April 13
NORTH CAROLINA:
Death penalty hearings scheduled for 2 New Hanover County murder suspects
Back-to-back death penalty hearings are scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in 2
New Hanover County murder cases.
Marshall Doran, the man suspected of lighting several fires that killed 2
people in Carolina Beach, and Harry Davis, the suspect accused of lighting a
fire that claimed 2 lives on Lingo Street in Wilmington, will both appear in
court Wednesday afternoon, according to District Attorney Ben David.
David said the 1st hearing will begin at 3 p.m. He did not specify which case
will be heard 1st.
David said the hearings will determine whether or not the state will be able to
seek the death penalty for the 2 suspects.
(source: WECT news)
FLORIDA:
Trial in Bradenton pastor's death waits to 2016
The case against a man accused of shooting his wife, a Bradenton pastor and a
neighbor is not expected to go to trial until 2016.
The Bradenton Herald reports that Andres "Andy" Avalos Jr. is charged with 3
counts of 1st-degree murder in the Dec. 4 slayings of his wife, Amber Avalos;
neighbor, Denise Potter; and the Rev. James "Tripp" Battle.
If Avalos is convicted, prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty.
Investigators said Avalos hanged his wife, beat her and then shot her. He also
gunned down Potter, who had been visiting his home.
Death penalty sought for accused Bradenton triple murderer
He then took a taxi to Bayshore Baptist Church, where investigators and
witnesses said he shot and killed Battle.
He's being held without bond in the Manatee County Jail.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Death penalty phase starts for deadly home invasion robberies
The death penalty phase is scheduled to start today in the case of a
34-year-old man, convicted on 24 charges stemming from a deadly spree of home
invasion robberies that culminated with the killing of a man in Desert Hot
Springs a decade ago.
Jurors will decide if Miguel Felix should be executed for the crimes that
occurred from the summer of 2004 until the spring of 2005 in Desert Hot
Springs, Thousand Palms, North Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Beaumont and
unincorporated county areas. The jurors also could recommend life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors said Felix was among several people who grabbed victim after victim
at or near their homes, forced them inside at gunpoint, then tied them up with
zip-ties, pistol-whipped and beat them, and ransacked their homes in search of
money or valuables.
In some cases, victims were kidnapped and taken to automatic teller machines or
other locations to obtain money, while their children or other relatives were
held at gunpoint by accomplices, prosecutors said.
In the most serious crime, Felix was convicted of 1st-degree murder with a
special circumstance for fatally shooting Armando Gonzalez at the victim's
Desert Hot Springs home on Aug. 11, 2004, during a robbery attempt.
Deputy District Attorney Lisa DiMaria said Felix and alleged accomplice Javier
Rodriguez Hernandez, who's been at large for more than a decade, went to
Gonzalez's home to rob him and shot him repeatedly when he resisted. Emergency
responders tried to save him, but Gonzalez was pronounced dead a short time
later.
The defense argued that Felix almost exclusively targeted drug dealers and that
the killing of Gonzalez was not a robbery attempt, but rather a personal feud
that boiled over.
Other charges against Felix included robbery, attempted robbery, burglary,
kidnapping and a variety of firearms charges.
Also accused in various parts of the crime spree were Hernandez, Antonio Jose
Cantu and Felix's girlfriend, Luisa Beatriz Lopez. Cantu pleaded guilty and
served 10 years in prison. Lopez fled and is believed to be hiding in Mexico.
(source: San Bernardino Sun)
USA:
152 Innocents, Marked for Death
However much Americans may disagree about the morality of capital punishment,
no one wants to see an innocent person executed.
And yet, far too often, people end up on death row after being convicted of
horrific crimes they did not commit. The lucky ones are exonerated while they
are still alive - a macabre club that has grown to include 152 members since
1973.
The rest remain locked up for life in closet-size cells. Some die there of
natural causes; in at least 2 documented cases, inmates who were almost
certainly innocent were put to death.
How many more innocent people have met the same fate, or are awaiting it? That
may never be known. But over the past 42 years, someone on death row has been
exonerated, on average, every 3 months. According to one study, at least 4 % of
all death-row inmates in the United States have been wrongfully convicted. That
is far more than often enough to conclude that the death penalty - besides
being cruel, immoral, and ineffective at reducing crime - is so riddled with
error that no civilized nation should tolerate its use.
Innocent people get convicted for many reasons, including bad lawyering,
mistaken identifications and false confessions made under duress. But as
advances in DNA analysis have accelerated the pace of exonerations, it has also
become clear that prosecutorial misconduct is at the heart of an alarming
number of these cases.
In the past year alone, nine people who had been sentenced to death were
released - and in all but 1 case, prosecutors' wrongdoing played a key role.
The latest was Anthony Ray Hinton, who on Apr. 3 walked out of the Alabama
prison where he had spent almost 30 years, 1/2 his life, on death row. Mr.
Hinton was convicted of 2 murders largely on faulty evidence that the bullets
had come from his gun. His prosecutor at the time said he knew Mr. Hinton was
guilty and "evil" just by looking at him. And later prosecutors continued to
insist on his guilt even when expert testimony clearly refuted the case against
him.
Why does this keep happening? In a remarkable letter to the editor published
last month in The Shreveport Times, A.M. Stroud III, a former prosecutor in
Louisiana's Caddo Parish, offered a chillingly frank answer: "Winning became
everything."
In 1984, Mr. Stroud convinced a jury to convict a man named Glenn Ford and
sentence him to death for murder. But Mr. Stroud now admits that because he was
so focused on winning rather than on seeking justice, he failed to identify and
turn over evidence that would have cleared Mr. Ford.
"How totally wrong was I," Mr. Stroud wrote, apologizing to Mr. Ford - who
spent 30 years in prison, 26 of those on death row - as well as his family, the
judge, the jury, and the family of the murder victim, a jeweler named Isadore
Rozeman.
This is little consolation to Mr. Ford, who was released in 2014 but is now
dying from lung cancer that developed, and went untreated, while he wasted away
in prison. (Last month a Louisiana judge denied Mr. Ford any compensation
beyond the $20 debit card he received upon his release.) Still, Mr. Stroud's
powerful message is a rare admission of prosecutorial hubris and the
outrageously high price many people pay for it.
Unfortunately, that message is unlikely to be heeded in places where it needs
to be heard most - in Caddo Parish itself, for example, which sentences more
people to death per capita than anywhere else in the country. Responding to the
searing honesty of Mr. Stroud's letter, the parish's current first assistant
district attorney, Dale Cox, offered up some candor of his own: "I'm a believer
that the death penalty serves society's interest in revenge," Mr. Cox told The
Shreveport Times. "I think we need to kill more people."
The all-too-common mind-set to win at all costs has facilitated the executions
of people like Cameron Todd Willingham or Carlos DeLuna, whose convictions have
been convincingly debunked in recent years. And that mind-set led to the
wrongful conviction of people like Mr. Hinton, Mr. Ford and Henry Lee McCollum,
who was exonerated last year after spending 3 decades on North Carolina's death
row.
If not for the extraordinary after-the-fact efforts of lawyers, investigators,
or just plain dumb luck, these men would be dead too, and neither Mr. Cox nor
anyone else would be the wiser.
(source: Editorial, New York Times)
***************
No death penalty for Tsarnaev - or anyone
It was almost inevitable that the jury in the Boston Marathon bombing trial
would reach the verdict it did. There was little doubt that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
was guilty of the heinous, despicable crimes for which he was charged; even his
lawyer acknowledged his role.
2 years ago, Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, packed 2 pressure cookers with
explosives, nails, metal shards and BBs. Then they detonated the bombs within
seconds of each other near the race's crowded finish line. The explosions
killed 3 people and wounded 264 others, many of whom lost limbs or suffered
other horrific, life-altering injuries.
It was the worst terrorist act in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, and it's understandable that few Americans feel much pity for the
young man in the dock. But early [this] week, when the same 7-woman, 5-man jury
that convicted Tsarnaev on Wednesday begins deliberating the young man's fate,
the decision-making will become even more difficult.
Under federal law, Tsarnaev is eligible for the death penalty on 17 of the 30
crimes of which he was convicted. At the outset of the trial, the jurors all
promised the judge that they would be able to sentence Tsarnaev to death if the
evidence, and the crimes, warranted it.
Tsarnaev's legal team will no doubt offer arguments for mitigation: He was only
19 when the bombings occurred. He has no prior criminal record. He was under
the influence of his older brother.
But although those things may all be true, the real reason to spare Tsarnaev's
life is that no crime warrants the death penalty. The jury should reject
capital punishment and sentence Tsarnaev to life in prison without possibility
of parole because that is how a mature society acts. Not out of vengeance. Not
out of passion. Killing another human being is immoral, whether by bomb or by
lethal injection.
It was the desire for retribution that led this page to agree in 2001 that
Timothy J. McVeigh, who murdered 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, deserved the death
penalty. But that editorial was written out of passion, not justice, and we now
regret what we wrote. It is in cases like these that a principled opposition to
the death penalty is tested, and we should have understood that.
Tsarnaev deserves no sympathy. But he should not die at the hands of his
government.
To execute Tsarnaev would be to adopt the mentality of terrorists, who seek to
sway the actions of others through violence. This country is - or at least
should be - better than that.
(source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times)
*****************
The death penalty fails as a punishment on multiple levels
Should the state have the right to end people's lives as a punishment? Is that
ever going to be effective in reducing the pain and suffering inflicted by the
most heinous crimes, let alone eradicating them completely? I do not deny that
those who commit statutory wrongs in our society should be punished, but I
wonder whether this particular disciplinary method is serving as an effective
deterrent. Outside of certain particularized situations, I can no longer accept
that it is.
Albert Camus once said, "For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by
barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime
persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the
law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium." The death penalty
should not be used simply due to the fact that the human mind is not under the
absolute directional control that the relevant laws dictate. If it was, why did
murder and treason still take place in medieval society when the punishments
for such crimes were often gruesome public executions? Why do they occur still
to this day? Human instincts regarding crimes cannot be completely framed by
the law. Their unpredictable nature doesn't allow it. Because we've relied too
much on the law, we may have forgotten about the complicated and spontaneous
nature of crime.
Not only does the death penalty seem to fail philosophically, it is also not
the most productive mechanism for crime prevention. According to a survey of
former and current presidents of the country's top academic criminological
societies, 88 % of these experts rejected the notion that the death penalty
acts as a competent deterrent to murder. In this country, the South accounts
for more than 80 % of executions. However, it is the Northeast that has the
lowest murder rate, even though it has less than 1 % of all executions. Based
on the statistics, the death penalty does not seem to properly serve the
general pursuit of the popular eye-for-an-eye logic.
The death penalty is also not the ideal option to choose based on the extremely
high cost of carrying it out. A study in California revealed that the cost of
the death penalty in that state has been more than $4 billion since 1978,
including pretrial and trial costs, costs of automatic appeals and state habeas
corpus petitions, costs of federal habeas corpus appeals and costs of
incarceration on death row. A 2009 poll commissioned by the Death Penalty
Information Center found police chiefs ranked the death penalty last among ways
to reduce violent crime. The chiefs also considered the death penalty the least
efficient use of taxpayers' money.
So, death as a punishment has generally proven to be ineffective and costly.
That wasted money could be used in helping to re-educate those who are deemed
to be adjustable to society, or manage criminals in a more organized way in
prisons. It could also be used to improve the living conditions of people
through extensive social programs targeted at preventing violent crimes. We
will never be able to prevent violence at the individual level. However, we
could use the resources more sensibly to reduce the chance of the horrible
crimes at the macro level.
In "Titus Andronicus," William Shakespeare wrote, "Terras Astraea reliquit."
This means that the goddess of justice, Astraea, has left the Earth. Because
the heavenly order has failed to give humans a reasonable justice, they are
forced to forge their own path of fairness. In the play, Titus sought violent
revenge for losing his children, murdering all the people involved in the
tragedy that had befallen him and his family. However, after realizing his
bloody goals, he dies. Ultimately, Titus' eye-for-an-eye approach, while
successful in catapulting his family to the throne, eventually sacrificed the
reputation of his country. Can this be a true justice? Surely, it cannot.
(source: Hae Rin is a freshman majoring in history----The (Univ. Wisconsin)
Daily Cardinal)
*********************
Not an execution, but an execution sermon
Last week Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty on 30 counts. Jurors - and
everyone else in and around Boston - now contemplate sentencing. Discussions
about the death penalty have a strange ring in Massachusetts, a state that
renounced it in 1984 and had its last execution 1947. Residents debate capital
punishment for the Boston Marathon bomber, with the Boston Globe arguing
against it.
What might be needed here is not an execution, but an execution sermon.
A genre distinctive (if not unique) to New England Puritans, the execution
sermon occupied an important role in the administration of justice in colonial
Massachusetts and well into the 19th century. The rhetorical form acknowledged
that punishment had a moral meaning that the state by itself could not explain.
Like many other places in the 17th and 18th centuries, public execution was a
fact of life here, and thousands might come out to watch. Thus, in church
before or at the actual execution, it was the task of a leading minister to
assess the misdeeds of the convict, to connect his punishment somehow to the
purpose and trajectory of the larger community, and to protect the event from
veering into mere vengeance or rowdy spectacle. Some of the big names of
Puritan New England - Samuel Danforth, Increase and Cotton Mather, Benjamin
Colman - preached execution sermons, affirming the duty of civil government to
assign punishment and the responsibility of the community to uphold standards
of right.
Execution sermons, importantly, reminded audiences that they and the convict
alike were stained with sin; criminals were not merely monsters but in ways
resembled others in the community who, but for the restraining grace of God,
could also fall to wickedness. Scott D. Seay posits, in Hanging Between Heaven
and Earth, that the execution sermon went through 3 phases in its long New
England history: from 17th-century linking of the convict's personal guilt to
general human depravity, to emphasis on the criminal's conversion after the
18th-century Great Awakening, up to the genre's expiry in the early 19th
century, when sermons dramatized the story of the condemned and plumbed
environmental causes of decline.
These texts might sting 21st century ears, but overall they kept clear of
sensationalizing or romanticizing crime or punishment. Puritan ministers, with
moral authority drawn from the community and affirmed by it, could encourage
the victims, temper the vindictive, and call all to rectitude.
Thankfully we have left behind the public execution. That use of state power
even behind walls gives pause. But wanting now is a moral expression like that
of the sermon occasioned by the condemned. To be sure, other voices
appropriately now are raised, from relatives of victims, bystanders,
editorialists. But this matters: the attack was felt not only by the injured
but by Boston as a whole. The brothers struck not just on Marathon Day but on
Patriots Day, which Masha Gessen, author of a recent Tsarnaev biography,
describes as a major public holiday in Boston, the "the other 4th of July." As
they commemorate the April 19, 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord, on one of
the 1st tender days of spring, Massachusetts folk cheer the Red Sox at Fenway
and revel in their state's Revolutionary role. After the attack "Boston Strong"
refrains united the city, but now reckoning is to be made, seeking justice,
sizing up the damage and healing.
Where is Cotton Mather when we need him?
(source: patheos.com)
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