill allows death row inmates to live out sentence
2 convicted murderers on Montana death row could live out their sentence in
prison rather than facing the death penalty.
House Bill 370, sponsored by Rep. David Moore (R - Missoula), is a proposed
bill to abolish the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without
the possibility of parole.
The law would be retroactive, meaning anyone currently on death row would be
re-sentenced.
In the state's history, 74 people have been executed after being sentenced to
death.
All but 3 of the executions occurred before 1976, according to the Death
Penalty Information Center, a Washington D.C. based non-profit research
organization.
William Jay Gollehon and Ronald Allen Smith are the only 2 inmates currently on
death row in Montana.
Gollehon, 50, was sentenced to death in 1992 for bludgeoning an inmate during a
riot at the prison.
At the time of the prison murder, Gollehon was serving time for 2 murders,
burglary, assault and kidnapping.
A judge sentenced Smith, 58, to death in 1983 for kidnapping and killing a man
in 1982.
Both men are awaiting execution at the Montana State Prison.
Similar bills to abolish the death penalty were passed through the Montana
Senate in 2009 and 2011, but they failed in the state House Judiciary
Committee.
Wyoming considered a similar bill in the current legislative session after the
state was faced with a death penalty drug deficit, but voted it down.
There are currently 32 states that have the death penalty.
Several states have repealed the death sentence in the past 10 years, with
Illinois doing so in 2012.
But Illinois' law was not retroactive, so the inmates previously sentenced to
death would carry that sentence.
HB 370 is in its 1st House committee and has not been tabled. A hearing has not
yet been scheduled.
(source: KTVQ news)
ARIZONA:
Jodi Arias sentencing retrial: Bishop takes the stand
A former religious leader of Travis Alexander testified Monday in the Jodi
Arias sentencing retrial.
Prosecutors are trying to convince the jury that Alexander never looked at
child porn or abused women in his life.
It was an interesting day as the trial begins to wind down.
On the stand, Monday was Vernon Parker, a Mormon Bishop, who Travis Alexander
lived with for a time before he met Jodi Arias.
Parker testified that he never saw Travis viewing child porn as Jodi claimed he
did, and never beat a former girlfriend as the defense claimed.
The defense cross-examined Parker and asked if someone who had unmarried sex,
and committed various sexual acts was a sinner.
The move meant to harm Alexander's image as an upstanding member of the Mormon
church.
The defense has already rested its case, and we may be nearing the end of this
trial.
Once the jury gets the case, it will decide if Arias gets the death penalty or
life in prison for murdering Travis Alexander.
(source: KSAZ news)
CALIFORNIA:
Records Kept Sealed in Quadruple Murder Trial
Various media outlets failed Friday to have a court unseal records in the
capital case against a man accused of killing a family of four and burying
their bodies in the Mojave Desert.
Charles "Chase" Merritt, 57, is accused in San Bernardino, Calif., of the 2010
murders of Joseph McStay, 40, and his wife, Summer, 43. He also is accused of
murdering the McStays' children, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3.
On Friday, Judge Michael Smith approved Merritt's request to represent himself
but denied requests from media outlets to unseal documents, saying access might
compromise the trial, the Associated Press reported.
More than a dozen media outlets argued the case no longer is being
investigated, so the documents should not be sealed. The media outlets had
filed a motion to release search warrants, statements regarding probable cause
and affidavits, according to the Associated Press.
With both the defense and prosecution opposing the motion, prosecutors
reportedly said the records should be available before a preliminary hearing
scheduled for April 7.
Prosecutors say Merritt bludgeoned the family to death inside their home in
Fallbrook on Nov. 4, 2010, the San Bernardino Sun reported.
Merritt was a "business associate" of Joseph McStay, according to a CBS News
article.
An off-road driver found the family's bodies buried in shallow graves in San
Bernardino County in 2013, the Associated Press reported.
Riverside County deputies arrested Merritt on Nov. 5, 2014, and he pleaded
innocent to 4 murder charges on Nov. 12. He faces the death penalty, the Sun
reported.
Robert Ponce, the attorney who represented Merritt before Friday, reportedly
told the court that his former client wants to represent himself and prove his
innocence as quickly as possible because he has congestive heart failure and
less than a year to live.
(source: Courthouse News)
*************************
Lawyers ask to ban media from hearing in deputies' killings
The public defenders who are representing the man accused of shooting and
killing 2 local sheriff's deputies 4 months ago have filed a motion to keep the
news media out of the courtroom Wednesday for a routine procedural hearing.
Sacramento County Assistant Public Defenders Norm Dawson and Jeff Barbour filed
the motion last week on behalf of their client, Luis Enriquez Monroy
Bracamontes. The attorney for Bracamontes' wife and co-defendant, Janelle
Marquez Monroy, said he plans to join in the motion.
"Counsel for Mr. Bracamontes believe that because of publicity, it will be
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to select a fair and impartial jury and
to afford Mr. Bracamontes his rights to a fair preliminary hearing, due process
and impartial trial," said the motion by Barbour and Dawson. "Publicizing this
matter further at this court appearance will continue to add to that
difficulty."
Bracamontes, 34, and Monroy, 38, are scheduled to make a routine appearance
Wednesday in front of Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White, to whom the
case has been pre-assigned.
They are accused in the Oct. 24 shooting deaths of Sacramento County sheriff's
deputy Daniel Oliver, 47, and Placer County sheriff's deputy Michael Davis Jr.,
42. Oliver was gunned down behind a Motel 6 on Arden Way in Sacramento.
Authorities say Davis was shot and killed when he and another deputy confronted
the fleeing Bracamontes and Monroy a few hours later on a road in Auburn.
Authorities have identified Bracamontes as the shooter and are seeking the
death penalty against him only. Besides the murders, he and his wife are
charged with 5 counts of attempted murder, 2 counts of carjacking, one of
attempted carjacking as well as 4 other felonies in the string of violent
crimes that spanned 2 counties.
Nothing substantive is expected to take place at Wednesday's hearing that the
defense wants to close to the media. Prosecutors from the Sacramento County and
Placer County district attorney's offices, which are jointly handling the case,
still have a significant amount of discovery materials such as police reports
and other evidentiary items to turn over to the defense before the 2 sides
begin to address the more significant issues that figure to arise ahead of
trial.
One of them is likely to be a defense request for a change of venue due to
pretrial publicity. Such hearings are usually preceded by surveys conducted by
the defense side to gauge how much attention the public has paid to media
accounts. The surveys and change-of-venue motions themselves can take months to
prepare.
Dawson, one of the public defenders who filed the motion to exclude the media,
did not comment Monday other than to say that if he and Barbour have anything
to say on the matter, they'll say it in court on Wednesday.
Their motion said that witnesses' identification of Bracamontes "may be an
issue in this case. Showing Mr. Bracamontes' face on broadcast media will make
it highly likely that known witnesses, and witnesses not yet interviewed, will
have identification procedures tainted by this publicity."
Pete Kmeto, the attorney who is representing Monroy, said the motion to keep
the media out is "a precautionary measure to ensure the integrity of witnesses'
testimony." Kmeto said banning the media at a hearing such as Wednesday's
basically is a matter of the lawyers "making a record" ahead of the change of
venue motion.
The public defenders said in their court papers that the publicity in the
deputies' killings "has been overwhelming, if not unprecedented."
"In the age of modern technology, events are broadcast in real time," the
motion said. "There was significant publicity on this case as it happened. The
police hunt for the suspects was broadcast on radio and television. Schools
were locked down. Once an arrest was made, the story remained the dominant
local news story."
When the defendants first appeared in front of a judge, "the courtroom was
filled with broadcast media," the motion said. "The news stories were run on
morning, afternoon, evening and nightly newscasts. The coverage also included
live broadcasts of the funerals of the fallen officers."
The prosecutors' announcement that they would seek the death penalty on
Bracamontes "saturated the local news," the defense lawyers said.
They also cited coverage of a video posting by Sacramento County Sheriff Scott
Jones that as of Monday had been viewed 438,492 times. In the video, Jones
linked the fatal shooting attributed to Bracamontes, a Mexican national who
authorities say was in the United States illegally, to President Barack Obama's
"singular failure" to enact what Jones called "meaningful immigration reform."
Within the past week, "The media has even recently covered the destruction of
the Motel 6 on Arden (Way)," where Deputy Oliver was fatally shot, the motion
said.
Defense attorneys previously sought to exclude the electronic media from a Dec.
9 hearing in Sacramento Superior Court. The motion was denied, although
television camera operators were barred from filming the defendants' faces.
In the motion for Wednesday's hearing, Dawson and Barbour said they want the
court to "exclude all media from the courtroom, including print media."
McGeorge School of Law professor John E.B. Myers called the defense effort to
ban the media "completely legitimate," but he said it "should fail at a
relatively innocuous hearing."
"As the facts of the case come out more, the defense should have a stronger
argument," Myers said. "But they should still lose. The burden should be a
heavy one on them to deprive the press and the public of our right to know.
People get fair trials every day where the press and the public are in the
courtroom."
(source: Sacramento Bee)
USA:
Death penalty, in retreat----Fewer states impose the sentence, and U.S. rulings
narrow it, professor says
Carol Steiker's interest in criminal justice took hold while she was at Harvard
Law School (HLS) in the 1980s. While studying there, she recalled, "It began to
appear to me that criminal justice was a great engine of American inequality."
Steiker became interested in capital punishment while clerking for U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, an ardent opponent of the death penalty. Now
the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at HLS, Steiker is using her year as the
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study's Rita E. Hauser Fellow to work with her
brother and frequent collaborator, Jordan M. Steiker, on a book about the past
half-century's experiment with the constitutional regulation of capital
punishment in America. She spoke with the Gazette about the history and future
of the death penalty in the United States.
GAZETTE: Could you see the Supreme Court striking down the death penalty?
STEIKER: Yes, it would not surprise me if the death penalty were
constitutionally invalidated sometime in the next couple of decades. The
Supreme Court has been on a trajectory of narrowing and questioning the death
penalty. In 2002, it held that people with mental retardation, now called
intellectual disability, couldn't get the death penalty. In 2005, it held that
juvenile offenders couldn't get the death penalty. In 2008, it held that people
who commit crimes other than murder - even the crime of aggravated rape of a
child - couldn't get the death penalty. These are really significant
limitations on capital punishment.
The court continues to express interest in key death-penalty issues. In
January, the court granted certiorari [agreeing to hear a lower-court case] on
questions regarding Oklahoma's lethal-injection protocol, after botched
executions in that state and elsewhere last year. It will decide this case by
June and offer some more guidance on death by lethal injection in an era when
states are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain appropriate drugs, given
the unwillingness of many manufacturers to supply them for the purpose of
executions. Other challenges to lethal-injection procedures continue to
percolate at the state level, such as challenges to the transparency of the
execution process - challenges to laws that hide the source of the drugs used
or the identities of participants in the execution process.
GAZETTE: Why did the Supreme Court initially strike down the death penalty in
1972?
STEIKER: Prior to the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia in 1972, juries had
regularly been told that they should look only to their conscience in deciding
whether to impose the death penalty. Lawyers argued that it was
unconstitutional to give this important power to jurors with no attempt to
guide their discretion, because that would lead to randomness and to
discrimination, a constitutionally intolerable result.
So the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as it was then practiced
across the country. But there was a huge backlash to Furman. Over the next few
years, 35 states redrafted their capital statutes to offer what the Supreme
Court later called "guided discretion." As people began to pile up on death row
in these states, the Supreme Court, knowing it had to rule on the
constitutionality of this new generation of capital statutes, granted cert
[certiorari] on 5 death-penalty cases from Georgia, Florida, Texas, North
Carolina, and Louisiana. Ultimately, the Supreme Court upheld 3 of the new
statutes that provided "guided discretion," and struck down 2 that provided no
discretion at all, that is, rejecting statutes that made the death penalty
mandatory upon conviction of certain crimes.
On the basis of this new approach, the American death penalty was back in
business. More and more people were sentenced to death, and more and more
people were executed pretty much every year until the turn of the century. The
death penalty reached a modern post-1976 high in 1999. In that year, 98 people
were executed and nearly 300 were sentenced to death. Since 2000, however, the
death penalty has been in sharp decline; you might even say free-fall.
Executions are down by more than 1/2, death sentences are down by more than
2/3, and 6 states have legislatively abolished the death penalty in the past 7
years. A federal judge declared California's death penalty unconstitutional
this past summer. We are living through a sea change on this issue.
GAZETTE: Can you tell me more about the history of capital punishment in
America?
STEIKER: For most of American history, the death penalty was understood to be
the creature of state and local law. From the colonial era until recent times,
it was not a national issue. The authorization of capital punishment was on the
colonial or state level, but the actual use of it was very much on the local
level. As an example, in 1660 a Quaker woman named Mary Dyer was executed in
Boston for heresy for being a Quaker in a Puritan colony. This is a great
example of how the death penalty, starting in colonial times but continuing
throughout American history, has been the expression of colonial, or state, and
even local priorities. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, things like heresy,
adultery, sodomy, and witchcraft were really, really important, and those kinds
of things were written into the capital code and produced a substantial number
of executions.
Contrast that to, say, Southern colonies. If you look in Virginia, South
Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana (which was mostly under French control),
capital statutes tended to focus on crimes by slaves, especially slave revolt,
and you see a substantial number of executions for such offenses. These are
good examples of how, throughout American history, the death penalty was
authorized by states but used by local officials to enforce local priorities
and to be a really dramatic statement of local concerns and values. Capital
punishment really wasn't thought to be an issue of overarching national
regulation.
GAZETTE: What was the Supreme Court's earliest involvement with the death
penalty?
STEIKER: The Supreme Court was asked a number of times to weigh in on questions
about capital punishment. In the late 19th century, the court was asked to
declare the firing squad cruel and unusual, but the court declined. Then, in
the middle of the 20th century, when the electric chair malfunctioned, the
court was asked, "Could someone be executed a 2nd time?" That was the famous
Willie Francis case, argued in the Supreme Court by the judge I clerked for,
Skelly Wright, early in his legal career. The Supreme Court said: "No, that's
fine." Louisiana could put Willie Francis back in the electric chair and do it
again (and it did).
The 1st time that the Supreme Court made constitutional law specific to the
death penalty was kind of a preview of how the Supreme Court would eventually
make the death penalty a subject of intensive constitutional regulation. That
was in a case called Powell v. Alabama, also known as the Scottsboro Boys case.
It involved 9 black men who were accused in 1931 on very flimsy evidence of
raping two white women. Now it is recognized that they were not guilty. But at
the time, they were tried over the course of just a few days and found guilty
and sentenced to death in incredibly cursory proceedings. They had essentially
no legal representation. 2 lawyers were present in the courtroom, but they but
had been appointed only days before, were unfamiliar with state law, and had
done no preparation. The Supreme Court held in that case that in capital cases
you had a federal constitutional right to be represented by counsel, a right
that it would eventually extend to criminal defendants in non-capital cases -
but not for another 30 years.
But after Scottsboro in the 1930s, the Supreme Court didn't do anything else
that was significant and specific to the death penalty until the 1960s. In
1963, Justice Arthur Goldberg, with the help of his law clerk (and eventual
Harvard Professor) Alan Dershowitz, drafted a memo designed to convince other
justices to take up the case of a black man accused of raping a white woman,
once again from Alabama. They argued that the court should grant cert on the
specific question of whether the death penalty was disproportionate punishment
for the crime of rape, when the victim was not killed. A big part of this memo
also had to do with the racial aspect of the death penalty for rape in the
South. While Goldberg got 2 of the necessary 3 other justices - [William]
Brennan and [William O.] Douglas - to vote to grant cert, he couldn't get Earl
Warren, who would have been the 4th vote.
But Goldberg took the unusual move of writing a dissent from denial of cert.
That dissent got the attention of the lawyers at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
(LDF), which had litigated Brown v. Board of Education in the previous decade.
Thinking that the Supreme Court was ready to be interested in the death
penalty, the LDF decided to make the death penalty their primary issue.
In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled in Witherspoon v. Illinois that people could
be excluded from juries in capital cases only if they were incapable of
imposing the death penalty, as opposed to simply having any sort of moral
scruples about it. That case is the foundation for the standard that reigns
today, which is that your views about the death penalty have to prevent or
substantially impair your ability to serve as a juror on the case. Witherspoon
was a huge victory. In fact, many people thought that it was going to be the
end of the death penalty because if people who had scruples about the death
penalty could actually sit on capital juries, there wouldn't be any more
executions. That turned out not to be the case.
GAZETTE: The trial for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is
underway in Boston, in a state that doesn't have the death penalty. Do tensions
exist between state and federal officials in these types of cases?
STEIKER: I don't know if there is any personal tension between state and
federal officials. But as you can see, it's getting hard to pick a jury here in
Massachusetts because so many people cannot sit; news reports say that
something like half the prospective jurors are being excluded because of their
views on the death penalty. That's a function of Massachusetts being an
anti-death-penalty state.
It's an odd artifact of American federalism that we have a federal government
that exists everywhere in the United States, and yet we have state sovereignty,
which extends over the states' own criminal justice systems. So you basically
have 2 sovereigns in Massachusetts, and either one of them can seek the death
penalty when the underlying crime is both a state and a federal offense, as in
this case.
It remains to be seen whether a Massachusetts jury will return a death verdict
in this case, though it is becoming clear that whatever jury is eventually
impaneled will not be representative of Massachusetts in terms of views about
capital punishment.
GAZETTE: Do you think having the death penalty hurts the United States'
standing with other countries?
STEIKER: I think that it does. The consensus in Europe and the rest of the
Western industrialized world is that the death penalty is not acceptable
because it violates international human rights law. The view of our peer
countries is that individuals have a human right not to be executed by their
government.
The United States likes to see itself as a human rights leader and likes to
criticize other countries - including some of the really powerful countries in
the world, like China - of violating human rights. Undoubtedly, it hurts our
moral authority in the world to be viewed as a human-rights violator. Moreover,
our ability to work with our allies on criminal-justice initiatives is hindered
because our allies won't extradite people to us who might face the death
penalty in the United States.
It's kind of ironic because here at Harvard Law School we have idealistic young
law students whom we send out around the world to work on international
human-rights projects. Meanwhile, Europe sends its idealistic law students
here, to states like Texas and Alabama, to work on death-penalty cases as
human-rights violations.
We are among the world's top 5 executors, and we are up there with countries we
don't normally think of as in our club. It varies year to year, but China,
Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen ... routinely make the "top 5" list of executors,
along with the United States.
GAZETTE: Why does Texas execute more people than any other state?
STEIKER: Texas is not that unusual in the rate of sentencing people to death.
What it's really good at is translating sentences into executions.
California sentences people to death for homicide at roughly the same rate that
Texas does, but since 1976 California has executed 13 people and Texas has
executed more than 500. That's a stunning difference. California has the
largest death row in the country because people just sit there. What's ironic
is that the leading cause of death on death row in California is not execution.
Instead, it's natural causes. And actually the second leading cause of death on
death row in California is not execution; it's suicide. So, amazingly,
execution is actually the third leading case of death on death row in
California. Last summer a federal judge declared California's death penalty
unconstitutional. That's currently under review. He said it couldn't possibly
serve a valid penological function the way it's administered. In California, a
death sentence translates into a life sentence on death row, with a very faint
chance of being executed. Texas really whips people through the appeals process
and gets them to the execution chamber really fast. That's what makes Texas the
leader in America's death penalty.
There are only a small number of states that execute with great frequency. In
fact, 80 percent of executions nationwide in the past year took place in only 3
states. And even within death-penalty states like Texas, the vast majority of
executions happen in only a few counties. Texas has more than 250 counties, and
most of them never execute anyone.
GAZETTE: What do those numbers reveal?
STEIKER: It points to the fact that the decision to seek the death penalty in
those counties is by locally elected officials. That gets back to my point
about the death penalty prior to the 1960s. There are locally elected district
attorneys, and localities pay for the death penalty. These capital trials are
much, much more expensive than any ordinary trial, which is why you see it
mostly in counties that can afford it, with district attorneys who really are
pursuing it. Although people speak in sweeping terms, there really is no
American death penalty, and there's no Texas death penalty or California death
penalty. You really need to look at a much more granular level to see what's
happening with the death penalty in this country. In the past few decades, what
you see is huge declines in the use of the death penalty, and even greater
concentration and isolation of its use in outlier states, and outlier counties
within states.
GAZETTE: How did you get interested in this topic?
STEIKER: When I first came to law school, I was not especially interested in
criminal justice. I think I would have said that what drew me was the problem
of inequality; that was what really engaged me about law and law school. It was
at law school that I became really interested in criminal justice because it
began to appear to me that criminal justice was a great engine of American
inequality. In the 1980s, crime was rising, but so were punitive responses to
crime, and I became very interested in it.
I came to law school knowing I wanted to be an academic who would think and
write about justice, but then I got very interested in criminal justice and
capital punishment, and then I thought, "You know, I should learn more about
this before I try to go teach and write about it." So I worked as a judicial
law clerk for 2 years in Washington, 1st for Judge Skelly Wright on the D.C.
Circuit, and then for Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. During my
clerkship for Thurgood Marshall, in particular, is when I became interested,
not just in criminal justice, but specifically in capital punishment. It was
something that Thurgood Marshall himself cared a lot about. When I clerked for
him, one of the things we were given by the outgoing clerks were 2 big, black,
3-ring binders filled with the Supreme Court's death-penalty cases. Everyone
called him "The boss," and they said: "The boss really cares a lot about this
stuff. You need to learn these, because you are going to be doing a lot of work
on death cases." And so I did learn all of that stuff, and it was fascinating.
GAZETTE: Can you tell me about the book you are working on?
STEIKER: My brother and I are writing this book about the way in which capital
punishment has become the subject of top-down, national regulation from the
Supreme Court over the last 50 years. We look at the interplay between this
attempted national regulation and state and local responses to it. The story of
these last 50 years of interaction between the Supreme Court, the federal
courts, the Constitution, and state and local and popular responses tells us a
lot about the death penalty, what it means, and what its functions are. But it
also tells us a lot about the possibilities and the pitfalls of constitutional
regulation in the context of highly contested social issues. There are some
interesting links here to school desegregation, abortion, and gay marriage. The
death-penalty experience provides a taxonomy of sorts of the kinds of issues
that arise in constitutional regulation of these kinds of "hot" social issues.
(source: Harvard Law School Professor Carol Steiker will discuss her research
during a talk at Radcliffe's Knafel Center on April 22 at 4 p.m.---- Harvard
Gazette)
***********************
Colorado: Rapid Jury Selection in Mass Killing at Movie Theater
The judge in the Aurora theater shooting case says jury selection is going so
efficiently that the first phase will be cut short. Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr.
had planned to finish giving potential jurors long, written questionnaires by
Feb. 13. But he said Monday that he will close that phase next Monday and begin
the next one, which includes individual questioning of potential jurors, 2 days
later on Feb. 11. The jury will hear the case against James Holmes, who is
charged with killing 12 people and injuring 70 others in the 2012 attack. He
pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors are seeking the death
penalty.
(source: Associated Press)
**************
Cruel and unusual? High court to rule on lethal injections
When the Supreme Court weighs in on the constitutionality of the lethal
injection executions in Oklahoma this year, its ruling will not likely be a
tipping point in eliminating capital punishment in the U.S., but some experts
say it could be the beginning of the end of this practice.
"It's not this problem that will end it, but it's another straw," said Richard
Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center based in
Washington.
Dieter noted that a lot of public discussion about lethal injections took place
last year after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, who
writhed in pain for 40 minutes before dying of apparent heart failure.
The execution was "quite a shock" and "got a lot of attention," which he said
explains why the drugs used to execute him deserve a review.
In April, the court will hear oral arguments in Glossip v. Gross, a case
brought by 4 death-row inmates in Oklahoma. One of the plaintiffs, Charles
Warner, was executed Jan. 15 after the court rejected a stay in a 5-4 vote. The
court announced Jan. 23 it would take the case and 5 days later it agreed to
stay the upcoming executions of the other 3 inmates until it issues a decision.
The case sounds somewhat familiar because in 2008, the court ruled in Baze v.
Rees that a 3-drug protocol used in Kentucky executions did not violate the
Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In this drug combination,
the 1st drug causes unconsciousness, the 2nd brings about paralysis and the 3rd
stops the heart.
But in recent years, a shortage of those drugs has caused states to try a
variety of drug combinations in their lethal injections, not the drugs the
court considered and upheld in 2008. Some combinations, as shown by Lockett's
botched execution, do not always work as intended.
Currently, the 32 states that have the death penalty use lethal injections. If
they are going to continue with that method, the deaths can't take a
significant period of time, said Meg Penrose, professor of constitutional law
at Texas A&M's University School of Law.
"The court is saying let's at least pause and get more information," she said,
adding that she doesn't think the court would "overturn the death penalty as a
method of punishment" but the justices might determine that until better
medication is available, states should "use another method."
According to the plaintiffs' case, the drug midazolam, the 1st drug used in
Oklahoma executions, does not sedate the prisoner sufficiently thus creating
the risk of excessive pain, which violates the standards set in the Baze ruling
and in the Constitution.
One of the other plaintiffs, Richard Glossip, was scheduled to be executed Jan.
28 before the stay was announced. Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph
and a longtime anti-death penalty activist, has been a spiritual adviser to
51-year-old Glossip and has said she will accompany him to the execution
chamber if he loses his appeals.
During a Jan. 27 news conference at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City, Sister
Prejean said: "There is no humane way to kill a conscious, imaginative human
being. We the citizens have our name on that gurney."
According to the Gallup poll last fall, a majority of Americans still support
capital punishment, but some feel the tides are slowly turning.
Dieter said the lethal injection cases illustrate the "ambivalence people have
about the death penalty" noting that they might be willing to have it but they
aren't "comfortable with the way it's working."
He also said people say they support capital punishment yet they vote for
legislators and governors who have said they will abolish it.
Marc Hyden, advocacy coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death
Penalty, a group which formed in 2013, acknowledged that conservatives have not
always been at the front of the anti-death penalty bandwagon but he said that
they are starting to shift their opinion, recognizing that it is a pro-life
issue and limited-government issue.
Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the
Use of the Death Penalty, said Catholics also are becoming more galvanized in
their views against capital punishment.
She said the botched death by lethal injection is not only a "stark reminder"
of the dignity of human life, but it also raises public awareness of the death
penalty and gives groups such as hers more opportunities to educate Catholics
about what church teaches.
Last October, Pope Francis called on Christians and all people of good will "to
fight ... for the abolition of the death penalty ... in all its forms" out of
respect for human dignity.
The U.S. bishops have been advocating against the death penalty for more than
40 years. In 2005, they initiated the Campaign to End the Use of the Death
Penalty and continue to work closely with state Catholic conferences, the
Catholic Mobilizing Network and other groups to abolish the death penalty in
the United States.
Clifton said in recent years more Catholics have been against the death penalty
because they have recognized it as a pro-life issue.
"We are executing the marginalized in our society," she said, noting that the
scriptures are full of references to how "we will be judged by how we treat the
least among us."
*******************
The Supreme Court's Secret Decisions
A convicted murderer, Charles F. Warner, was executed in Oklahoma last month
after the United States Supreme Court denied his request for a last-minute
stay. Mr. Warner and other death-row inmates had challenged the state's lethal
injection procedures as unconstitutional. In a strange twist, the court agreed
to hear his claims - a week after Mr. Warner had been executed.
Traditionally, the court postpones an execution once it has decided to hear an
inmate's case. Why did the court wait to accept the case until it was too late
for Mr. Warner? Did it decide for some reason to depart from tradition? The
court gave no explanation. 4 justices dissented from the refusal to stay the
execution, but the majority issued only a one-sentence order stating that the
application for a stay had been denied.
Mr. Warner's execution illustrates the high stakes in a crucial part of the
court's work that most people don???t know anything about: its orders docket.
Work at the Supreme Court is divided into two main categories. One is deciding
the cases it hears on the merits: the 70-some cases each year that the court
selects for extensive briefing, oral argument and a substantial written
opinion, sometimes with dissents. These are the cases we hear about in the
news.
The orders docket includes nearly everything else the court must decide - which
cases to hear, procedural matters in pending cases, and whether to grant a stay
or injunction that pauses legal proceedings temporarily. There are no oral
arguments in these cases and, as in Mr. Warner's situation, they are often
decided with no explanation.
This docket operates in such obscurity that I call it the "shadow docket." (I
was a law clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in 2008-9, but these
views are solely mine.)
Despite their obscurity, these orders - there are thousands each year, if you
count decisions not to hear cases - are significant. Consider the flurry of
orders issued in the month before the 2014 election. The court stopped
Wisconsin from implementing a strict voter identification law while it allowed
a similar law to be implemented in Texas, and it also stopped lower courts from
expanding early voting in Ohio or voter registration in North Carolina.
Different groups of justices dissented in some of the cases, but the court did
not explain any of them. Richard L. Hasen, an authority on election law, has
argued that there is a common legal thread in these decisions, but the court
could have explained its own reasoning rather than leaving it to him to surmise
what it did.
Or consider the strange situation of same-sex couples who have sought to marry
while the court debated whether to hear a case about whether the Constitution
required marriage equality. Last summer, the court temporarily stopped some
lower courts from authorizing marriages while various constitutional challenges
were pending, but then in the fall the court decided not to hear any of the
challenges. It let marriages go forward without any explanation for the
apparent change of heart. Then, last month, it decided to hear a case after
all. It's as if the court were playing "red light, green light" with same-sex
couples.
This lack of transparency has a practical impact. Because the court doesn't
issue opinions in these cases, lawyers don't know what legal standards to apply
when litigating the issue again in the future. (What if there's something that
Mr. Warner's lawyers could have said to stay his execution, but they didn't
know what it was?) And because we don't even know which justices have joined
most of the orders, we don't know which justices are responsible, and we don't
know whether the justices are being consistent and principled from case to
case.
These procedural issues also affect the lower courts, which are supposed to
follow Supreme Court precedent. But because the lower-court judges don't know
why the Supreme Court does what it does, they sometimes divide sharply when
forced to interpret the court's nonpronouncements. The orders can influence the
substance of litigation, too, because a key factor in procedural cases is
whether the claim has merit.
To be sure, there are good reasons for the court to proceed quickly and without
much explanation in many of these cases. These disputes happen fast, and the
justices may not want to commit to a public explanation that they haven't had
time to fully consider. But even modest changes would provide valuable
guidance.
What could the court do? First, it could provide more written explanations. It
would not need to do so in every case. It could, however, briefly explain its
decision when it either reversed a lower court decision, or when it proceeded
in the face of a written dissent. In both cases, the presence of a thoughtful
written opinion on the other side shows that the court's decision is not so
obvious as to go without saying. In many cases these explanations would take
only a paragraph or 2 - but they would be a big improvement over our current,
murky practices.
In the context of opinions on the merits, the justices have recognized the
importance of individual accountability. Justice Antonin Scalia has said that
writing separate opinions "forces them to think systematically and consistently
about the law," while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said that it "puts the
judge's conscience and reputation on the line." The court should extend this
logic to the orders docket.
A 2nd, even more modest step toward transparency would be to at least reveal
which justices have voted on which side of an orders decision, which the court
does not do consistently. Again, the court would not have to do this in every
case; it could announce that it would do so whenever there was a dissent, or
whenever a dissenting justice requested it. Even knowing which decisions were
controversial would enable us to better judge and predict the court.
The court is in the spotlight more and more. Transparency in all its decisions
is vital to its continued legitimacy.
(source: Op-Ed; William Baude is an assistant professor of law at the
University of Chicago----New York Times)
****************
Puerto Rico: 9 Different People Indicted For Killing A Single Officer Who Took
Their Cell Phones
It's rare that more than 1 or 2 people get indicted for murder. But one strange
news story out of Puerto Rico involves nine individuals possibly earning the
death penalty for killing a single corrections officer from the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Prisons.
According to Fox News, 9 different men from Puerto Rico have been convicted for
the murder of Lt. Osvaldo Albarati on February 26, 2013. All 9 of them were
inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, when the
incident occurred. Albarati had confiscated cellphones and other contraband
from the inmates. This provoked the 9 inmates to retaliate.
The United States Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, Rosa Emilia
Rodriguez, claimed that this was the 1st murder of a United States federal
agent in Puerto Rico. Rodriguez spoke at a press conference on Friday,
explaining that the nine defendants had carefully planned to kill the Puerto
Rican correctional officer as a direct result of the confiscated items.
"Throughout his law enforcement career, Lieutenant Albarati's service was both
selfless and courageous," said Rodriguez. "With this action, we continue our
work to hold accountable those who carried out this reprehensible and senseless
act. And in all that we do, the Department of Justice will continue to honor
Lieutenant Albarati's sacrifice, to safeguard the community he served, and to
protect the values and principles he defended all his life."
According to FBI.gov, the names of the Puerto Rico inmates include the leader
of the group, Oscar Martinez-Hernandez or "Cali," Angel D. Ramos-Cruz or "Api,"
Miguel Diaz-Rivera or "Bolo," Juan Quinones-Melendez or "El Manco," Orlando
Mojica-Rodriguez or "Yogui," Jayson Rodriguez-Gonz1lez or "Gonzo," Carlos
Rosado-Rosado or "Cano," Alexander Rosario de Leon or "Coqui," and Jancarlos
Velazquez-Vazquez or "Jan."
The murder was orchestrated by Martinez-Hernandez, Ramos-Cruz, and Diaz-Rivera,
who hired other inmates to murder Albarati in the Puerto Rico prison. A
cellphone, a vehicle and a firearm (four Glock.40) was provided by
Quinones-Melendez and Mojica-Rodriguez to 3 other inmates Rodriguez-Gonzalez,
Rosado-Rosado and Rosario de Leon, who then carried out the murder.
Velazquez-Vazquez was the driver for the crime.
The District of Puerto Rico Attorney reported that the crime could result in
the death penalty, but she wouldn't reveal if she would recommend the
punishment herself. Instead, the decision will be left up to U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder.
The death penalty was technically abolished in Puerto Rico in 1929, but capital
punishment can still be enforced since Puerto Rico is a United States
commonwealth. If the 9 defendants are charged with the death penalty, all of
the executions would have to be carried out off the island of Puerto Rico.
(source: inquisitr.com)
*************************
The death sentence is ineffective, cruel
Although execution as a form of punishment has existed for generations, capital
punishment in the U.S. reached a peak in the 1930s, with more criminals being
put to death by the government than in any other decade since. Despite many
Supreme Court rulings and high profile cases, capital punishment is still a
highly-debated issue, one that sheds light on how fairness and justice is
upheld in the U.S.
In my opinion, capital punishment is an inefficient way to punish criminals
because it is an outdated, ineffective, biased and expensive practice that
furthers a cycle of violence.
Outdated
Capital punishment is an extremely outdated practice that has already been
abolished in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Many U.S. states are
coming to the realization that the death penalty is inhumane. Capital
punishment is dormant in the military and in the federal system and, according
to The New York Times article "The Slow Demise of Capital Punishment," 30
states had no executions within the past 5 years as of 2013.
For a country that prides itself on being innovative, we are one of the last
countries that still honors the death penalty. The U.S. is regressing with this
controversial issue and should think differently. The death penalty, though
still very much alive, has become less popular and is used most frequently in
places such as Texas and Florida, where over half of 2013's 80 sentences
occurred, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Taking innocent lives
Capital punishment is an ineffective deterrent to crime and criminals. There
have been several instances where capital punishment has sent innocent people
to death row.
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth spent nine years in prison and two years on death row
for a crime he did not commit. Bloodsworth also said Carlos DeLuna, Ruben Cantu
and Cameron Todd Willingham were others put to death before their cases were
fully and thoroughly closed, according to his article in The New York Times,
"Of Course the Death Penalty is Cruel and Unusual." All 3 men have since had
considerable doubt cast on their convictions.
Capital punishment is ineffective because it can be erroneous and biased as
well.
"Someone will always end up on the short end of the stick," Bloodsworth said in
the article. "Most of the time, that person will be black or Latino and poor.
If it can happen to me, it could happen to you."
There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that minorities are facing the most
disparity due the death penalty. Several studies have indicated that minorities
are more likely to be sentenced with the death penalty than other offenders,
according to The New York Times article, "Justice and Victims of Color."
If we believe that the death penalty illustrates the ultimate definition of
justice for victims, then we also have to accept that this form of "justice" is
ineffective and biased as well.
Expenses
One of the more popular arguments of those in favor of the death penalty is
that it is cheaper to kill inmates rather than sentence them to life
imprisonment. However, death penalty cases are extremely costly to states and
taxpayers, and in some cases are more expenses than life imprisonment.
These cases are also expensive due to long trials, excessive witnesses and
timely jury selections, according to The New York Times article, "The Slow
Demise of Capital Punishment."
Housing prisoners on death row in Kansas costs twice as much per year ($49,380)
as for prisoners in the general population ($24,690). Extra security is also
needed for death row inmates, according to an article in Forbes magazine
entitled, "Considering the Death Penalty: Your Tax Dollars at Work."
In California, the annual cost of lifetime incarceration is a mere $11.5
million compared to the $137 million it costs to use the death penalty.
Ineffective
One may argue that this cost is justified because capital punishment is a
warning. It illustrates the consequences of one???s horrifying actions and is
used to scare people into not committing serious crimes. Millions of dollars is
quite an investment to scare members of society. Money used to finance capital
punishment could be spent on real crime deterrents such as courts, police
officers, prison cells and public defenders. This could result in less crime
than the fear capital punishment evokes.
With social issues, such as same-sex marriage, constantly changing, public
attitudes towards the death penalty are changing as well. Regardless of their
morals, U.S. citizens should view the death penalty from an economic standpoint
as well.
A circle of violence
Capital punishment helps further a cycle of violence. Many who stand by the
death penalty justify "an eye for an eye." This idea only helps cycle a larger
perspective that violence is justified.
Darryl Stallworth, deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California from
1992 to 2007, once fought to sentence a young man to death, but as he delved
further into the case he realized that he was, "witnessing a cycle of
violence." The young boy had a rocky childhood in which his crime resembled
traumatic violence he had gone through as a child. Stallworth realized that he
couldn't stand by the death penalty for this boy despite his crimes because it
perpetuated a cycle of violence, according to The San Jose Mercury News
article, "Death Penalty Perpetuates Vicious Cycle of Violence."
Killing someone will not help bring a loved one back or make the victim and the
perpetrator even. How are those that have implemented capital punishment any
better than a murderer? The death penalty justifies killing someone and deems
that the only way to properly punish someone is to take away their life.
Capital punishment depletes the American justice systems definition of justice
and takes their credibility away by perpetuating a cycle of violence which
makes killing acceptable.
Abolishing the death penalty would rid the U.S. of an old-fashioned and
backwards practice that is extremely costly, perpetuates a cycle of violence
and is ineffective as a deterrent. If we move funds that the death penalty
would use in more effective places we may have less crime than the "fear"
capital punishment evokes. The U.S. and its citizens should look at more
controversial issues from an introspective lens rather than from one seeking
justice and revenge.
"An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." -- Mahatma Gandhi.
(source: Opinion; Sonia Kumar is a sophomore in apparel textiles and
marketing----The (Kansas State Univ.) Collegian)
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