Feb. 17
FLORIDA----stay of impending execution
Florida Supreme Court blocks execution of Orlando killer Jerry Correll
The Florida Supreme Court today stayed the execution of a death-row inmate who
killed 4 people in Orlando in 1985.
Jerry William Correll was convicted in the stabbing his ex-wife, Susan, and
their 5-year-old daughter.
Also killed were Susan Correll's mother, Mary Lou Hines, and her sister,
Marybeth Jones.
Correll's attorneys have filed appeals to block his planned execution on Feb.
26.
(source: Orlando Sentinel)
WYOMING:
Judge denies inmate's request to block death-penalty hearing
A federal judge won't block the Casper district attorney from once again
seeking the death penalty against a Wyoming inmate convicted of killing a
Montana woman.
U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson of Cheyenne on Friday denied a request from
lawyers representing inmate Dale Wayne Eaton to bar the state from seeking the
death penalty against him for the 2nd time.
Eaton was convicted in 2004 of murdering Lisa Marie Kimmell, 18, of Billings,
Montana. Eaton's lawyers don't dispute he killed her.
Johnson in November overturned Eaton's original death sentence, ruling he
didn't get an adequate defense at his state trial. The judge said prosecutors
could seek to convince another jury to resentence him to death or opt to send
Eaton to prison for life without parole.
Eaton's lawyers had asked Johnson to reconsider giving the state the option to
seek the death sentence again and asked him instead to order Eaton to serve
life in prison without parole.
Eaton's lawyers argued that too many witnesses have died who could have
testified about Eaton's background to try to convince a jury that his life had
value.
Eaton's lawyers also argued that years of negative publicity fueled by what
they claimed to be improper statements from prosecutors to the media would make
it impossible for him to get a fair rehearing on whether he deserves the death
penalty.
Eaton had been the only inmate on death row in the state before Johnson
overturned his death sentence. His case has received extensive media coverage,
including some that has included law enforcement speculation that he was a
serial killer.
Johnson, in his order on Friday denying Eaton's requests, stated that Eaton's
arguments that he can't get a fair hearing need to be addressed in the state
court system.
Cheyenne lawyer Terry Harris is on the legal team representing Eaton in
Johnson's court. Harris declined comment Tuesday on the judge's order.
Kimmell disappeared in 1988 while driving alone across Wyoming. Fishermen later
found her body in the North Platte River.
Investigators tied Eaton to the crime in 2002 when DNA evidence taken from
Kimmell's body linked Eaton to the case while he was in prison on unrelated
charges. Investigators then unearthed her missing car on his property.
Authorities say Eaton kept Kimmell captive for a time in his rundown compound
in Moneta, west of Casper, and raped her before killing her.
Casper District Attorney Mike Blonigen recently filed notice that he would once
again seek the death penalty against Eaton. Blonigen was the original
prosecutor against Eaton.
An attempt to reach Blonigen for comment on Tuesday was unsuccessful. In a
recent interview, Blonigen said he has always followed the rules of
professional conduct in speaking with the media about the case.
"You have to appreciate that you have to say something when these cases of
great public interest occur," Blonigen said last month. "We haven't commented
on specific evidence, or argued the case in the press."
(source: Associated Press)
OREGON:
Gov. Kitzhaber: Your Job Is Not Yet Done
Governor Kitzhaber has given 35 years of steadfast service to the people of
Oregon. His tirelessness and courage have helped to forge a State that is the
envy of the nation -- a community as strong and prosperous as it is just and
fair. But the job is not yet done. In his last few hours in the Capitol
Building, Governor Kitzhaber has the opportunity to undertake perhaps the most
courageous act of his career, one that would create his most enduring legacy --
the Governor can commute the death sentences of the 34 men and one woman on
Oregon's death row.
A decision to commute the death sentences would align with contemporary
standards of decency in Oregon, and increasing it aligns with the norms of the
nation. A recent poll in the Oregonian showed that 74 % of respondents would
support a Kitzhaber decision to commute all existing death sentences. This same
sense of decreasing support for capital punishment resonates throughout the
country. Within the last decade, six states have abolished the death penalty.
Even in states like Oregon where the punishment is authorized on paper, jurors
rarely impose it. Indeed, 2014 brought the fewest executions in over 20 years
and the fewest death sentences in the modern era. From Alabama to Louisiana,
Mississippi to Texas, death sentences and executions are in a steep decline.
The death penalty will end nationally when the United States Supreme Court
detects a national consensus against its use. A decision to commute the death
row in Oregon would help push the country towards the tipping point. Last year,
in a case called Hall v. Florida, the Supreme Court counted Oregon "on the
abolitionist side of the ledger" noting that Kitzhaber had "suspended the death
penalty" and the State had "executed only 2 individuals in the past 40 years."
A bold move to clear death row could ensure that Oregon permanently remains "on
the abolitionist side of the ledger." It also could reverberate beyond the
State's borders, creating needed momentum for governors in other moratorium
states -- for instance, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Washington -- to follow
Kitzhaber's lead.
In the end, though, the most sacred duty of the Governor is to preserve the
basic human dignity of the people of Oregon. This duty extends to each of
Oregon's citizens, including those whom have committed serious crimes. The
people who occupy death row tend to be people who suffer from serious mental
illness, intellectual impairments, torturous childhood abuse, and other extreme
disadvantage. Often times these individuals do not receive adequate legal
representation; and, in states across the nation, innocent men and women emerge
from the ranks of the condemned.
Recognizing these shortcomings, Governor Kitzhaber declared a moratorium on the
death penalty back in 2011. He labeled the State's practice of imposing death
sentences "neither fair nor just" and concluded that a "compromised and
inequitable" capital punishment system is not befitting of Oregon. Nothing has
changed and nothing will: the death penalty in Oregon is too broken to fix.
In his resignation letter, Governor Kitzhaber told us that he was proud to not
have presided over any executions. Yet, as Governor, he presided over a state
that has sentenced people to death under the same unjust system that led him to
impose the moratorium. The Governor has the power to leave the troubled history
of this disreputable death penalty system in Oregon's rearview mirror; and
doing so would enhance the integrity of the criminal justice system without
compromising public safety.
Governor Kitzhaber: You lit the torch in 2011; and now, in these few remaining
hours, please carry that torch across the finish line.
(source: By Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of
Law; Founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute
for Race and Justice -- This post was co-authored with Rob Smith, Associate
Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill----Dupont
Circle Communications)
USA:
Marvin Gabrion, awaiting death penalty, files 'emergency' request for
psychiatric exam
Awaiting the death penalty, Marvin Gabrion is seeking an "emergency"
psychiatric review to determine his mental functioning when he killed Rachel
Timmerman in 1997, when he stood trial and now.
His attorneys are seeking an order as part of an "exhaustive claim" to show
Gabrion's trial counsel's representation was below the standard required under
the law.
"Mr. Gabrion's mental functioning was a primary focus, and rightly so, at
trial," his attorneys wrote. "Mr. Gabrion's current functioning is important to
how counsel moves forward in these proceedings and is also relevant as to
whether Mr. Gabrion is even competent to be executed ... ."
They have asked that Gabrion, 61, undergo an evaluation on Wednesday, Feb. 18,
at USP Terre Haute, a high-security federal penitentiary in Indiana. A
psychiatrist is scheduled to meet with Gabrion but the prison will not reserve
a room without a court order, attorneys Scott Graham, Monica Foster and Joseph
Cleary wrote.
The government opposes the motion "for the reason that there is no emergency in
this case, and that there is no basis for concluding that a fourth mental
assessment is necessary," Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy VerHey wrote in court
records.
He said Gabrion has feigned mental illness in the past in an attempt to avoid
responsibility.
"Gabrion has been exhaustively evaluated by mental health professions," the
prosecutor wrote. "He was assessed for competency no fewer than three times
during the course of the proceedings before this court, and each time he was
found to be competent. In fact, the evaluations concluded that Gabrion was
malingering."
VerHey said the defense wants to use an assessment "apparently to cast doubt
upon the efforts of his trial counsel. However, even if (the psychiatrist)
determines that Gabrion suffers from some new, previously undiscovered mental
condition, that does not translate into a basis for overturning the verdict and
sentence," VerHey said.
A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel earlier overturned the death penalty,
but the full court, by a 12-4 vote, affirmed the conviction and sentence.
Gabrion showed "utter depravity" when he killed Timmerman, 19, in a shallow,
remote lake in the Manistee National Forest, the federal appellate court said.
He kidnapped her 2 days before he was to stand trial in Newaygo County for
raping her.
He bound and gagged her, weighed her down with a concrete block, then threw her
into the water and she drowned. He also killed her 11-month-old daughter,
Shannon Verhage, whose body has not been found, the government says.
Federal investigators believe he killed 3 others.
(source: mlive.com)
*************************
Why I Oppose the Death Penalty: Redemption Is Always Possible, so Killing Is
Always Wrong
Imagine the worst thing you've ever done. Hold onto that thought for a moment.
Now ask yourself: Does that moment define you? Should that moment define you?
If you're like me, you'll find that even though we all make mistakes in life,
even though we all fall short of our greatest ideals and hopes, our worst
decisions don't necessarily reflect our true character. How many of us did
stupid things when we were younger? How many have committed acts we regret? As
we age, we make mistakes. As we make mistakes, we learn and grow.
How does it make sense, then, to brand convicted felons as permanently
"unworthy" of life? If we were truly rational and consistent in our moral
outrage, this possibility would be wholly untenable -- for they, like us,
possess the capacity to change -- yet we persist in our delusional thinking
about retributive punishment, character, and ethics. We forget why we condemn
murder in the first place -- its incredible and horrible finality, its absolute
denial of any and all ability to learn and grow. This rebuff of human
potentiality confuses justice for vengeance.
Don't get me wrong: The death penalty is about many things -- retribution,
punishment, anger, a misguided desire for some illusory "cosmic balancing" of
the scales of justice. Yet it is most about imagination. Because even though
society takes solace in a belief that the people we legally murder deserve
death because they once caused it, this rationale lies in the realm of fiction,
not reality. Because people change.
The men and women who were sentenced to death decades ago are not the same men
and women alive today. After languishing for perhaps fifteen years in solitary
confinement, one finds a lot of time to think and to read and to reminisce and
to regret and to immerse oneself in redemptive activity and thought. While of
course not all death row inmates avail themselves of these opportunities, many
do. Many go through a crucible of pain and suffering and emerge as better
people, as people who are shed of past wrongdoings in character if not in deed,
as people who are immersed in religion or philosophy or wisdom drawn from a
well of mistakes made and sufferings suffered.
As a result of the mere existence of this natural process of change, we are (in
a sense) executing innocent people: That is to say, we are killing men and
women so far changed from who they were when they committed their horrendous
crimes that to say we are doling out truly retributive justice -- much less
just justice -- is nonsensical. We aren't executing the same person. We are
killing, instead, a much-improved "version" of the criminal we sentenced, a
person who bears little to no resemblance to the dumb, inexperienced kid who
committed a heinous crime perhaps 15 or 20 years ago.
Anecdotes are plentiful. There is William Happ, who committed a brutal murder
in 1986 only to recant decades later. There is Robert Waterhouse, who may well
have been innocent in the legal manner rather than the manner I use the term in
this essay, and who maintained his innocence until the end. The list is
tragically long. For every death row inmate who didn't change for the better
after his sentencing, there is another who recanted in sincere and moving ways.
What good does it do to kill these people? What good, when they have made so
much moral progress?
The death penalty is dying; it's only a matter of time. How many people will it
need to take with it? Society rightly condemns murder because death is the very
definition of finality. It can't be undone. So of course I understand why the
impulse to kill those who kill exists. Faced with the death of a loved one, I
sometimes wonder whether I myself would be able to uphold my ideals and forgo
the impulse for retribution. I don't have the temerity to judge anyone who
supports the death penalty.
But killing people who kill is wrong for the same reasons killing others is
wrong: Death's finality denies all possibility of change. By killing people who
kill, we either (1) kill men and women who have changed for the better or (2)
deny murderers the possibility of reforming their characters and lives. This is
repugnant to all moral systems, but especially Christianity. In the immortal
words of Justice William Douglas, the "principle of forgiveness and the
doctrine of redemption are too deep in our philosophy to admit that there is no
return for those who have once erred."
Murder is the most heinous crime there is. But it is a better society where
murderers, already justly suffering through a life in prison, can at least
meditate on their crimes and redeem themselves by changing -- mentally -- for
the better. Killing killers denies the possibility of redemptive change while
perpetuating the very crime that put these people in prison in the first place.
If we are really consistent in our condemnation of murder, if we truly
acknowledge the power of change and the possibility for redemption, we should
not ourselves -- through our votes and through our politics -- become
collective murderers.
Stop killing people.
(source: Michael Shammas, Huffington Post)
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