July 18
FLORIDA:
2 cases delayed by new death penalty to be in Duval County court
2 death penalty cases affected by the new death penalty ruling will be in Duval
County court Monday morning.
The recent ruling stated that the death penalty law in the State of Florida is
unconstitutional.
The ruling that affects two Duval County cases has families in the courtroom
longer, which can be tiring for the family.
James Rhodes is accused of killing Shelby Farah at a Metro PCS store in 2013.
Rhodes' court appearance is expected to include motions regarding death
penalty.
Rhodes was charged in connection to the death of Farah, 20.
Farah's mother has been candid about her disagreement with the State Attorney's
Office to seek the death penalty for her daughter's accused killer. Farah's
mother said it will only keep the case going, but State Attorney Angela Corey
said the law requires her to seek death.
In the Michael Shellito case, he was convicted in the murder of 18-year-old
Sean Hathorne. Hathrone was shot in the chest in 1994 and Shellito was
sentenced to death.
But the Florida Supreme Court unanimously overturned his death sentence back in
2013 citing mental issues and that he may have suffered from brain damage from
child abuse.
Shelitto has a final pretrial hearing Monday morning. His case isn't scheduled
to go to trial until 2017.
As of today, there are 388 people in Florida on death row.
(source: actionnewsjax.com)
LOUISIANA:
Inmates' lawyers: A/C only way to prevent heat-related illness, death at Angola
With south Louisiana's summer heat and humidity kicking into high gear, the
legal battle rages on over how to best protect 3 ailing condemned killers from
extreme heat indexes on Angola's death row.
In the most recent federal court filings in the 3-year-old case, attorneys for
Elzie Ball, Nathaniel Code and James Magee insist air conditioning is the only
way to shield them from the substantial risk of heat-related illness or worse.
"Public health agencies as well as the medical community agree that exposure to
air-conditioning is the only method of preventing heat-related illness and
death in extreme heat," the inmates' attorneys, including lead lawyer Mercedes
Montagnes with The Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans, argue in
documents filed July 11 at Baton Rouge federal court.
Attorneys for state corrections officials, however, claim their second heat
remediation plan - which calls for a daily cool shower and additional ice and
fans for the prisoners - adequately remedies a violation of the constitutional
protection against cruel and unusual punishment that Chief U.S. District Judge
Brian Jackson and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in relation to
the Louisiana State Penitentiary's death row.
The state's lawyers, in documents filed July 11 as well, contend the heat
remediation plan's measures "are sufficient to cure the constitutional
violation." They argue further that the relief "extends as far as is necessary
to correct the constitutional violation in this matter."
Jackson opined last month at a hearing on the state's second remediation plan
that corrections officials have done "little if anything" to prevent heat
indexes on death row from topping 88 degrees, something he ordered them to do 2
1/2 years ago.
The state's 1st court-ordered heat remediation plan included air conditioning
for the inmates, but the 5th Circuit ruled last summer the prisoners are not
entitled to mechanical cooling. But the appellate court said they do deserve
some relief.
In their latest court filing, the state's attorneys - a combination of private
lawyers and assistant state attorney's general - say they interpret the 5th
Circuit ruling to mean the state is not required to maintain the heat index in
the inmates' cells below 88 degrees.
"The Fifth Circuit noted ... that a permanent injunction requiring (the state)
to develop a plan to keep the heat index at or below 88 degrees would
'effectively' require (the state) to install air conditioning," the state's
attorneys point out. "It is (the state's) position that the Fifth Circuit ruled
that (the state) must implement sufficient remedial measures ... when the heat
index reaches 88 degrees - not that (the state) must maintain the heat index
below 88 degrees."
In its ruling last year, the New Orleans federal appeals court suggested the
state could divert cool air from the air-conditioned guard pods into the
death-row tiers or allow the inmates access to air-conditioned areas, but
corrections officials rejected those suggestions for security and other
reasons.
The inmates' lawyers acknowledge that while no 5th Circuit case has previously
upheld an order requiring air conditioning to remedy a violation of the Eighth
Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, no authority explicitly
bars the use of air conditioning as a remedy.
"The Fifth Circuit itself suggested remedies which included exposure to air
conditioning," the prisoners' attorneys note. "The Fifth Circuit plainly
contemplated the need for remedial measures beyond ice, showers and fans."
"The Fifth Circuit has not - and could not - categorically bar the use of
air-conditioning to remedy the Eighth Amendment violation," they add.
The state's first heat remediation plan remedies the constitutional violation
and does not disrupt the effective administration of the prison, the inmates'
attorneys say.
Code is on death row for the slaying of 4 people at a house in Shreveport in
1985. Magee received the death penalty for the 2007 shotgun killing of his
estranged wife and their 5-year-old son in a subdivision near Mandeville. Ball
was condemned to die for fatally shooting a beer delivery man during the 1996
armed robbery of a Gretna lounge.
(source: The Advocate)
UTAH:
Debating the Death Penalty in Utah
A debate over the death penalty is expected to return to Utah's Capitol Hill
during the next legislative session. We could see a bill to abolish it all
together, and another one to speed up the process. I sat down with Robert
Dunham this morning, he's the Executive Director of the Death Penalty
Information Center, to give us a look at the possible legislative pieces we
could see next year.
Dunham wanted to be clear that the Information Center takes no stance on the
death penalty. Their focus is ensuring the death penalty is administered
properly.
(source: Glen Mills, good4utah.com)
USA:
'Dr. Death'
In just a few months, Donnie Myers's long and lethal tenure as a top prosecutor
in South Carolina will come to an end. If past is precedent, so will the bumper
crop of death sentences in his jurisdiction.
Mr. Myers, known locally as "Dr. Death," has personally secured 39 death
sentences against 28 defendants - some were tried twice - in a 38-year career
as solicitor of South Carolina's 11th Judicial District. He is notorious for
keeping a paperweight model of the state's electric chair on his desk, for his
race-baiting courtroom histrionics, and for playing fast and loose with legal
rules. According to an analysis by Harvard Law School, courts have found he
committed misconduct in 46 % of his capital cases, and 6 death sentences he
secured were subsequently overturned.
Mr. Myers, who has been convicted of drunken driving and, recently, charged
again for the same offense, could usher in a big change when he retires this
year. If South Carolina's 11th Judicial District follows what has become a
pronounced pattern, the exit of one overzealous prosecutor could bring about a
sharp drop in the imposition of the death penalty.
That is among the findings of Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project,
which surveyed the wildly disproportionate impact of a handful of fanatical
state prosecutors. Even as the frequency of death sentences and executions in
the United States has plummeted in recent decades, the Harvard study shows how
the nation's death rows, which currently house about 2,900 convicts, have been
populated by the efforts of a very few, death-penalty-loving men (and, notably,
1 woman) like Mr.?Myers.
The report's findings underscore the grossly arbitrary nature of capital
punishment in this country and undercut whatever legitimacy it may retain. If
imposition of the ultimate punishment is to a great extent driven by
personality and a hunger for notoriety, then it is the antithesis of justice.
How else to think about prosecutors such as Dale Cox, just retired as the top
prosecutor in Caddo Parish, La., who declared, upon learning of the exoneration
of a man who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, "I
think we need to kill more people." Mr. Cox, who secured 1/3 of Louisiana's
death sentences in a 5-year period ending in 2015, had a simple rationale:
"Revenge brings to us a visceral satisfaction."
The good news is that the number of states allowing capital punishment has
shrunk and, in states where the penalty remains active, U.S. juries have mostly
lost their appetite for it. Just 49 death sentences were handed down last year,
an 84?% drop from the modern-era high of 315 in 1996.
Nonetheless, in the shrinking numbers of counties where the capital punishment
remains in fashion, it's striking how few prosecutors dominate death-sentencing
statistics. They are evidence, the Harvard study concludes, "that the
application of the death penalty is - and always has been - less about the
circumstances of the offense or the characteristics of the person who committed
the crime, and more a function of the personality and predilections" of a very
few prosecutors.
(source: Washington Post)
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