Oct. 4
NEW MEXICO:
After few revisions, death penalty bill heads to full House
Republican lawmakers took another step Monday night towards reinstating the
death penalty in New Mexico.
Members of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee voted 8-6 along party
lines to send the capital punishment legislation to a vote of the full
70-member House of Representatives.
House Bill 7 would allow the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a
child, a police officer or a corrections officer. The bill largely mirrors a
capital punishment statute that legislators repealed in 2009.
As lawmakers wrangled with the bill and its potential costs, some committee
members questioned the legislation's clarity and whether it could withstand
court challenges.
"It doesn't feel like it was well thought out to me," said Rep. Doreen
Gallegos, D-Las Cruces.
The co-sponsor, Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, offered a dozen changes
Monday night in response to criticism that the bill contained outdated language
and other provisions that might be unconstitutional.
For example, the amendment replaced the term "mentally retarded," with
"intellectual disability." But advocates for people with disabilities said
Monday the legislation still might not stand up in court.
Youngblood's bill originally said inmates would be considered "retarded" if
they have an IQ below 70. But in 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited using
a specific IQ number to determine whether an inmate can be executed and
required an individualized evaluation instead.
"The courts have made clear you have to dig a bit deeper," said Jim Jackson,
chief executive officer of Disability Rights New Mexico.
His organization does not have a position on the death penalty but has raised
concerns about how the proposed bill would be applied to people with
disabilities. The group has argued, for example, that the bill does not have an
adequate process to determine whether an inmate has a mental illness that might
prohibit execution.
Youngblood's amendment also allowed the state to change the drugs it uses in
executions. Rather than specifying the state would use an "ultra-short-acting
barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent,' the amendment
would only require a "substance" in "a quantity sufficient to cause death."
The change would allow the state to carry out an execution if the previously
used drugs are no longer available. New Mexico Corrections Department
procedures for execution include sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and
potassium chloride - widely used among states with the death penalty. But some
of those states have had difficulty obtaining those drugs in recent years as
opponents of the death penalty have pressured manufacturers to stop selling
them for use in executions.
Youngblood also proposed changing the bill to keep the identities of
executioners confidential.
And in another change, Youngblood eliminated part of the process for
determining whether a woman sentenced to death is pregnant. The bill Youngblood
initially proposed with Rep. Andy Nu???ez, R-Hatch, called for doctors
accompanied by a judge to examine the woman in a court.
"It's like we woke up in the 1950s," said Steven Allen, director of public
policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.
Allen and many Democrats in the state House have argued the Legislature should
not try to craft and pass death penalty legislation during a short special
session but wait to take up the issue during the regular 60-day session
starting in January.
"We are discussing a bill of life or death," Rep. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces,
said during Monday's committee hearing. "This warrants extreme, intelligent,
thorough deliberation."
But Youngblood and others supporting the bill have argued that much of the
measure's language was tried and tested before the death penalty was repealed
in 2009.
"This is a statute that worked in New Mexico previously," said Dianna Luce,
district attorney of Lea, Chaves and Eddy counties. Luce said designing a
totally new law would create "unknowns" in future appeals.
Typically concerned with the costs of legislation, the House Appropriations and
Finance Committee spent much of its hearing grappling with differing
calculations of the cost of reinstating capital punishment for a limited number
of cases.
Attorneys from the Law Offices of the Public Defender said death penalty cases
would strain defense lawyers and prosecutors alike while sapping even more
resources from the state's courts. But prosecutors argued murder cases are
already labor and resource intensive, suggesting the additional costs of death
penalty cases would be insubstantial.
Legislative staffers wrote in a financial analysis that the bill would cost at
least $2 million a year within the next 3 years. But Youngblood said the
analysis inflated the costs based on a miscalculation of the number of cases in
which the bill might apply. New Mexico used the death penalty sparingly when it
was last in place, executing one man between 1977 and 2009.
The death penalty is 1 of 3 crime bills that Republican Gov. Susana Martinez
added to the agenda of a special legislative session initially intended to
address the state's budget deficit.
It could pass the Republican-controlled House on a party-line vote, but
positions on the death penalty have not always been predictable. 3 sitting
House Republicans voted to repeal the death penalty 7 years ago.
Unclear, too, is whether the state Senate will even consider the bill.
The Senate, where Democrats are the majority, adjourned Friday after passing
several budget bills on the special session's 1st day, effectively snubbing the
governor's tough-on-crime agenda.
Senators may have to return to Santa Fe later this week, however, to at least
vote on changes to budget bills made by the House.
(source: The Santa Fe New Mexican)
********************
Death penalty bill will go to the House floor
The death penalty bill will go to the House floor after it barely made it out
of the Finance Committee. Lawmakers Monday worked until 10 p.m. before voting 8
to 6 to advance the bill.
Committee members found themselves at odds over the price of the bill if it
were to pass. A legislative fiscal report that compiled data from each part of
the criminal justice system found that on average, it could cost about $105,000
a year for one person in a death penalty case, and that about 14 cases could go
to trial each year.
That means reinstating the death penalty could cost taxpayers an extra $1.5
million a year.
"Clearly all the fiscal analyses show that we can't afford this," said
Christine Trujillo, a Democrat who represents Albuquerque. "It's a pure waste
of time."
But the bill's sponsors defended the bill and refuted the numbers, saying
lawyers won't always seek the death penalty.
"They're estimating they're going to have 14 trials for murder next year (but)
they don't have any idea how many there are. That's just speculation,"
Republican Rep. Andy Nunez from Hatch said.
Nunez says he voted to repeal the death penalty back in 2009 but says now
things have changed.
"You know the police officer who was killed in Hatch? I hired him, and he was
shot down about 1,000 yards from my house," he said.
Trujillo and other Democrats say they understand this is an important,
emotional issue, but urged people to wait until the regular legislative session
convenes in January because this special session has cost taxpayers about
$150,000 for the last 4 days.
"Let's stick to the budget," Trujillo said.
"We should be able to multitask," Nunez said.
The House is scheduled to reconvene Wednesday.
According to a recent poll by our partners at the Albuquerque Journal, 65 % of
New Mexico voters support bringing the death penalty back
(source: KOAT news)
UTAH:
Utah man accused of double murder enters not guilty pleas
A man accused of killing a Sanpete County couple nearly 5 years ago pleaded not
guilty to charges on Monday.
Logan Welles McFarland, 28, is charged in 6th District Court with 2 counts of
1st-degree felony aggravated murder for the December 2011 shooting deaths of
70-year-old Leroy Fullwood and his 69-year-old wife, Dorothy Ann Fullwood, at
their Mount Pleasant home. He is also facing aggravated burglary, robbery and
theft charges.
McFarland is expected in court again on Nov. 16 for a review hearing.
Though McFarland has long been the suspect in the double homicide, prosecutors
did not file murder charges against him until May 2014, a day after McFarland
had been sentenced to spend up to 56 years in a Nevada prison for a crime spree
that took place there after the double murder.
Sanpete County Attorney Brody Keisel said in 2014 that he waited to file on the
homicides until Nevada authorities had adjudicated their case against McFarland
and his girlfriend, 28-year-old Angela Marie Hill, also known as Angela Marie
Atwood.
Prosecutors say they will seek for the death penalty for McFarland.
Hill is charged in Utah with the same counts as McFarland, minus the homicide
charges. She was extradited to Utah in May, and pleaded not guilty to charges
in September. She is accused of burglarizing another Mount Pleasant home with
McFarland in the same time period as the homicides.
Hill is set to appear in court again in January for a pre-trial conference.
An arrest affidavit filed in Utah's 6th District Court, which was briefly made
public in January 2012 before being sealed, alleges that on Dec. 29, 2011,
McFarland drove around Mount Pleasant looking for a home to burglarize.
McFarland apparently selected the Fullwood home at random and, late Dec. 29 or
early Dec. 30, had friends drop him off on a road behind the residence,
according to the affidavit.
What happened inside the home has not been made public, but the arrest
affidavit says the home was ransacked, the contents of cupboards and closets
"strewn" around the home. By the time McFarland left, the Fullwoods were dead
from gunshot wounds.
A day later, McFarland told a relative that "a mission had gone south" and that
he had "dispatched lives" in Sanpete County, court records allege.
On Dec. 31, 2011 - the same day the Fullwoods were found dead in their home -
police say McFarland and Hill tried to carjack a woman's car outside a casino
in West Wendover, Nev. The victim fought off Hill and sped away, but was shot
and wounded in the head.
The couple stole 2 other vehicles and led police on a high speed chase in the
days that followed. They were eventually spotted walking in the Nevada desert
by a rancher checking on cattle from an airline and were captured.
(source: Salt Lake Tribune)
ARIZONA:
US Supreme Court won't hear Arizona death sentence case
The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear Arizona's appeal of a lower court
ruling that overturned a convicted murderer's death sentence has opened the
door for about 25 death row inmates to challenge their sentences.
The justices on Monday let stand the ruling that said Arizona
unconstitutionally excluded evidence about James McKinney's troubled childhood
and post-traumatic stress disorder that might have led to a lesser punishment.
McKinney was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1993.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last December that Arizona's causal
nexus rule violated the Constitution. The rule required any mitigating
evidence, such as mental illness or post-traumatic stress disorder, to be
directly tied to the crime committed to be relevant in sentencing.
In the case of McKinney, that means a judge could have granted some leniency -
and perhaps avoided the death penalty - had he been able to consider McKinney's
troubled past and abuse as a child. But McKinney's abuse wasn't directly
correlated to the double murders he committed, so it wasn't admissible as a
mitigating factor in court. McKinney was sentenced to death in 1993, and the
Arizona Supreme Court upheld the sentence 3 years later.
The causal nexus rule was applied in Arizona for about 15 years, but it hasn't
been used since 2005.
McKinney's sentencing case will go back to state court within 90 to 120 days,
Arizona Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Mia Garcia said. His conviction
stands.
Only a jury could re-sentence McKinney to death because Arizona can no longer
allow judges to impose death sentences following a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court
ruling. McKinney was originally sentenced to death by a judge.
Dale Baich, federal public defender in Arizona, says up to 25 death sentences
could also be affected. Baich said it will take time for federal courts to sort
out those cases and determine which ones will go back for new sentencing
hearings.
Ivan Mathew, an attorney for McKinney, declined to comment on the Supreme
Court's refusal to hear the state's appeal, but he said he would be conveying
the decision to his client. He said during arguments in the appeals court that
the causal nexus rule amounted to a filter or screen that would not allow the
full information to be meaningfully considered.
(source: The Journal Times)
CALIFORNIA:
For Some, Fixing the Death Penalty Means Speeding Up Executions
Kate and Richard Riggins' son, John, was murdered along with his girlfriend,
Sabrina Gonsalves, in 1980. At the time, John was a freshman attending the
University of California at Davis.
"They were kidnapped and left in a ditch to die with their throats slit," says
Kate Riggins. The case was unsolved for decades, until a DNA hit led cold case
investigators to Richard Hirschfield, who was serving time in a Washington
State prison for child molestation.
In 2013, Hirschfield was sentenced to death by a Sacramento jury, 33 years
after what became known as "the Sweetheart Murders." Hirschfield is currently 1
of nearly 750 people on California's death row.
For Richard Riggins, the execution can't come soon enough.
"They're going to give him a general anesthesia, like people do every day for
major operative procedures," Riggins tells me. "He just isn't going to wake up.
He is going to die in his sleep. So cruel and unusual punishment? Not really."
On my visit to death row late last year, Richard Hirschfield, the man who
killed John Riggins and his girlfriend, told me he wasn't too concerned about
getting an execution date.
"I'm not too concerned about it because I really don't think that I'm going to
be killed," Hirschfield said through the bars on his prison cell.
Hirschfield has good reason to think that. Since California reinstated the
death penalty in 1978, nearly 900 death sentences have been handed down by
juries. And yet the state has executed just 13 condemned inmates. The last was
Clarence Ray Allen in January 2006. Later that year, federal Judge Jeremy Fogel
suspended executions until the state revises the protocol it uses to put
inmates to death. There hasn't been an execution since then.
Even before Fogel stopped executions, legal appeals for death row inmates
dragged on for 20 years or more. With that in mind, backers of Proposition 66
are seeking to reduce the time between a death sentence being handed down and
carried out.
Proposition 66 seeks to "mend, not end" the death penalty so that decades-long
delays are eliminated.
It would do that by changing the procedures governing legal appeals, which are
automatic in California. It would also require more attorneys to accept death
penalty appeals cases and train them in how to handle those cases. And it would
shorten the amount of time allowed for state appeals and require death row
inmates to work while in prison and pay restitution to their victims.
"It's unconscionable that it should take 25 to 30 years, and that individuals
are dying on death row of natural causes, when a jury has said that this
(death) is an appropriate sentence for very rare circumstances," says
Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. She thinks Proposition 66
will help deliver more timely justice to crime victims.
Of course not everyone agrees.
"That initiative is a false promise of expediting death sentences," says Santa
Clara University Law School professor Ellen Kreitzberg. She supports
Proposition 62, a competing measure to end the death penalty.
"The danger with Proposition 66," she says, "is it does limit and narrow the
ability to present newly discovered evidence, which is how most of these
innocence claims are presented in court."
She and other critics of Proposition 66 think speeding up the appeals process
could lead to a catastrophic mistake in California - like executing an innocent
person.
The weak link in Proposition 66 might be funding it. The measure contains no
language requiring the state Legislature to spend the money on training
additional attorneys to handle death penalty appeals.
San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, president of the California
District Attorneys Association, admits that getting Proposition 66 funded could
be problematic, especially with a governor and state Legislature opposed to
capital punishment.
"We recognize it's going to have to rely on the Legislature implementing the
will of the people" Wagstaffe says. "And if they do not, well, that is on
them."
(source: Scott Shafer, KQED news)
**********************
Double murder suspect's trial date revealed
A man who confessed to killing 2 people appeared in court Monday to have his
court date set.
Anthony Baxter confessed to killing Georgia Engelhaupt and Michael Helsby at
their apartment on Manter Drive in January.
Today he appeared in court in Shasta County.
Baxter has previously stated that he wants the death penalty. He said that he
didn't "want to have to go through prison" for the rest of his life.
According to California state law -- although Baxter has already publicly
confessed to his crime -- a trial must be held if prosecutors were to ask for
the death penalty.
A jury would then have to unanimously decide on it.
Baxter's attorney says the trial is set to get underway November 29th.
(source: KRCR TV news)
OREGON:
Murder Trial Starts for Convict Already Facing Decades in Prison ---- David Ray
Bartol was recently sentenced to more than 50 years. Now he faces a possible
death penalty.
David Ray Bartol, who earlier this year was sentenced to more than 50 years in
prison for 2 separate attacks in which gang associates were tortured, goes on
trial Monday for allegedly killing a fellow inmate.
Bartol, who was serving 18 years in the Marion County Jail for a home invasion
robbery, allegedly plunged a sharpened object into the eye of a fellow inmate
and pounded at it with one of his sandals.
The inmate died several days later.
If the jury convicts him, they will then have to decide whether he should
receive the death penalty.
Prosecutors have said Bartol was a member of the Krude Rude Brood gang.
(source: patch.com)
USA:
RNC Goes After Kaine On The Death Penalty Ahead Of VP Debate
A new web video from the Republican National Committee charges that Democratic
vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine "protected the worst kinds of people" on
death row as a defense attorney and as governor of Virginia.
The video released Monday, a day before the vice presidential debate, focuses
on 4 cases the RNC seized on to characterize Kaine as soft on crime.
The video references Lem Tuggle, who Kaine defended against rape and murder
charges as a young lawyer and who was eventually executed, as well as Richard
Lee Whitley, who was executed despite what the Richmond Times-Dispatch
described as "about 1,000 hours of largely free legal work" on Kaine's part.
2 other cases featured in the video took place during Kaine's tenure as
governor of Virginia: Kaine commuted Percy Levar Walton's sentence from
execution down to life in prison without parole due to "lack of mental
competence," while Kaine approved Jens Soering's attempt to return to his home
country of Germany. Kaine's successor, Bob McDonnell, stopped that transfer.
The new video sets up a potential discussion of the death penalty in Tuesday
night's vice presidential debate.
Both the official Republican Party Twitter account and RNC spokesman Sean
Spicer tweeted a link to a RollCall article about the new video that
characterized it as a "Willie Horton-Style Attack." Spicer later deleted his
tweet, writing "we/I never used the term."
The William Horton case made national political waves in 1988, when a George
H.W. Bush-aligned PAC ran an advertisement about "Willie Horton," who raped and
murdered a woman while out of prison on a weekend furlough program that Bush's
opponent, Michael Dukakis, supported as governor of Massachusetts. Critics said
the attack played on racial fears and the stereotype that black people are
inherently criminal.
For his part, Kaine, a devout Catholic, has long been conflicted on the death
penalty.
"The hardest thing about being a governor was dealing with the death penalty,"
Kaine told the National Catholic Reporter in August. "I hope on Judgment Day
that both understanding and mercy, because it was tough."
During his campaign for governor, Kaine's opponent ran a television ad that
claimed "Tim Kaine says that Adolf Hitler doesn???t qualify for the death
penalty." Kaine responded to the attack with his own ad, in which he said "My
faith teaches life is sacred" before adding, "as governor, I'll carry out death
sentences handed down by Virginia juries, because that's the law." Kaine
ultimately oversaw 11 executions as governor, according to ABC News.
His opponent Mike Pence said in a 2014 panel of governors hosted by CNN, "I
support the death penalty. I believe justice demands it in our most heinous
cases."
Pence has overseen no executions as governor of Indiana, though there are
numerous people currently on death row in the state.
(source: talkingpointsmemo.com)
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