Feb. 20
KENTUCKY:
Ky. legislature should find out death penalty's cost
Let's say you have no moral qualms about the death penalty. You also think,
despite compelling evidence to the contrary, that our justice system is meting
out the irreversible punishment fairly with negligible errors.
You still might not consider the perceived benefits of prosecuting and
sentencing a criminal to death worth the cost when compared to some other
sentence such as life without parole - if you knew the cost, which in Kentucky
we don't.
Legislators, who are entrusted with budgeting tax dollars to meet many
competing underfunded needs, should want to know the cost to taxpayers. In
fact, they should demand to know.
Bipartisan resolutions have been introduced in both chambers that would
authorize a task force to study the death penalty's cost to the state before
the 2016 General Assembly convenes.
Senate Resolution 11 and House Resolution 30 have bipartisan support, which
makes sense since their bottom line is making the best use of tax dollars, a
bipartisan concern.
A blue ribbon panel of Kentuckians convened by the American Bar Association
studied the death penalty in our state and issued a troubling report in 2011.
Since 1976 when Kentucky reinstated capital punishment, 78 people have been
sentenced to death. Of those, 52 have had a death sentence overturned on appeal
or been granted clemency - an error rate of about 60 %. 3 individuals have been
executed.
The panel did not study how much that record has cost taxpayers, however, and
neither has anyone else. A responsible legislature would fill the knowledge
gap.
(source: Editorial, kentucky.com)
***********************
Webb Files Bill to Reform Kentucky's Death Penalty
On the same day Pennsylvania's governor placed a moratorium on the death
penalty in the Keystone state, a Kentucky lawmaker filed a bill to make what
she says would be moderate reforms to Kentucky's laws.
State Sen. Robin Webb maintains there are so many problems with Kentucky's
death penalty that Gov. Steve Beshear should do what Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf
did last Friday - suspend the death penalty.
"You know, we've had a lot of litigation over our manner of execution and
lethal injections, and the cocktail and the protocol and all of that, which is
expensive for the state," Webb points out. "And, you know, again there's a
humanitarian aspect of this, but there's also a fiscal impact of this."
It was 3 years ago December that the American Bar Association (ABA) released a
report outlining a myriad of problems with Kentucky's death penalty - citing 95
specific things that needed to be fixed.
Webb's bill calls for more law enforcement training on the use of lineups,
interrogations, eyewitness testimony and biological evidence.
It also proposes more training for judges on mental-health issues. And, it
attempts to improve DNA storage and testing - a crucial piece of the bill, says
Webb, because of the dozens of wrongful convictions across the country.
"It's, you know, not too comprehensive," she concedes. "I'm a realist. I think
it's things that we've talked about in the past and hopefully can reach a
consensus."
Pennsylvania's governor said his state's moratorium will remain in effect until
problems cited by an advisory commission are addressed - a situation similar to
Kentucky's.
When the ABA issued its report in December 2011 the panel of lawyers,
professors and retired judges recommended a temporary suspension of the death
penalty.
(source: WMKY news)
ARKANSAS:
Justices hear arguments on state's execution law
The Arkansas Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday about whether a 2013
law enacted by state legislators gave too much authority to the Arkansas
Department of Correction to set lethal-injection protocol.
Last year, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen declared that Act 139
of 2013 violated separation-of-powers principles and was therefore a "clear
violation" of the Arkansas Constitution. His ruling put lethal injection on
hold in the state unless the Supreme Court decides otherwise or legislators
rewrite the law.
Griffen's ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed in April of 2013 by 9
death-row inmates who challenged the latest rewrite of the Method of Execution
Act, which replaced the electric chair with lethal injection in 1983. The
inmates had already prevailed in 2 earlier lawsuits challenging legislative
rewrites of the law.
In his ruling, Griffen said that "Simply put," the 2013 law "suffers from the
same separation-of-powers infirmity that caused our Supreme Court to declare
its predecessor invalid."
In 2012, the Supreme Court said the Legislature "abdicated its responsibility
and passed to the executive branch [the Correction Department] the unfettered
discretion to determine all protocols and procedures, most notably the
chemicals to be used, for a state execution."
The legislative branch of government can delegate its decision-making authority
to an executive agency as long as the delegation is accompanied by "reasonable
guidelines" that set "appropriate standards" for the agency to use that
authority, Griffen said. He found that the 2013 law still gave the department
too much leeway to decide what type of drug should be used and how it should be
administered. He said that specifying only that the department use a
"barbiturate" isn't adequate.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Merritt told the justices that the 2013
version of the law "provides sufficient guidance" to prison officials and
"accurately constrains" the department's discretion.
In response to a question from Justice Robin Wynne, Merritt said the words
"ultra short-acting barbiturate" were removed from the state law because such a
drug had become increasingly difficult to obtain. She said legislators tried to
remedy the problem by enacting a "very broad statute," as most states have --
to which Wynne replied that his own research has found that "a number of
states" specify the drugs to be used.
Justice Karen Baker noted that Act 139 "lacks any sort of requirement for
medical personnel," to which Merritt replied that "selecting appropriate
personnel is an executive function."
Josh Lee, an assistant federal public defender who is representing the inmates,
said the statute gives the department the discretion on whether to have medical
personnel on hand.
"What the General Assembly has said is, 'We can have a quick and painless
death, or a slow and agonizing death. Department of Correction, it's up to
you,'" Lee said.
He urged the justices to consider the dangers of vesting too much authority in
the department, pointing out, "There is nothing in the lethal-injection act
saying it has to be humane."
Statutes in Kansas and Ohio, unlike the Arkansas statute, specify that the
lethal-injection protocol "should cause a quick and painless death," he said.
He answered affirmatively when Justice Paul Danielson asked if the law would be
cured by specifying that the procedure must be "swift and humane." But Baker
wondered how that phrase would be defined.
Lee said the 2013 revision of the law would permit whoever was designated to
carry out a lethal injection in Arkansas to personally decide whether a
particular inmate has a "slow and agonizing" death or a "quick and painless"
death, based on the facts of the case that led to the death sentence.
Baker said that surely the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which
protects against cruel and unusual punishment and supersedes any state statute,
would prevent that, but Lee said he isn't so certain.
While acknowledging that the Eighth Amendment doesn't require Arkansas to enact
a "swift and humane" protocol, Merritt told the justices that "it is extremely
difficult for the Legislature to codify everything," and said she feared that
adding that phrase would generate "endless litigation."
When Baker asked how an executioner would choose which barbiturate to use,
Merritt replied that the department's protocol would specify a particular drug.
But she conceded that under the 2013 statute, "This act would allow any
barbiturate."
Merritt tried to steer the justices away from questions about medical issues,
reminding them that the issue is separation of powers.
Similarly, Lee said in an emailed statement after the hearing, "This case is
really not about the death penalty. It is about making sure that government
agencies don't exceed their authority. Not just prisoners but also Arkansas
businesses and ordinary citizens need government agencies to stay within the
limits of their constitutional authority."
(source: arkansasonline.com)
MISSOURI:
MU law professor highlights 'serious problems' in Missouri dealth penalty
process
2 bipartisan state bills focusing on death penalty reform - Senate Bill 393 and
House Bill 561 - have more to do with fixing "serious problems" affecting the
entire Missouri criminal justice system and less to do with the morality of
executions, MU law professor Paul Litton said Thursday. Litton was co-chair of
an 8-member team of prominent Missouri jurists tasked by the American Bar
Association with studying potential flaws in the fairness and accuracy of the
state's capital justice system. The group's 2-year, 400-plus-page report was
released in 2012.
Litton highlighted some of the report's recommendations at a meeting hosted by
opponents of the death penalty at the Missouri United Methodist Church. The
event, "Moratorium Now: Promoting Reforms for Greater Fairness and Accuracy in
Missouri's Death Penalty" drew about 40 people. Recommendations included
changes to the state's investigative procedures, where the most serious
problems were found, he said.
Other recommendations aimed at reducing wrongful convictions would require
police departments to: record an entire interrogation with a suspect from
beginning to end; inform eyewitnesses reviewing a police lineup that a suspect
may not be in the lineup; and ensure the police officer leading the lineup
doesn't know who the suspect is in order not to influence the results.
"These are relevant to the whole criminal justice system, not just death
penalty cases," Litton said.
At Thursday's event, state Rep. Stephen Webber, D-Columbia, said he has long
supported reform in the state's capital punishment practices.
"Every single person I've ever met believes government makes mistakes," Webber
said, adding that the death penalty is something where "you can't make a
mistake."
Both SB 393 and HB 561 would create a task force to analyze the state's capital
punishment system, while placing a moratorium on the death penalty until
January 2018. The bipartisan Senate bill is sponsored by Sens. Jill Schupp,
D-Creve Coeur, and Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph; HB 561 was sponsored by Rep. John
Rizzo, D-Kansas City, and cosponsored by 11 members including three
Republicans.
Missouri has executed 81 people since 1976, including 10 last year, which tied
it with Texas for the state with most executions.
(source: The Missourian)
***********************
Groups sponsor death penalty talk
Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and the Mid-Missouri
Fellowship of Reconciliation will hold a program called "Moratorium Now:
Promoting Reforms for Greater Fairness and Accuracy in Missouri's Death
Penalty" at 7 p.m. Thursday in Whittler Hall at Missouri United Methodist
Church, 204 S. Ninth St.
Paul Litton, an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of
Law, who co-chaired the Missouri Death Penalty Assessment Team, and other legal
experts will talk about the state's death penalty system.
(source: Columbia Daily Tribune)
MONTANA:
Judiciary Committee advances bill abolishing death penalty
By a slim margin, the House Judiciary Committee has advanced a bill to abolish
the death penalty in Montana and replace it with life imprisonment without
parole.
The panel voted 11-10 on to send House Bill 370 to the floor for debate.
The vote marks a dramatic turnaround for death penalty-abolishment advocates,
as the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee has killed similar bills
in several previous legislative sessions.
"I was shocked," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. David "Doc" Moore, R-Missoula.
"I didn't expect it to come out of committee. I kind of feel I've got a tiger
by the tail here."
The bill now advances to the House floor for debate. Moore said he figures the
odds of the bill passing the full House are 50-50.
"I know everyone has their own personal beliefs on it," he said. "I don't think
that anything anyone says on the House floor during deliberations is going to
sway anyone."
2 Republicans - Reps. Clayton Fiscus of Billings and Bruce Meyers of Box Elder
- joined all 9 Democrats to vote for HB370 in committee, while the other 10
Republicans opposed the bill.
"Our death penalty is a joke," Fiscus said Thursday.
After people are sentenced to the death penalty, he said taxpayers have to
spend $3 million or $4 million providing them with public defenders, including
one specializing in death penalty cases, to say they belong in prison.
Another reason Fiscus said he voted for the bill is that life in prison without
parole "is worse than the death penalty" for the convicted person.
Fiscus said he also opposes the death penalty, to eliminate any worry about
executing an innocent person.
Meyers explained his opposition to the death penalty by saying he came from a
background of having a Native American father and a mother with a Christian
background.
"That was part of my conscience, the way I was raised," he said. "Native
Americans view all life as being sacred."
From a Christian perspective, Meyers said he prefers the New Testament, which
"calls for mercy and grace" over the "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth"
philosophy of the Old Testament.
Moore recounted what he said in the committee hearing last week about the death
penalty.
"You've got to decide yourself whether you personally could pull a trigger or
press that button or pull the lever," he said.
(source: Ravalli Republic)
CALIFORNIA----new death sentence
Killer in 2009 triple murder rampage gets death penalty
In handing down a death sentence Thursday for a man who orchestrated the
killings of his cousin and 2 other people in just over a month in 2009, a judge
said the defendant went on a "murderous rampage" and deserved the ultimate
punishment.
Robert Louis Caballero - who knocked over a chair as he was being led into
court by more than a half-dozen Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies - blurted
out an expletive as one of his attorneys asked that the jury's Sept. 16 death
penalty recommendation be reduced to life in prison without parole.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen denied the request, calling the
crimes "atrocious" and noting that 3 people were "brutally murdered."
"You went on a murderous rampage that shows a ... callous disregard for human
life," the judge told the defendant.
Jurors deliberated about an hour before finding Caballero, 37, guilty of
1st-degree murder for the Sept. 29, 2009, shooting death of Armando Vidana of
Pomona, the Nov. 5, 2009, strangulation of Lorraine Minjarez of Covina, and the
Nov. 6, 2009, bludgeoning death of his cousin, David Padilla, of El Monte.
In addition to 3 counts of 1st-degree murder, Caballero was convicted of 2
counts of kidnapping and 1 count each of assault with a firearm, possession of
a firearm by a felon and evading an officer.
Jurors found true gang and gun allegations, along with special circumstance
allegations of lying in wait, murder during the course of a kidnapping and
multiple murders.
Deputy District Attorney Sarika Kim told the panel that Caballero made Minjarez
"sit and listen as her grave was being dug."
The 32-year-old woman's body was found in the Angeles National Forest along
Mount Baldy Road. The prosecutor said Caballero lured Minjarez to a car in a
"cold and callous way," gathered what he needed to kill her, forced her to hike
to her gravesite, tightened a rope around her neck as she struggled to breathe
and then directed co-defendant Pete Trejo Jr. to bury her body.
Padilla, 29, was bludgeoned and strangled and was found near the Union Pacific
railroad tracks near Walnut Avenue in Chino. The prosecutor said Caballero
ordered co-defendant Andrew Valenzuela to strangle Padilla because he had
decided he didn't trust him any longer.
Caballero was arrested in November 2009 after a police chase that ended in a
crash in Montclair.
At the time, authorities said he was wanted on a warrant for Vidana's killing.
The motive for the 25-year-old Pomona man's killing was unclear.
One of Padilla's sisters, Inez Roacho, told the judge that "there are no
adequate words to describe the pain, anger and despair that I've felt from his
murder."
" ... What has kept me focused since David's murder is the promise I made to
myself and my loved ones when I saw him laid out on the cold table at the
funeral home, I promised that whomever did this to him that justice would be
served and now I pass that promise on to you," she told the judge while asking
him to impose the maximum sentence. "It is my wish that no one ever again would
have to go through a tragedy like ours."
In a statement read by the prosecutor, another of Padilla's sisters, Isabel
Garcia, wrote that "it's already been 5 years that he was taken from us, but
the pain feels like it was just yesterday."
In comments addressed to the defendant, the woman wrote, "I pray to God every
night that he will give me the strength to forgive you but as for now all I
want is you to pay for what you did, because not only did you take a brother
from myself and my sisters but because you took a father from my nieces and now
they have to grow up without their dad. How do you do that? How do you live
with yourself knowing you took someone's life, not just anyone's life, but your
own cousin!"
Trejo and Valenzuela - who were tried along with Caballero - were sentenced
Oct. 3 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Trejo was convicted
of 1st-degree murder and kidnapping in connection with Minjarez's death, while
Valenzuela was convicted of 1st-degree murder and kidnapping involving
Padilla's death.
(source: mynewsLA.com)
OREGON:
Gov. Brown says she'll keep Kitzhaber's death penalty moratorium
Taking rapid-fire questions from the press in her ceremonial office in the
Capitol, Oregon's new governor Kate Brown didn't flinch.
Before anyone could ask her about it, she dispensed with the question of who
would fill her shoes in her former position as secretary of state by saying she
would make her selection Friday, March 6.
Otherwise, she fielded questions from a wide range of issues spanning the
political spectrum as reporters tried to feel out where she will come down on
issues.
She said she'll keep her predecessor's moratorium on the death penalty in place
and "there needs to be a broader discussion about fixing the system. Until that
discussion, I'm upholding the moratorium imposed by (former) Gov. (John)
Kitzhaber."
In November 2011, Kitzhaber declared that no one on death row would be executed
in Oregon under his watch. It set off a firestorm of controversy, and
surprisingly, the man who led the charge against Kitzhaber was a convicted
murderer on death row, Gary Haugen. Haugen argued Kitzhaber should follow the
law and let him be executed.
In a phone interview with KATU's Steve Dunn earlier in the week - the same day
Brown was inaugurated - Haugen said she hopes the new governor will "follow the
will of the people and follow the law."
On education, Brown said she was committed to reducing class sizes and
stabilizing funding, but she deflected on a question whether she favors keeping
in place Kitzhaber's creation: the Oregon Education Investment Board.
She is now the chair of that board, which Kitzhaber envisioned as an
overarching entity that would work to streamline the education system from
birth to career. It was one of his top policy initiatives.
The Legislature this year will decide whether to keep the board or let it die.
Transparency was one of her mainstays as secretary of state, and many people
view the lack of it got Kitzhaber in trouble, which eventually forced him to
resign last week amid a whirlwind scandal involving his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes.
Newspapers, especially KATU's news partners at Willamette Week, published story
after story detailing Hayes' private contracts that appeared to create a
conflict of interest within the governor's office.
As she did during her inaugural speech, Brown pledged to be open with
Oregonians.
"I will run an inclusive and transparent administration that???s focused on how
to do what's best for Oregonians. I want to hear from all sides," she said.
She said she and her husband, Dan Little, are excited about moving into the
governor's mansion, Mahonia Hall.
"The downside is that I don't have a dog at this time, so I won't be able to
join in all the dog parties that apparently happen," she said.
**************************
Death row inmate Haugen wants Gov. Brown to follow the law
2-time convicted murderer and death row inmate Gary Haugen wanted former Gov.
John Kitzhaber to let his execution go forward.
But in November 2011, Kitzhaber, a death penalty opponent, issued a moratorium
on all executions while he was in office. Now that Kitzhaber has resigned, amid
an ethics scandal surrounding his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, Haugen said he wants
Kitzhaber's successor Gov. Kate Brown to "follow the will of the people and
follow the law."
The law right now allows for the death penalty.
Haugen made his statements in a phone call he initiated with KATU's anchor
Steve Dunn on Wednesday, the same day Kitzhaber stepped down and Brown took his
place.
Haugen said he wants Brown to "not just pick and choose the pieces of the law
you wanna follow or not."
Just weeks before Haugen was supposed to be executed by lethal injection in
2011, Kitzhaber declared that he wouldn't let anyone be executed on his watch
as governor.
Haugen challenged Kitzhaber in court, saying he wanted to die, and his case
went before the Oregon Supreme Court where justices ultimately ruled the
governor had the authority to deny Haugen's wish to be executed.
Kitzhaber's moratorium expires 20 days after he leaves office unless Brown
chooses to extend it.
"I'm still waiting," Haugen said, expressing displeasure that he believes he's
been in limbo on the taxpayer's dime. "I said (Kitzhaber's) not going to do
anything. He's just doing this out of ego."
Ultimately, Haugen said he wished Kitzhaber would have pardoned him as he left
office.
"I mean, why not? The guy issued an unprecedented reprieve on me, which could
have lasted up to 7 years or even longer, depending on whatever Kate decides to
do, and a reprieve is a gift. It's a thing of grace you grant for some noble
act ... and he did nothing, he just sat me here all wrapped up in Charlotte's
Web wondering, geez, is this guy ever going to get around to following the
people's will or is he going to do who knows? ... "I don't know what I did to
deserve a reprieve, let alone an act of grace up until he supposedly left
office," Haugen said. "Why not just pardon me? But what he did was he didn't do
anything."
(source for both: KATU news)
*********************
Oregonians need to tackle death-penalty debate
Death penalty opponents were disappointed Wednesday morning when Gov. John
Kitzhaber slunk out of office without commuting the sentences of the 33 men and
1 woman on Oregon's death row.
His inaction should not have surprised them. Despite Kitzhaber's stated
revulsion over capital punishment, he took 1 - and only 1 - bold move with
regards to Oregon's death penalty system. In November 2011, he stayed the
planned execution of inmate Gary Haugen. Choking up at times, the governor who
had twice previously presided over the lethal injections of death-row prisoners
vowed he would allow no more executions on his watch and denounced Oregon's
costly death-penalty system for failing "to meet basic standards of justice."
Kitzhaber then followed up his impassioned speech with... silence. Even after
Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, introduced legislation in 2013 that would
refer a constitutional amendment abolishing the death penalty to voters,
Kitzhaber largely stayed out of the picture. When the bill came up for a
hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, Kitzhaber sent a letter. The governor
was out of town, Greenlick said. The bill died in committee.
In the 3 years since Haugen's reprieve, however, the death-penalty machinery
has kept running. Oregon's death row added a new inmate, David Ray Taylor. A
longtime inmate, Allen Gary Zweigart, died of natural causes. Another death row
prisoner, Travis Lee Gibson, is now serving a life sentence after his death
sentence was vacated in 2012. And inmate Robert Langley, whose
multimillion-dollar case has been back and forth to the Oregon Supreme Court,
has been sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of Anne Louise Gray -- for a
4th time.
But the immediate issue is what happens to Haugen, who had volunteered for
execution in 2011 as a way to protest a legal system he considered corrupt. His
request forced Kitzhaber's hand in the first place, but the reprieve dissolved
with the governor's departure from office.
The next move is up to the state, but it is also unclear what path Haugen wants
to pursue. He told The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board in a phone call
that part of him wants to proceed with the execution as a way to continue his
protest. After all, he noted, what has changed? What has Kitzhaber's reprieve
accomplished?
There are other reasons for Oregonians to consider once again whether they want
to keep a legally flawed system that costs millions to administer but results
in a life sentence for the vast majority of inmates.
Nationally, the mood toward the death penalty has shifted. Washington's
governor declared a moratorium on executions in 2014, and Pennsylvania's
governor similarly imposed a stay just this month.
With manufacturers refusing to make one of the drugs often used in lethal
injections, states have revised their drug protocols -- raising questions of
their role in recent botched executions. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has
asked states to hold off on executions until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on an
appeal from Oklahoma inmates challenging the constitutionality of its lethal
injection drug protocol.
And, as always, there is the question of innocence. In the past 3 years, 11
inmates across the country who had been sentenced to die have been exonerated,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit research group
whose board members oppose the death penalty. Mistakes occur in Oregon's legal
system as well, from the quality of legal representation to the improper
introduction of evidence.
Is Oregon ready to vote on a ballot measure? Greenlick, who has reintroduced
his abolition bill for the 2015 session, told The Oregonian/OregonLive
editorial board that he is unsure whether legislators will support it. And, as
in 2013, it's unclear whether activist groups have the fundraising and
organizational capacity to champion a campaign.
Still, he said, it's long past time to have the conversation, adding that he
believes voters would approve abolition if the campaign could raise enough
money to explain its reasons. "That's a big if," he said.
In his commanding November 2011 speech, Kitzhaber noted that lawyers, judges,
victims' families and others agreed that the death-penalty system was broken.
"But we have done nothing," he said at the time. "We have avoided the
question."
It's as if he could see into the next 3 years of his governorship and was
summing up his own accomplishments on the death penalty front. It's time for
the Legislature and Oregonians to move the conversation forward. We have
avoided the question for too long.
(source: The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board)
WASHINGTON:
Death penalty challenge going nowhere this year
A bill to abolish the state's death penalty died Thursday.
The state House Judiciary Committee did not address the bill Thursday, which
was the last day that the committee will meet this week. Friday is the cut-off
deadline for getting policy-only bills out of committee for any further
consideration during the 2015 legislative session.
Committee chair Rep. Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, said the general public is not
ready to repeal the death penalty, and the bill's purpose this session was to
promote public discussion on the topic. The thought is that discussion can
prepare the way for a more receptive public in the future. She said the
strategy is similar to the public gradually becoming more receptive to gay
marriage.
A bipartisan group of four representatives had introduced the bill. A Wednesday
committee hearing on the subject brought strong support for repealing the death
penalty. Only the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs
testified against the bill, which was introduced by Reps. Reuven Carlyle,
D-Seattle, Maureen Walsh, R-Walla Walla, Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, and Chad
Magendanz, R-Issaquah.
On Wednesday, Carlyle, Walsh, Orwall and Magendanz argued that imposing the
death penalty is prohibitively expensive, and they pointed to the chance of
erroneously sending an innocent person to death row.
9 people are on the state's death row. A year ago, Gov. Jay Inslee declared a
moratorium on executions that will last until he leaves office. Some death
penalty opponents have criticized his approach as failing to resolve the
question.
(source: Kitsap Sun)
***********************
Bill to abolish death penalty doesn't pass out of committee
An effort to abolish the death penalty in Washington state isn't moving forward
in the Legislature this year.
House Bill 1739, which received a public hearing this week, was scheduled for a
vote in the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, but it was not brought up for a
vote on the last day before a key policy bill deadline. The chairwoman of the
committee said she's personally supportive of the bill, but said that she
didn't think this was the right time to move forward with it.
The measure would have replaced capital punishment with life in prison, with no
opportunity for parole. It also would have required those convicted to work in
prison in order to pay restitution to victims' families.
Last year, Gov. Jay Inslee issued a moratorium on capital punishment for as
long as he's in office.
(source: Associated Press)
USA:
It's time to kill the death penalty
Following multiple botched executions in Oklahoma, the Supreme Court asked the
state to halt executions until the court could review the process.
This week, the soon-to-be outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder proposed taking
it a step further at a National Press event.
Holder called for a nationwide moratorium on executions until "fundamental
questions" are asked.
This case in particular has been focused on whether lethal injection protocols
are consistent with the Constitutional abolishment of cruel and unusual
punishment.
But I would argue the court - and the country as a whole - should cast a wider
net on the death penalty issue.
The legal developments of recent years regarding capital punishment should be
enough to justify a more comprehensive review of the death penalty and how it
is used.
Though questioning whether lethal injection is a proper way of carrying out the
death penalty is important - as is questioning the virtue of having the death
penalty at all - I would point to a question with much larger implications.
Is the death penalty levied unfairly against the poor and minorities?
And if it is, can we justify its existence at all?
Since Northwestern University's law school began evaluating and defending
capital punishment cases through the Bluhm Legal Clinic, revelations about the
legitimacy of death penalty convictions have been called into question.
The center has helped to exonerate several inmates and found 5.6 percent of
convictions in Illinois alone were eventually overturned during a 25 year
period.
Further, questions of why some receive the death penalty and others don't for
seemingly similar crimes have arisen.
A study published in the Journal of Criminal Law in 2009 examined claims that
courts unfairly applied the death penalty to the poor.
It found the ability to hire a lawyer significantly reduced and sometimes
entirely eliminated the chance of a death sentence. The study also emphasized
that, though there was significant anecdotal evidence of discrimination against
minorities, there has been little effort to investigate the claims.
The discrimination against the poor and minorities by our justice system is a
much more important question than whether protocols are appropriate or whether
the death penalty should be legal on moral grounds.
Our justice system is built on a presumption of innocence and commitment to the
principle that it is better to let a guilty man go free than to convict an
innocent man.
We all understand mistakes happen and our justice system is not perfect. But
when a person's life is at stake, a just society can't settle for "good
enough."
To justify the existence of such a punishment, we need to ensure it isn't
handed out solely to those who can't afford a good lawyer, and we need to
ensure facts, not race, drive convictions.
Until we can guarantee the principles of our justice system are upheld in
capital cases, we can't justify killing our own people.
(source: Jared Thompson, The (Univ. Indiana) Indiana Daily Student)
********************************************
Market forces determine media coverage of death penalty decisions by state high
courts.
What determines how death penalty cases are covered by the media? In new
research, Richard L. Vining, Jr., Teena Wilhelm and Jack D. Collens argue that
the press does not treat all cases equally, and that they are more likely to
report on cases that will have broad appeal and increase their sales and
profits. They find that a newspaper is nearly 60 % more likely to cover a death
penalty case decision if the offender is a woman and about 30 % more likely if
the sentence or conviction is overridden.
One persistent assumption among scholars of state politics is that capital
cases are salient, or have the potential to be salient, to judges and citizens.
That is, death penalty cases are more interesting to the public than others
decided by state supreme courts. A Louisiana justice admitted to Melinda Gann
Hall decades ago that he voted contrary to his preferences in capital cases to
appease the public, largely because they had the potential to be newsworthy and
generate unwanted negative attention. A steady stream of systematic, empirical
research has reaffirmed the influence of constituents on death penalty
decisions. One need look no further than the famous electoral defeats of
multiple California justices (1986) and Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Penny
White (1996) to see the potential consequences of shirking public and elite
preferences in capital cases. However, we have little evidence regarding which
death penalty decisions are likely to be salient for the press, public or
elites. Although scholars have studied news about murder trials and executions,
we lack systematic information about coverage of state high courts' death
penalty rulings. Given that the media inform the public and elites about the
activities of judicial institutions, we believe it is necessary to understand
which cases the press finds newsworthy and why. In new research, we present a
market-based model of state Supreme Court news, arguing that the press focuses
on cases that are likely to attract a broader audience and therefore increase
their revenues and profits.
Research by Doris Graber and others established that news outlets devote space
in the news hole to events based on their potential impact, degree of conflict
or scandal, familiarity, proximity (to the news outlets' base of operations),
and timeliness (or novelty). While we acknowledge the importance of this
research, we draw primarily on the economic model of news content advanced by
James T. Hamilton. It assumes that news outlets seek to maximize revenues by
drawing more readers/viewers and, as a result, more sales and advertising. This
is achieved by providing a mix of hard and soft news of interest to a diverse
audience. A key component of this theory is the need to provide news that
appeals to both the typical hard news consumer and potential audience members
who lack interest in news for its own sake.
We apply this framework to coverage of death penalty appeals in state supreme
courts to determine whether case characteristics appealing to a mass audience
influence the selection of news content. We identified factors that are novel
or sensational (White, juvenile, female, or intellectually disabled offender,
more victims, elderly or juvenile victims, and fewer executions in the state
over time), indicative of higher stakes (amicus filings, constitutional issues,
non-procedural issues), or dramatic (conviction/sentence overrides, dissent).
We also controlled for (state-specific) institutional factors related to the
type of judicial selection system and journalistic norms (gatekeeping via prior
coverage).
Our analysis determined which factors lead to front-page coverage or any
coverage in the most circulated newspaper in 27 death penalty states on the day
after a decision. It includes about 3/4 of the capital cases from 1995 to 1998
in the State Supreme Court Data Archive compiled by Paul Brace and Melinda Gann
Hall. We focus on the conditions associated with providing any news content
about a state high court's decision in a death penalty case rather than only
front-page coverage.
Likelihood of Any Coverage of Death Penalty Case Decision
Figure 1 above displays the predicted likelihood that a newspaper will devote
attention to a death penalty decision if certain conditions are met. In red is
a baseline prediction (an 18.6 % likelihood), which shows the predicted
likelihood of covering a case with a male offender, one victim, no prior
coverage, and an actual/non-procedural challenge. When the paper has recently
covered a case, the likelihood of covering the outcome increases to 78 %.
Sentence overrides (31.2 %) and conviction overrides (28.2 %) increase
substantially the likelihood of coverage. This is not surprising as the
decision to reverse a sentence of death or conviction is a dramatic event and
implies that judges are shirking the public's wishes. Cases with only
procedural challenges are about half as likely to be covered, as the likelihood
drops from 18.6 % to 9.2 %.
Finally, the likelihood that a case receives media attention increases to 57.2
% when the offender is a female. The novelty of such cases makes them
interesting to the public. However, their rarity also reduces our confidence in
the prediction as indicated by the wide confidence interval for female
offenders.
These results of the analysis are interesting because of both the significant
findings and the factors that fail to influence coverage. General coverage of
capital cases does not increase as a result of a fewer executions in the
post-Gregg era (but we do find a positive relationship between execution
novelty and front-page coverage). We also do not find that newspapers in states
with elected judges pay more attention to death penalty decisions. This is
surprising given the greater potential role of the press in elective rather
than appointive selection systems. We also find that few case facts fail to
influence coverage, though the number of victims and the offender's gender do
so.
Our findings demonstrate that journalists are selective when deciding whether
to cover state high courts' death penalty decisions. States' elite newspapers
(and, by extension, the public) pay more attention to cases which are novel or
sensational (with female offenders or a greater number of victims), have higher
stakes (focus on non-procedural challenges), or result in more dramatic
outcomes (conviction/sentence overrides). Typical indicators of legal salience
including constitutional issues, amicus filings, judicial dissent, and
offender/victim status fail to attract media coverage systematically. This
means that we should not assume that media treat all death penalty cases
equally, or that all death penalty cases are particularly high-profile and
salient. Our results provide a more nuanced look at public fascination with our
country's most punitive form of justice.
(source: This article is based on the paper 'A Market-Based Model of State
Supreme Court News Lessons from Capital Cases', in State Politics & Policy
Quarterly----London School of Economics)
**********************************
Looking to the Founders: Capital Punishment
Last week, the Utah House reignited the capital punishment controversy by
approving a measure to bring back the firing squad as a legal form of execution
in response to growing court challenges over lethal injection.
Wyoming approved a similar law in January, joining Oklahoma as the only states
with the firing squad approved in the event of court rulings against lethal
injection.
Too often, the death penalty debate centers on what the Founding Fathers meant
by the phrase "cruel and unusual punishments," and many death penalty appeals
request further court guidance and intervention.
What did the Founding Fathers mean when they wrote the Bill of Rights? And more
importantly, what did they do in practice?
English Common Law
The Founding Fathers were an exceedingly educated group of men, with 30 of the
55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention being college graduates.
While many pursued several (and varied) careers, 35 of them were also accepted
to the bar to practice law.
An enormous part of their education was learning the traditions of English
Common Law from Edward Coke's Institute:
What the medieval cases and traditions were to Coke, Coke's Second Institute
and the decisions of the common law courts he discusses or that followed him,
were to the American lawyers before the Revolution.
Of all of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson is probably the best known for
quoting from Coke's Institute - Jefferson's copy is on display at the Library
of Congress. It was also quoted numerous times in early U.S. Supreme Court
cases in the various justices' opinions.
It is through Coke's Institute that we can see the common - and gruesome -
punishment of the day for the treasonous:
After a traitor has had his just trial, and is convicted ... he shall have his
judgment: to be drawn to the place of execution from his prison, as being not
worthy anymore to tread upon the face of earth whereof he was made. Also, for
that he has been retrograde to nature, therefore is he drawn backward ....
And whereas God has made the head of man the highest and most supreme part, as
being his chief grace and ornament, he must be drawn with his head declining
downward and lying so near the ground as may be, being thought unfit to take
benefit of the common air.
For which cause also he shall be strangled, being hanged up by the neck between
heaven and earth as deemed unworthy of both or either, as likewise, that the
eyes of men may behold and their hearts condemn him.
Then he is to be cut down alive, and to have his privy parts cut off and burnt
before his face as being unworthily begotten and unfit to lead any generation
after him. His bowels ... taken out and burnt, who inwardly had conceived and
harboured such horrible treason.
After, to have his head cut off, which had imagined the mischief.
And lastly, his body to be quartered and the quarters set up in some high and
eminent place, to the view and detestation of men, and to become prey for the
fowls of the air.
And this is a reward due to traitors whose heart be hardened. For it is a
psychic of state and government to let out our corrupt blood from the heart.
Coke added that a traitor's assets would be seized by the Crown as further
punishment for the crime (often leaving their family in poverty).
This was the punishment that the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence
faced when they gave their solemn oath to each other:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection
of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes
and our sacred Honor.
Nearly 100 years after the ratification of the Constitution, the Supreme Court
defined, for the 1st time, the meaning and limits to "cruel and unusual."
In Wilkerson v. Utah (1878), the court upheld Utah territorial law requiring
1st degree murderers to face death by "being shot, hanged, or beheaded."
The court ruled that "cruel and unusual" applied only to drawing and
quartering, public dissection, burning alive, or disembowelment.
1st Federal Execution
The federal government didn't have to wait long to be faced with its 1st
capital case. In fact, the defendant waited in jail for a year for the federal
courts to be organized under the Constitution.
A small British slave ship wrecked off the coast of Falmouth, Massachusetts
(current site of Portland, Maine) under suspicious circumstances.
The captain had been murdered, and only 4 people were on the boat when it was
rescued: an American, a Norwegian, a Brit, and a teenage African boy.
The British sailor, Thomas Bird, was arrested and charged with murder, mutiny,
and other maritime crimes. Massachusetts courts initially planned to handle the
case, but deferred to federal courts once Massachusetts had ratified the
Constitution.
While waiting a year for trial, Bird carved toy boats for the jail keeper's
children, which was recounted by 1 during an interview when he was in his 90s.
Falmouth had been burned and razed by the British Navy during the Revolution,
and some accounts suggested the ensuing trial was a form of retribution.
Without lengthy wrangling or constant appeals, Bird was executed by hanging,
with the U.S. Marshall's service in charge of the execution.
The First Congress had enacted that the U.S. Marshall was responsible for
carrying out all federal executions, highlighting the fact that the Founding
Fathers anticipated the need and usage of capital punishment.
America, 2015
In 2014, U.S. Ninth Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote a scathing
dissent in the Arizona death penalty case of Joseph Rudolph Wood III:
Executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to
do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out
executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing
a horrendous brutality on our behalf.
At the heart of his dissent was his opinion that foolproof, but gory methods of
execution like beheading or firing squads should be brought back - that the
state shouldn't try to conceal the brutality of the act.
Kozinski also noted that the average death row inmate in California was more
likely to die from old age than from execution.
At the time of the Founding Fathers, the time between conviction and execution
could be measured in days. A century later, the courts argued that being held
in solitary confinement for 4 weeks prior to execution imposed "horrible
feelings" in the condemned.
Currently, death row inmates average 190 months of incarceration prior to
execution.
While this is mostly caused by their own appeals, it creates a system where the
punishment is too distant from the crime itself, and sometimes these appeals
exonerate the convicted.
Since 2007, 6 states have abolished the death penalty, raising the total number
of states without a death penalty to 18.
When Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signed the bill abolishing the death
penalty in 2012, he pointed out that:
In the last 52 years, only 2 people have been put to death in Connecticut - and
both of them volunteered for it. Instead, the people of this state pay for
appeal after appeal, and then watch time and again as defendants are marched in
front of the cameras, giving them a platform of public attention they don't
deserve.
Malloy has a point; it is often cheaper for the state and more comforting to
the victim's family for the convicted to be sentenced to life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole.
There is no doubt that the Founding Fathers intended there to be a death
penalty in the United States. But in 2015, we should consider alternate
sentencing that removes criminals from society with the smallest cost or risk
of wrongful execution.
(source: ivn.us)
************************
Is the death penalty Christian?
The attorney general, Eric Holder, yesterday called for an end to executions in
America, or at the very least, a lengthy moratorium. This naturally raises the
question about what the Christian view of capital punishment is. It's a
question worth answering.
Capital punishment was instituted by God following the flood of Noah. According
to Genesis 9:5-6, God says, "From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for
the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be
shed, for God made man in his image."
Here God is clearly delegating his authority to man - "by man shall his blood
be shed" - to carry out the death penalty for the wanton taking of innocent
human life. God himself is the one who is requiring this "reckoning for the
life of man," because the murderer has destroyed someone created "in his
image." Murder defaces and destroys the image of God, and for that God demands
an accounting.
Prior to the flood, capital punishment was not allowed as a punishment for
crime or as a deterrent for homicide. In fact, God himself declared that he
would take vengeance "sevenfold" on anyone who punished Cain for his
cold-blooded murder of Abel (Genesis 4:15).
It is as if God was saying, "Alright, you think capital punishment is barbaric.
We'll do it your way for 1700 and see how that works out." And so mankind did,
from the days of Cain until the days of Noah. How well did this kinder, gentler
approach to justice work?
It lead to vigilante justice and barbarism, as men took matters of punishment
into their own hands. Said Lamech, "I have killed a man for wounding me, a
young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is
seventy-sevenfold" (Genesis 4:23-24). So vigilante justice, without God's
authorization, was almost immediately exercised for non-capital offenses.
And by the time Noah arrived, the lack of a system of justice had so
contributed to social deterioration and the collapse of character that "the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and...every intention of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). There was nothing for
God to do but wipe everything out and start over. It was much like finding an
18-month old carton of cottage cheese in the back of a refrigerator when the
power's been out during the heat of summer. There's nothing to salvage. You
have to dump the lot and start with a fresh container. This was the story of
the flood.
So God established a new rule following the wild, wild East of the pre-flood
days. From now on, God said, murder will be dealt with through capital
punishment.
This standard is re-established in the Ten Commandments, where God succinctly
commands, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13).
The King James version, "Thou shalt not kill," has led some to erroneously
believe that God was prohibiting killing of every kind, but he most certainly
was not. The Sixth Commandment is specifically a command against cold-blooded
murder. Killing in self-defense, war, and as punishment for murder are not only
permitted but prescribed in the Scripture.
In fact, on the next page on the book of Exodus, in chapter 21, there are 6
specific crimes for which capital punishment is the prescribed penalty. As an
aside, it's worth noting that the death penalty was mandated for participation
in the slave trade: "Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in
possession of him, shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:16).
In other words, if the United States had simply followed the standards found in
Scripture, slaves never would have appeared on our shores, slavery never would
have been an issue, and the Civil War would never have been fought. Then, as
always, the Scriptures show us the way forward not just personally but
politically as well.
Capital punishment is reaffirmed by the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans as
the antidote to vigilante justice and social chaos. He tells us in Romans
12:19, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for
it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'" How does the
Lord exact vengeance? As Paul immediately goes on to say, through the
instrumentality of the state. Civil government has been invested with God's own
authority to execute justice, including capital punishment. Government "does
not bear the sword in vain," Paul says in Romans 13:4. A sword, of course, was
an instrument of lethal force.
And for what purpose does civil government bear the sword? Paul immediately
explains: "For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath
on the wrongdoer" (Romans 13:4).
It bears emphasizing that capital punishment is thus not just an Old Testament
concept, but is reaffirmed as a principle of justice under the terms of the New
Covenant in Christ.
Solomon adds an important word of wisdom, on the subject of deterrence. Many
argue - falsely it turns out - that capital punishment is no deterrent at all.
Well, it certainly deters the murderer from killing anybody ever again, which
sounds like deterrence to me.
But the Scripture indicates that unless capital punishment is carried out in a
timely manner, it not only loses its deterrent force but actually makes things
worse instead of better. "Because the sentence against an evil deed is not
executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil"
(Ecclesiastes 8:11).
Keeping murderers and serial killers alive on Death Row for a decade or more
has no deterrent effect whatsoever, and yet that's what we're doing. According
the Bureau of Justice, the average time between sentencing and execution in
America is now up to 169 months, or just over 14 years. This is up from 50
months in 1977.
By the time the sentence is carried out, the public - and potential murderers
who might have had some sense scared into them - have forgotten all about the
crime. There is simply no connection in the public mind between crime and
capital punishment.
Contrast this, for instance, with the fate of the conspirators who worked
together to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. He was assassinated on April 14, 1865.
The plotters had been apprehended, tried, and hung by the neck til dead by July
6, a scant 83 days later.
According to polling data, there still is a significant residue of
Judeo-Christian morality left when it comes to the death penalty. Gallup found
as recently as 2010 that 64% of Americans support the death penalty while just
29% oppose it. This is an encouraging result, given the relentless brainwashing
from the left to convince us otherwise. (It's worth noting that as recently as
1995, the split with 80-16 in favor of executing murderers.)
Bizarrely, in 2004 fewer people who went to church weekly favored the death
penalty (65%) compared to those who never went (71%). This is likely due to the
way in which the gospel of Christ has been feminized by the modern church, all
its firm edges sanded off in order not to offend. It's sobering to think that
people outside the church have a more biblical view of justice than those
inside the church, which certainly is an indictment of the teaching coming from
America's pulpits.
Critics argue that capital punishment demonstrates a low view of the value of
human life. It's exactly the reverse. It is imposing the death penalty that
enables a culture to declare its highest regard for life. With the death
penalty, society says that human life is so valuable that if someone takes a
human life without just cause he must forfeit his own life in return. Justice
truly is, as the book of God's truth says, "Life for life."
(source: Bryan Fischer, renewamerica.com)
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