Sept. 7
TEXAS:
Death penalty does not represent justice
I strongly disagree with the recent Amarillo Globe-News editorial on the death
penalty (Editorial: Death penalty can be justified, Aug. 20, amarillo.com.)
Society can be protected without taking another human life since we now have
"life without parole" as an optional punishment for capital murder.
Furthermore, our criminal justice system is very imperfect - many innocent
people have been sent to death row - at least 13 in Texas and over 150
nationwide.
And there is strong evidence that we have executed innocent people.
Even if there is strong evidence that someone is guilty, the death penalty is
applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner because of economic, racial and
geographic biases in the criminal justice system.
Because of these problems, the death penalty will probably be declared
unconstitutional in the not-too-distant future.
David Atwood
Founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
Houston
(source: Letter to the Editor, Amarillo Globe-News)
*****************
Texas appeals judge questions fairness of life without parole----Once a
Republican, now a Democrat, Judge Larry Meyers says no-parole sentences lack
legal protections.
Life without parole is a slow-motion death penalty, longtime Texas judge says.
Judge Larry Meyers, the longest-serving member of the state's highest criminal
court, has grown uncomfortable with the way Texas allows for life in prison
without parole, calling it a slow-motion death sentence without the same legal
protections given to defendants who face the death penalty.
It can be argued, Meyers said, that the prospect of decades of prison - ended
only by death from old age, medical problems or even violence - is as harsh or
harsher than execution.
Even so, life without parole can be given in some capital murder cases without
jurors answering two questions that must be considered before issuing a death
sentence - is the defendant a future danger to society, and are there any
mitigating factors such as mental disability or childhood abuse that weigh
against capital punishment?
"I'm not saying the death penalty is unconstitutional. I think right now it's
about as fair as it could be," Meyers said. "But there are 2 variations of the
death penalty; one is just longer than the other. People are getting a (life
without parole) death sentence without the same safeguards and procedures that
you get when there is a death sentence."
Meyers, the only Democrat on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, plans to make
changing the life-without-parole system an issue of his re-election campaign,
an admittedly uphill battle after he switched from the Republican Party in 2013
over disagreements in its direction under the surging tea party movement.
His Republican opponent in the Nov. 8 election, 22-year state District Judge
Mary Lou Keel of Houston, believes Meyers has strayed from his principal task
as a judge.
"Policy issues like this are best left to the Legislature," Keel said. "Doesn't
he have enough work to do as a judge?"
Keel and Meyers are vying for 1 of the 9 seats on a court that has the last
word on criminal matters in Texas.
Death row down 40%
Life without parole, an option for capital murder cases since 2005, has been
credited with helping to sharply reduce the number of death row inmates by
allowing prosecutors to reserve capital punishment for the worst cases, yet
ensure that other convicted murderers are permanently removed from society.
Since life without parole became an option, the population of Texas' death row
has fallen to 244 inmates, down about 40 p%, as the pace of executions has
outstripped the number of new death sentences.
In contrast, 782 inmates were serving life without parole for capital murder as
of July 31.
An additional 54 inmates are serving life without parole after repeat
convictions for sexually violent offenses, including crimes against children,
since the Legislature allowed the punishment for the crime of continuous sexual
abuse in 2007.
In capital murder cases, life without parole is handed down 2 ways:
-- In cases in which the prosecutor seeks death by lethal injection, if jurors
convict, a 2nd trial begins over the punishment.
Prosecutors try to prove that the defendant will pose a future danger to
society unless put to death, and defense lawyers attempt to convince jurors
that execution isn't the appropriate punishment. Jurors must be unanimous on
the future danger question, and they must all reject the defense's mitigating
evidence.
If 1 juror disagrees on either point, the sentence automatically becomes life
without parole.
-- In cases in which the prosecutor waives the death penalty, life without
parole is the only available option for capital murder.
Seeking life without parole is by far the simpler option. Jurors are easier to
seat - death penalty opponents aren't allowed on juries if execution is an
option - and there is no punishment phase trial. The appeals process also is
less rigorous, with death row inmates granted 2 appeals before the state's
highest criminal court, while inmates serving life without parole go through
the normal process.
Meyers, a 23-year member of the Court of Criminal Appeals, believes life
without parole has been made too simple, providing "an easy, inexpensive way of
getting the death penalty."
It would be fairer, he said, to let jurors consider some variation of the
future danger question and to allow defense lawyers to present mitigating
evidence. If jurors cannot agree that life without parole is appropriate, the
defendant would get a life sentence and be eligible for parole after 40 years
or some other suitable time, Meyers said.
The bigger reform - what Meyers called the "smarter fix" - would be for the
Legislature to end capital punishment, making life without parole the ultimate
punishment and including an option for parole.
The political reality in Texas, by far the nation's top death penalty state,
makes that an extremely unlikely option for legislators, Meyers admits. "But
right now, as I see it, there's just 2 options - both for death," he said.
Change of heart
Meyers' misgivings fall short of concerns raised by another judge on his court,
Elsa Alcala, who said this summer that her confidence in the death penalty had
been eroded after weighing appeals in cases with mistaken witness testimony,
exonerations based on previously unavailable DNA tests and scientific
advancements that have called earlier expert testimony into question.
Meyers said his change of heart on life without parole didn't come about
because of appeals. Nobody is going to tell his court that they improperly
received a no-parole term when the alternative is a death sentence, he said.
Instead, Meyers said, his qualms arose after coming to see the sentence as a
delayed death penalty - one that is particularly harsh on young people - when a
typical murder conviction is often enough to lock away killers until they are
no longer a danger.
When the Legislature debated life without parole in the mid-2000s, prosecutors
were divided on the best course to take, but many opposed adding a "long,
drawn-out" sentencing hearing to determine the difference between a no-parole
sentence and parole eligibility after 40 years, said Shannon Edmonds, staff
attorney with the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
"You could argue that it's not much difference. It was a lot of squeeze without
much juice," Edmonds said.
In addition, many capital murder cases are decided by a plea bargain that
allows defendants to choose perpetual prison time over execution. Some
prosecutors feared losing bargaining leverage to a defense lawyer who
threatened, for example, to drag out a sentencing hearing for 3 weeks unless
offered a sentence with parole for a lesser crime like murder, Edmonds said.
Life without parole raises questions about whether Texas is imprisoning people
long past the point that they "will ever be dangerous," said Kathryn Kase,
executive director of Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit that provides capital
murder legal representation at trial and on appeal.
"We've got places in prisons that look like nursing homes. It makes me wonder,
as a taxpayer, are these people dangerous? Why are we paying the extra cost of
imprisoning them when they are geriatrics?" Kase said.
(source: Austin American-Statesman)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Democratic candidates for governor spar on opioid fight,
immigration----Candidates debate in final week before primary
The Democratic candidates for governor sought to distinguish themselves from
each other in Tuesday night's debate on WMUR.
Polls show that Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern, former state Rep. Mark
Connolly and former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand are largely unknown to
voters, so the debate was an opportunity to make first impressions on voters
with one week to go before the primary.
Marchand called himself the progressive candidate in the race.
"I am the progressive choice for governor," Marchand said. "I'm the only one
here that voted for Bernie (Sanders) this spring. I'm the only one 100 %
against both Northern Pass and the death penalty. I'm the only one with a plan
for paid family leave and that supports legalization of marijuana."
On the opioid crisis, all said they favor more aggressive action and more
funding for treatment. To pay for it, Van Ostern said that part of his plan is
making sure that the state's alcohol fund will go toward fighting addiction
instead of being raided for other purposes.
He also said that expanded Medicaid plays a key role in the fight.
"When we expanded Medicaid to now 50,000 of our fellow citizens, part of that
coverage now includes substance-abuse disorders," Van Ostern said.
Connolly said that the fight against opioid addiction will be costly,
"This is not a $6 million or $8 million problem, this is a $20 million, $25
million problem," he said.
He said he would increase the tobacco tax by 10 cents to help pay for it.
Marchand countered that by targeting aid to specific communities for specific
programs, about $8 million would be needed to help deal with the problem. He
also said that legalizing and taxing marijuana would help pay for more state
services.
"I'm the only candidate in this race talking candidly about the need for more
money," he said. "If you want things that matter, you have to pay for them."
The candidates also addressed the economic pressures on the state caused by its
aging population. Connolly said immigration is part of the solution.
"We need to welcome immigrants into our state, into our country," Connolly
said. "And there's a vetting process now of over 2 years for these kind of
refugees. I welcome the Syrian refugees into our state."
Marchand noted that his family moved to Manchester from Canada, so he has
personal experience with the issue of immigration.
"When I look to the future of New Hampshire and America's economy, the key to
our economic growth, the key to getting younger as a state, the key to
entrepreneurship is increasing the amount of immigration that we have in New
Hampshire," Marchand said.
Van Ostern said that immigrants seeking a better life in New Hampshire should
be welcomed, with individualized background checks and assessments that don't
lead to blanket denials based on their countries of origin.
"I saw a picture a week or two ago of a young boy, a Syrian in Aleppo, I think
it was, maybe 5 years old, covered in blood and dirt," Van Ostern said. "He was
in a state of shock. He is not a security threat."
Van Ostern continued to make a $300 million commuter rail project a centerpiece
of his campaign, saying it will help grow new businesses.
"5600 new jobs will be created by local businesses if we bring passenger rail
from Boston to Nashua, the airport and the Millyard in Manchester," Van Ostern
said. "This isn't about what we need to tell voters. This is a product of
listening to voters."
Connolly and Marchand said they also support commuter rail, though they also
both called for improving the state's infrastructure. Marchand said that
bringing in commuter rail as part of a plan to improve roads and bridges across
the state would help sell the plan to voters.
All the candidates called for more action on dealing with climate change. Van
Ostern said he has worked on the Executive Council to support more renewable
energy projects, while Marchand called for increased conservation. Connolly
said the state should set more aggressive goals for renewable energy.
The 3 candidates all said they support repealing the death penalty, but they
split on whether they would also commute the death sentence of the state's only
death row inmate. Michael Addison was sentenced to death for shooting and
killing Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs.
Van Ostern and Connolly said they would not commute Addison's sentence, but
Marchand said he would.
"If you believe the death penalty is wrong, and I do, then it is not just wrong
in the future, it is wrong today, as well," Marchand said.
Van Ostern is viewed as the front-runner in the race for the Democratic
nomination, but both Connolly and Marchand projected confidence that the race
is still in play.
(source: WMUR news)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Duke Divinity Students Offer Death Row Inmates a Chance to Tell Their Stories
They say it's not about redemption - that providing North Carolina's 150 death
row inmates with a voice is an opportunity to both restore a sense of humanity
among the condemned and give those outside the walls of Central Prison a chance
to "look within" and, perhaps, contribute to the national debate over the death
penalty.
But Life Lines, an audio journal for the 147 men and three women living on the
row created by Duke University Divinity School graduates Chris Agoranos and
Lars Akerson - not to be confused with LifeLines, a British group that writes
letters to condemned inmates all over the U.S. - isn't about taking a political
stand.
"I think the voices speak for themselves, so we don't really need to take a
firm position," Akerson says. "And it's been amazing to hear the guys'
reflections on it and to hear how enthusiastic they are just to be heard.
Something as simple as a telephone or hearing someone else's voice. It's been
revolutionary for them."
With a recent change in phone-access policy - until June, inmates were only
authorized to make 1 10-minute call a year, but now they can make calls more
frequently - they saw a chance to let the inmates' stories be heard. And the
inmates embraced the Life Lines concept. To date, more than a dozen clips have
been recorded.
In one, George Wilkerson - a Randolph County man convicted in 2006 of murdering
an 18-year-old over a $30 drug theft - recites a poem he wrote called "Who Am
I?" "I come from the broken playground, littered with crack pipes, bullet
shells, and busted beer bottles, my mom's walk and stale nicotine," he says on
the recording, which can be heard on the Life Lines SoundCloud page
(soundcloud.com/lifelinesjournal). "I belong to my dad's hard, heavy leather
belt, our dingy apartment in the projects, and crispy, spicy, sour-smelling
kimchi."
But in order to fully realize their dream - an ongoing project that includes
voices from death rows all over the country - Agoranos and Akerson are asking
for the public's help. Life Lines is currently an active project on
Kickstarter. With less than a week remaining, it's raised just over $6,000 of
its $16,000 goal. That money would go toward paying for prisoners' phone calls,
which aren't cheap.
"We say that this is about recovering humanity on the inside and outside the
walls," Agoranos says. "It causes us to look within. I would want this to help
someone think about how they have been taught to see people that are
incarcerated as like these irredeemable criminals worthy of death. And I think,
you know, maybe as the lights go off, you begin to see, 'I've made mistakes,
too.'"
(source: indyweek.com)
FLORIDA:
Death penalty, symbol of Florida's racial bias
The NAACP and its membership have been at the forefront of efforts across the
country to end the death penalty. We recognize the disturbing role that racial
bias has played in the death penalty???s history, and continues to play to this
day.
Alarmed by the death penalty's racial bias, as well as its errors and high
cost, much of the country is turning away from it. 7 states in the last decade
have ended the death penalty, 4 have placed a moratorium on executions, and
death sentences and executions are at record lows.
Unfortunately, a new report from Harvard Law School shows that a handful of
counties in Florida are resisting this trend, holding onto an institution
plagued by racial bias that has no place in society today. Between 2010 and
2015, only 16 counties - out of 3,143 nationwide - sentenced 5 or more people
to death. A quarter of these 16 outlier counties are in Florida.
From the days of lynchings through the years of Jim Crow laws, and even today
capital punishment has always been deeply affected by race. Although African
Americans make up just under 13 % of the overall population, 42 % of the people
currently on death row are black, and almost 35 percent of those who have been
executed in the U.S. are African American.
The death penalty undermines trust and integrity in the criminal justice system
because it is racially biased and inhumane.
Currently, 30 states and the federal government have the death penalty, though
many states rarely use it.
There can be no doubt that race plays a role in the use of the death penalty: a
2014 study found that jurors in Washington state are 3 times more likely to
recommend a death sentence for an African American defendant than for a white
defendant in a similar case.
Furthermore, the race of the victim in a death penalty case appears to have an
impact: A 2011 study in Louisiana showed that the odds of a death sentence were
97 % higher for those whose victim was white than those whose victim was
African American.
The problematic role of race sends the troubling message that in our criminal
justice system African American lives are less valuable than those of white
Americans.
As the recent Harvard Law School report explains, the justice systems in these
counties suffer from prosecutorial misconduct, bad defense, racial bias, and
harsh sentencing practices against youth and those with intellectual
impairments. In short, too many Florida counties are making a list that no one
wants to be on.
Miami-Dade County, as well as Duval, Hillsborough, and Pinellas, make the list
of counties that most frequently use the death penalty. Of these 4, Duval by
far produces the most death sentences - a quarter of the state's death
sentences between 2010 and 2015 - despite accounting for only 5 % of Florida's
population. With 87 % of the defendants sentenced to death between 2010 and
2015 being people of color, the racial disparities in Duval are especially
stark. The fact that such racial disparities persist in the old confederacy
should trouble us all.
As America moves away from the death penalty, the majority of the counties
stubbornly hanging onto it are in former slave states - Texas, Louisiana,
Alabama, and of course Florida. The death penalty remains a symbol of racial
bias, which lives on in locales with some of the most disturbing histories of
violence and discrimination against African Americans. Part of coming to terms
with this past requires ending institutions intricately tied to it, such as the
death penalty.
For this reason and others, the NAACP is committed to ending the death penalty.
The recent report from Harvard Law School reminds us of the urgency of
achieving this goal in Florida. The death penalty causes too much harm to allow
it to continue. There are more effective ways to respond to violence and keep
society safe.
(source: Op-Ed; Adora Obi Nweze is the president of the Florida State
Conference NAACP and a Board Member of the National NAACP----Miami Herald)
MISSISSIPPI:
Mississippi Attorney General Tries to Remove Defense Lawyers Who Challenged
Suspect Bitemark Evidence
Attorneys for Mississippi death row prisoner Eddie Lee Howard (pictured) are
seeking to prove his innocence and challenging the questionable expert bite
mark testimony that persuaded jurors to convict him and sentence him to death
in 1992. As part of the attack on that evidence, Howard's lawyers recently
deposed Michael West, the discredited forensic odontologist who testified
against Howard and many other defendants in the 1990s, primarily in Mississippi
and Louisiana. A 2-part story by Washington Post columnist Radley Balko
recounts the combative deposition in which defense lawyers systematically
picked apart the credibility of West's testimony in Howard's case, and the
apparent retaliatory efforts by the office of Mississippi's attorney general to
remove the lawyers from the case after they asked that charges against Howard
be dropped. West, who was belligerent, openly contemptuous, and profane during
the deposition, was popular as a prosecution expert witness because he
purported to be able to match marks to a single individual, excluding all other
possible suspects through an idiosyncratic technique that, he said, he alone
was capable of using and could reveal bite marks that other experts couldn't
find. In the mid-1990s, Newsweek and 60 Minutes profiled West and raised
questions about the veracity of his techniques. He was later expelled from
three professional organizations, and several people he testified against have
later been proven innocent, including Kennedy Brewer, who was exonerated in
2008 after DNA evidence implicated another suspect, who then confessed to the
crime. Bitemark claims such as those made by West were the subject of stinging
criticism in a 2009 report of the National Academies of Science, Strengthening
Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. The report criticized
the field of forensic odontology as lacking any "evidence of an existing
scientific basis for identifying an individual to the exclusion of all others"
and "lack[ing] valid evidence to support many of the assumptions made by
forensic dentists during bite mark comparisons."
In April 2016, Eddie Howard's attorneys arranged a deposition with West in
advance of a hearing in which they planned to present DNA evidence to support
Howard's innocence claim. West, who had refused to prepared for. the
deposition, asserted that he stood by his testimony from Howard's trial, even
as he contradicted that testimony. Days later, Howard's attorney, Tucker
Carrington of the Mississippi Innocence Project, sent a letter to Mississippi
Assistant Attorney General Jason Davis describing the deposition and the new
evidence and asking Davis to drop the charges against Howard. Davis and
Attorney General Jim Hood filed a motion the next day challenging the
competency of Howard's attorneys, despite having vouched for their
qualifications in a different context less than a year earlier. Howard is
represented by respected and experienced death penalty attorneys, but a vaguely
written Mississippi court rule known as Rule 22 could potentially have
disqualified them. Hood's office has repeatedly used Rule 22 against
well-qualified attorneys from out-of-state law firms or legal aid groups to
attempt to exclude them from representing Mississippi prisoners. Almost
immediately after Hood's motion was filed, the Mississippi Supreme Court
revised Rule 22, effectively stopping the motion in its tracks. An evidentiary
hearing in Howard's case was held in May, but the judge has yet to rule.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
OHIO:
Ohio looks at nitrogen as a new execution method
Ohio might consider adding nitrogen gas as a new execution method because of
problems securing lethal injection drugs.
There have been no executions in the state for 2 1/2 years, largely because of
lawsuits and difficulty obtaining drugs for lethal injection. Beginning in
January, there are 28 convicted killers with execution dates scheduled over
four years.
John Murphy, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association,
said today lethal injection is "stalled" and it's time for a change.
Prosecutors have long been strong supporters of Ohio's death penalty law.
"I think the legislature ought to recommend another method of execution,"
Murphy said in an interview. He recommends switching to nitrogen gas, a method
he called "humane and reasonably inexpensive."
Nitrogen gas, pumped into an air-tight chamber, produces asphyxiation by a lack
of oxygen in the blood. It has not been used for executions, although Oklahoma
adopted it as a backup method. The sponsor of the Oklahoma law called it
"foolproof."
People occasionally die accidentally from nitrogen asphyxiation. Deep-sea
divers sometimes suffer from a form of it, producing an effect often described
as euphoric. The gas is widely available and inexpensive.
JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and
Correction, said the agency "continues to seek all legal means to obtain the
drugs necessary to carry out court-ordered executions."
State Rep. Jim Butler, R-Oakwood, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
said, "It's good to look at alternative methods that are humane. That's
something we should definitely do."
But Butler added, "One problem is if it's something that's not been tried
before, you need to vet it to make sure it's appropriate. It's certainly going
to be tested in the court system."
Other states have moved ahead with alternatives. Tennessee permits use of the
electric chair, Utah allows the firing squad, and Oklahoma allows nitrogen gas.
Dr. Jonathan Groner, a professor of clinical surgery at Ohio State University
College of Medicine, said using nitrogen gas could be "dangerous and
impractical."
"You and I are breathing 78 % nitrogen right now," he said. "It's not a poison.
It's an inert gas."
When nitrogen is introduced, oxygen is pushed out of the bloodstream, causing
potentially painful suffocation, Groner said.
"I would challenge that it's foolproof. We've heard that before," he said.
Death penalty opponents say it's not time to add a new execution method but to
abandon capital punishment entirely. The current process is unfair, arbitrary
and prone to mistakes, concludes a new report by Ohioans to Stop Executions, "A
Relic of the Past, Ohio's Dwindling Death Penalty."
The report, released today, details the history of the state's death penalty
law which was reinstated in 1981 after being overturned as unconstitutional by
a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision that put capital punishment on hold
nationally. The state resumed executions in 1999 and has put 53 men to death
over 17 years. The last execution was in Jan. 2014.
The report argues that the Ohio's death penalty law "remains plagued by the
very same flaws" that caused it to be overturned 40 years ago. There are
significant disparities in death sentences based on race and geography, the
report states.
But Murphy said the method aside, the death penalty is "not a broken system" in
Ohio.
He disputed the report's assertion about geographic disparities. He said
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, known as a hardliner on capital
punishment, "keeps getting elected. This is democracy in action. People elect
prosecutors who reflect the attitude of the community."
(source: The Columbus Dispatch)
********************
Death Penalty Opponents Want More Task Force Recommendations Implemented
A group that fights for an end to the death penalty in Ohio has issued a new
report showing a task force's recent recommendations are not being implemented.
In 2014, an Ohio Supreme Court task force of judges, prosecutors, lawmakers and
other members issued 56 proposals to change the state's capital punishment
trial and execution process. But Kevin Werner with Ohioans to Stop Executions
says only 4 have been adopted. He asking Ohio's lawmakers to approve the rest.
"We want those recommendations to be fully adopted so that at least we know the
system is a little bit more fair and a little bit more accurate."
And Werner says there were 5 more death penalty cases last year than the year
before. Ohio hasn't put any inmates to death in almost 3 years since there has
been a shortage of lethal injection drugs.
(source: WOSU news)
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