Oct. 26



FLORDIA:

Pinellas judge rules death penalty case of ex-Jabil executive can move forward


Patrick Evans, the former Jabil executive accused of killing his wife and her friend in 2008, finally learned Tuesday how his fate will be decided when his retrial starts next week.

The jurors will be told that - if they convict him of the 2 murders - all 12 of them must then vote unanimously to send Evans to death row. If not, he'll end up with a sentence of life in prison.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Joseph Bulone said Tuesday that modifying jury instructions was the "most viable option" in a case muddled by uncertainty after the Florida Supreme Court ruled Oct. 14 that only unanimous juries can sentence defendants to death.

But the defense disagreed, then sprang another option on the court: They could refuse to participate in jury selection under the judge's rules.

Assistant Public Defender John Swisher, who is also on Evans' defense team, said the court is relying on the assumption that the Florida Legislature will follow the state Supreme Court???s opinion when it rewrites the law next year.

That did not sit well with the judge.

"I would really think very seriously about not doing your job," Bulone told him. "If you don't participate, quite frankly, I think that's pretty outrageous."

The other options Bulone offered last week included having the same jury come back next year for the penalty phase, after the Legislature has rewritten the death penalty law; or picking 2 separate juries, 1 for the trial and the other to decide the penalty phase next year.

Assistant State Attorney Tom Koskinas said rewriting the jury instructions to conform with the state Supreme Court???s ruling was the best choice.

'I just don't see the prejudice or detriment if we do it now," he said.

Assistant Public Defender Allison Miller disagreed.

"Our position is there is no lawful way in which the death penalty can be imposed on Mr. Evans currently," she said.

In the end, the judge sided with the state and explained his rationale, which is in part based on the state Supreme Court's ruling that death row inmate Timothy Lee Hurst, who was sentenced to death for a 1998 murder in Pensacola, should receive a new penalty phase "consistent with this opinion."

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the old way Florida condemned defendants to die - by juries recommending a death sentence and judges imposing it - was unconstitutional. In response, legislators in March passed a new law requiring a 10-2 jury vote to impose death.

But this month the Florida Supreme Court scuttled that law, ruling that "Florida need not face a similar crisis in the future." Bulone said he interpreted that to mean the statute may not have to be amended.

The defendant was once married to Elizabeth Evans, a sales director. She later filed for divorce. On Dec. 20, 2008, she went on a date with a co-worker, Gerald Taylor. Later that day, authorities said, Evans confronted them inside her Gulfport condo, part of which was captured in a recorded call to 911.

Evans is accused of fatally shooting Elizabeth Evans, 44, and Taylor, 43.

He was arrested, then convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder. In 2012, Evans was sentenced to death. But in November, the Florida Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, citing errors in a detective's testimony and criticizing a prosecutor's remarks. His retrial is scheduled to start Monday.

(source: Tampa Bay Times)






NEBRASKA:

Anti-death penalty group outlines human costs of Nebraska's capital punishment


As the clock ticks down on Nebraska voters' decision on whether to retain the Legislature's decision to repeal the death penalty, the anti-death penalty campaign on Tuesday zeroed in on wrongful murder convictions.

Retain A Just Nebraska, the organization that wants voters to replace the death penalty with life in prison for 1st-degree murder convictions, held a morning news conference Tuesday with a member of the wrongfully convicted Beatrice 6.

Ada JoAnn Taylor and attorneys Jeff Patterson, Bob Bartle and Herb Friedman, who represented 5 of the the Beatrice 6, talked to reporters about the human cost of the death penalty.

Taylor and 5 others spent a collective 70 years in prison for the 1985 murder and rape of Helen Wilson of Beatrice before they were exonerated by DNA evidence i 2008. 1 of the 6, Joseph White, died on the job at an Alabama steel mill in 2011.

Taylor's son was 14 months old when she was taken away in the middle of the night after a cold-case investigation led to her arrest in 1989. She didn't see him again until 10 months ago. And she has never seen her grandchildren.

In a federal civil rights trial in June, jurors heard evidence of what caused the wrongful convictions -- and about everything they lost when they were sent to prison, Patterson said.

"This evidence led a jury to award our clients over $28.1 million," he said. "It was compensation to right a wrong of the worst miscarriage of justice in Nebraska history."

The productive years from age 25 to 45, when many people start careers, get married, watch children grow, were stolen from Taylor and co-defendant Tom Winslow when they were convicted of 2nd-degree murder and from White, who was sentenced to life for 1st-degree murder.

"Money cannot possibly make up for the human cost of a wrongful conviction," Patterson said.

Taylor, Winslow and 3 others -- Debra Shelden, Kathy Gonzalez and James Dean -- entered pleas in the case. White pleaded not guilty and was convicted after a trial.

"The threat of the death penalty was terrifying and overwhelming," Taylor said Tuesday. "I came to believe that I must have been guilty even though I had nothing to do with Mrs. Wilson's murder."

Taylor, who spent 19 years, 7 months and 26 days locked up, told her story for TV and online ads. At the news conference, she said she was told nearly every day she was in the Gage County jail that she would be the first woman on death row unless she pleaded guilty.

She had a mental illness, borderline personality disorder, she said, and she began having dreams and visions at the time that she was involved in a crime she knew nothing about. Ultimately, she developed a delusion that she was the one who suffocated Helen Wilson.

In fact, said Patterson, some of those delusions are still present.

With enough pressure, he said, everybody has a breaking point. The county attorney and the Gage County sheriff knew Taylor was at risk for psychotic lapses when under stress, he said.

Dean, who was sentenced to 10 years for aiding and abetting second-degree murder and released after serving about five, insisted at the time that he was innocent, the attorneys said Tuesday. But he was so nervous and distraught -- and having anxiety attacks because of the threat of the death penalty -- that a reserve sheriff's deputy who was also a psychologist was brought in to counsel him.

The deputy told Dean he was repressing his memory, and if he just relaxed, his recollection of what happened in Wilson's home would come back to him in dreams, Patterson said.

"Almost immediately, James started having dreams about a murder he knew nothing about," he said Tuesday.

Gonzalez and Winslow also knew they weren't guilty, but they entered guilty pleas in the case, Patterson said.

"Threatening suspects with execution may resolve cases, but is it the kind of resolution we can afford?" he asked.

Taylor is 53 now, and said she is speaking out for those who don't have a voice. She is still trying to reconnect with family members with whom she lost contact.

"Just trying to be a typical, normal housewife, per se," Taylor said.

Despite her exoneration, some people continue to believe she and the others are guilty, she said. "It's hard."

The 5 living people who were convicted of killing Wilson felt they were being tried again during the federal trial accusing Gage County, Deputy Sheriff Burdette Searcey and Reserve Deputy Wayne Price of violating their civil rights, Patterson said.

"All of them felt the trial exonerated them from Mrs. Wilson's murder, as much as it did convict the Gage County authorities for what they did," he said.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)

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Tour speakers include Ohio man formerly on death row


During the 20 years he spent on death row, Joe D'Ambrosio became filled with despair as he lost one appeal after another.

D'Ambrosio was innocent. It started to look as though he would be executed for something he didn't do, and no one was paying attention to him.

"Once you're convicted, no one listens to the man in the orange jumpsuit," D'Ambrosio said. "No one listens to the dead man walking. They all say they didn't do it."

The Ohio man was eventually exonerated, but he now spends much of his time speaking against the death penalty. The only purpose of capital punishment is to keep society safe from the criminals who've been convicted, he said. Life without parole serves the same purpose. Those people will never see the outside of prison.

"When you leave, you leave in a pine box," he said.

If authorities find out later that someone serving a life sentence was innocent, they can release him, D'Ambrosio said.

D'Ambrosio was one of several people who spoke on Tuesday night at St. Mary's Cathedral at a gathering presented by the Nebraska Catholic Conference. The speaking tour also visited Omaha on Monday and will conclude today in Lincoln.

Nebraska's 3 Catholic dioceses organized the tour to help persuade the state's voters to uphold the abolition of the death penalty on Nov. 8.

D'Ambrosio, who lives in North Ridgeville, Ohio, was 26 when he went to prison, sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of Tony Klann of Cleveland. Prosecutorial misconduct led to his conviction.

Defenders of the death penalty say it's a deterrent to crime. D'Ambrosio, who got to know a lot of criminals, says it is not.

"Actually, most of the guys that are on 'The Row' would rather be executed than put in prison for the rest of their lives," he said in an interview. People serving a life sentence always have to worry and look over their shoulder. The next guy sentenced to prison might be a friend or relative of the person the inmate killed.

D'Ambrosio, who will turn 55 on Dec. 1, was released from prison in 2010 thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Neil Kookoothe, who is also on the Nebraska speaking tour.

Kookoothe, who is a lawyer and nurse as well as a Catholic priest, said the death penalty does not prevent crime.

He said many people who commit violent acts are under the influence of alcohol or drugs or are consumed with rage. People in that condition are not going to stop and ask themselves if they'll get the death penalty before they take action, Kookoothe said. No government, especially "a democracy as great as ours," should be in the business of taking people's lives, said Kookoothe, who works at a parish in North Olmsted, Ohio.

Kookoothe said he can counter any pro-death-penalty argument except the one that cares only about vengeance. People who seek capital punishment simply out of revenge should admit it, he said. But we, as a people, should not be killing criminals for that reason, Kookoothe said.

Another person on the speaking tour is Marietta Jaeger-Lane, whose 7-year-old daughter, Susie, was kidnapped from a Montana campground and killed in 1973.

Executing a person solves nothing, Jaeger-Lane said. All it does is make another victim and victimize the killer's family. By killing people, a government takes on the mindset that the murderer had, which "degrades and demeans all of us," Jaeger-Lane said.

Executions are done in our name "as citizens of the state," using our tax dollars, she said. People need to step up and protest if the practice violates their values, said the former Michigan woman, who now lives in Punta Gorda, Fla.

The man who killed her daughter, David Meirhofer, would not confess to that murder and others as long as prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, Jaeger-Lane said.

Exactly one year after killing her daughter, Meirhofer called Jaeger-Lane in the middle of the night to gloat. Jaeger-Lane, whose faith was strengthened after her daughter's death, told Meirhofer she was praying for him. She kept him on the phone for an hour and a half because he was "my only connection with Susie."

During the conversation, Meirhofer let his guard down and revealed enough information that the FBI was able to catch him.

Jaeger-Lane argued for life without parole, which was implemented by the Montana Legislature the year Meirhofer was sentenced.

Meirhofer committed suicide the same day as his guilty plea. Jaeger-Lane has since become friends with his mother.

Jaeger-Lane, who speaks all over the world, believes that life is sacred.

She regularly spends time with prisoners just to let them know that someone cares about them.

Most crimes are committed by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, she said. When they've sobered up, "they're really very nice guys," she said.

Anti-death penalty film Sunday afternoon

What: documentary about Juan Melendez, the 24th person exonerated and released from Florida's death row

When: 1:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Grand Theatre

Cost: free

(source: The Independent)

*******************

Anti-death penalty group wants radio ad featuring secretary of state off the air


An anti-death penalty group is crying foul over radio advertisements in which the secretary of state tries to "clarify" ballot language that will decide the fate of capital punishment in Nebraska.

Retain a Just Nebraska sent a letter to the Nebraska Broadcasters Association asking it to stop running a pair of public service announcements produced by Secretary of State John Gale.

Darold Bauer, campaign manager for the group, said the radio announcements fail to say that the Nebraska Legislature repealed the death penalty and replaced it with life in prison without parole. Research shows that public opinion changes "drastically" based on whether or not the alternative of life imprisonment exists, he added.

"The current ad ... is nothing more than a state sponsored political ad which violates the trust of the public, the intent of numerous campaign laws, and may be a violation of state and federal law," Bauer wrote.

Gale declined to comment Tuesday.

Jim Timm, director of the Nebraska Broadcasters Association, said the organization will not discontinue the ads. The scripts were written by Gale and carefully reviewed so as not to sway voters either way on the issue, he added.

"I approved them to make sure they are not steering people to vote one way or the other," Timm said Tuesday. "They are trying to inform and educate as to what will be on the ballot."

Timm pointed out that the public service ads are available to radio stations statewide to broadcast as they see fit. The $3,500 campaign does not come with a guarantee that the ads will air a minimum number of times.

The Legislature voted to repeal the death penalty in 2015. Supporters of capital punishment launched a successful petition drive to put the question to voters in the Nov. 8 general election.

"It's easy to get tripped up over the language," Gale said in the release. That's because the ballot language asks voters if they want to retain or repeal the legislation that abolished the death penalty.

In the ads, Gale explains "a vote to retain abolishes the death penalty, a vote to repeal preserves the death penalty." Bauer also criticized Gale's campaign for not including an online component that would more likely reach younger voters and for not including a Spanish-language version

(source: Omaha World-Herald)

*********************

Nebraska politicians can't agree on the death penalty - now voters get to decide ---- After the conservative state repealed capital punishment and the governor unsuccessfully tried to keep it, a bid to bring it back again will go to the public


When Nebraska last year became the 1st conservative state to repeal the death penalty in more than 40 years, change came through a vote that saw ideological opponents of capital punishment unite with pragmatists worried about cost and effectiveness.

But it was not an outcome that the state's governor, Pete Ricketts, was ready to accept. In a contentious tug-of-war, Ricketts vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature before the lawmakers overrode him by a 30 to 19 vote.

Within a few weeks, death penalty supporters gathered enough signatures to introduce a ballot measure. Ricketts is bankrolling that effort, to the tune of $300,000.

This bid to bring back capital punishment again will go to a public vote on 8 November, as both sides escalate their spending and their rhetoric in an ideological battle over the penalty, even though the sparsely populated state of less than 2 million people rarely carries it out.

"I think a lot of people, that rubbed them the wrong way - but you know, that's the democratic process and now the voters get to decide," Dan Parsons, a spokesman for the anti-death penalty group Retain a Just Nebraska, said of the governor's contributions.

Retain a Just Nebraska, which Parsons says has raised $2.7m, began airing a television commercial this week featuring Ada JoAnn Taylor, one of the Beatrice 6.

Taylor spent more than 19 years in prison as 1 of 6 people wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of a 68-year-old woman in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1985. "After my arrest I was threatened with the death penalty and told I'd be the 1st woman on death row in Nebraska nearly every day that I was in the Gage County jail until I agreed to plead guilty," she told a press conference on Tuesday.

She was taken away from her 14-month-old son and had to give him up for adoption. They did not meet again for 26 years. Taylor said that anxiety about possibly being executed caused her to become delusional: "The threat of the death penalty was terrifying and overwhelming, I came to believe I must have been guilty."

The governor has countered in a newspaper column that "checks and balances in Nebraska ensure that the death penalty is used sparingly and applied justly, and rapid advancements in DNA technology will help to ensure accuracy in future cases."

Ricketts' father, Joe, has also given $100,000 to Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, the Omaha World-Herald reported. The group did not respond to requests for comment. Joe Ricketts is a billionaire who founded the online broker TD Ameritrade. The Ricketts family owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

"This is an internal political fight between Governor Ricketts and the legislature," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "He has staked his political prestige on overturning the repeal of the death penalty."

Voters in California and Oklahoma will also decide death penalty questions on 8 November. Confusingly, the ballot language in Nebraska means that selecting "retain" will abolish capital punishment and "repeal" will keep it, raising the possibility that some votes will be cast erroneously.

Nebraska has executed three people since capital punishment was reinstated nationwide in 1976 and none since 1997, when Robert Williams, convicted of multiple murders, died in the electric chair. Its death row consists of 10 people. Across the country, 17 people have been executed this year in 5 states, but the punishment is in decline - the US is on track for the fewest judicial killings in a year since 1991.

Parsons cited a disputed study by a Creighton University economist, which claims that Nebraska's death penalty costs on average an extra $14.6m annually compared with life without parole.

"Fiscal conservatives - whether you're Republican or Democrat - I think most people in Nebraska don't like wasting tax dollars," he said. Colby Coash, a Republican state senator, was one of the conservatives who voted for the repeal, calling the practice unjust.

In a speech last year he said his stance was informed by seeing the suffering of the sister of a murder victim who waited in vain for 30 years for her brother's killer to be executed. In the end, the death row inmate died of cancer.

Coash also recalled feeling uneasy when, as a college student in Lincoln in 1994, he went to the state penitentiary for a late-night execution. People gathered outside to celebrate in what he described as a carnival-like atmosphere, with a band playing, people drinking beer and grilling food and a New Year's Eve-style clock counting down the minutes until midnight.

"You wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between what I was participating in at 11 o'clock at night and what you might see an hour before a [college] football game," he told the audience. "At midnight, everybody cheered ... and fireworks shot off."

A report in the New York Times put the crowd at about 2,000. Harold Otey was executed in the same electric chair used in Nebraska's previous execution, 35 years earlier. "Mr Otey made no final statement, but mouthed 'I love you,' to his 3 chosen witnesses after he was strapped into the chair,' the report said. "Sweat poured off his head and soaked his shirt. Minutes later, 4 2,400-volt jolts of electricity coursed through his body. After the 3rd jolt, smoke rose from his left leg."

Even if voters decide in favor of the punishment, other hurdles pose considerable challenges to future executions in the state.

Now committed to the lethal injection method, it is far from clear that the state would even be able to source suitable drugs. As BuzzFeed reported, last year Nebraska spent $26,700 on a feckless attempt to import drugs from a dubious source in India. The shipment never left the country because the drugs were likely illegal to import into the US and would have been seized by federal authorities.

"Even if the voters restore the death penalty, there's no guarantee that the statute is even constitutional" in the light of a US supreme court decision in January on the role of juries in sentencing in Florida, Dunham said. "There's a very significant prospect that Nebraska's death penalty statute would be declared unconstitutional because the ultimate sentencing decision there, the weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, is made by a 3-judge panel" rather than a jury, he said.

(source: The Guardian)






CALIFORNIA:

California's death-penalty flaws can be fixed


Abolishing the death penalty and reducing sentences for depraved criminals to life in prison without the possibility of parole is a bad idea that needs to be defeated this November.

Proposition 62 is backed by Hollywood elites and billionaires who have no stake in the game and are working to thwart justice. They have never suffered the agonizing pain that victims' families experience, nor have they dealt with these heinous criminals on a regular basis.

Those of us who work in the criminal justice system and prosecute the worst of the worst offenders do so to ensure that those who were murdered as well as their families receive justice.

Laci Peterson's family deserves justice. As many of you may recall, Laci was 8 months pregnant when she went missing in December 2002. Her body, along with her infant son's body, was discovered several months later.

It was a horrific case with all evidence leading to her husband as the killer. I was a prosecutor on that case. Scott Peterson was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005. He's sat on death row for more than a decade.

California taxpayers are still housing, feeding, clothing and providing health care to a man who, upon sentencing, was called "cruel, uncaring, heartless and callous."

Why would Californians want to continue spending millions of dollars to take care of people like Peterson or Lawrence Bittaker, who kidnapped, raped and killed 6 young women, or Cary Stayner, who fantasized about killing women since he was 7 years old and carried out his fantasies by viciously murdering 2 women and 2 teenage girls?

Proposition 62 proponents want to abolish the death penalty and instead give all death-row inmates life in prison "without the possibility of parole."

However, life without parole does not stop people like them from continuing to perpetuate crimes. We have instances in California where prisoners on death row have been directing murders outside prison walls through gang affiliations.

There's also the threat of these prisoners killing correctional officers or inmates. Under these circumstances, what sentence would death penalty-repeal advocates give these killers ... a 2nd sentence of life without the possibility of parole?

By voting No on Proposition 62 and Yes on Proposition 66, we can eliminate the costs associated with multiple appeals as well as eliminate the costs associated with living in prison for life.

California's death-penalty system is broken but can be fixed, which is exactly what Proposition 66 will do.

Proposition 66 was written by the most experienced legal experts on the death penalty. It was written to ensure due process and to balance the rights of all involved - defendants, victims and their families.

Proposition 66 will streamline the system to ensure criminals sentenced to death will not wait years simply to have an appellate attorney appointed. It will limit unnecessary and repetitive delays in state court to 5 years.

The measure also limits what are clearly repetitive and frivolous abuses of the habeas process, where the same inmate files claim after claim with only minor variations on previously denied claims.

While there are no innocent people on California's death row, Proposition 66 will ensure due process by never limiting claims of actual innocence.

Proposition 66 expands the pool of qualified lawyers to deal with these cases, and the trial courts that know these cases best will handle the initial appeals.

The overall changes to the death penalty system are simple fixes that will reform capital punishment and fix what's broken. I urge a "no" vote on Proposition 62 and "yes" on Proposition 66 to ensure the worst of the worst killers receive the strongest sentences, while saving California taxpayers millions of dollars every year.

(source: Birgit Fladager is the Stanislaus County district attorney----Fresno Bee)

***********************

End the death penalty on election day


Besides the heated and dramatic contest for the White House that will pull many students away from their p-sets to the polls for an hour on Nov. 8, a no less important but certainly less publicized fight over ballot initiatives will be up for grabs for Californian voters. Especially consequential for the advancement of social justice is Proposition 62, which seeks to end the death penalty. Unless we are to be complicit with the systematic killing of the dispossessed or even merely support the codified ability for our government to have such a tool at its disposal, then ending capital punishment is a critical first step.

A foundational principle of our legal system is equal protection before the law. As powerless as removing the death penalty may be for the purpose of remedying the inequalities embedded in the system, capital punishment serves to empower the very apparatus that is broken. With great power comes great responsibility - responsibilities the American justice system is unequipped to handle. Exonerations are common: The Innocence Project documents that DNA evidence has found over 150 people innocent on death row nationwide. Yet even with the presence of such technology, wrongful convictions continue, encouraged by a system that overemphasizes the role of witness testimonies and undervalues the principle of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also impossible to ignore the demographics of exonerees: Joint data from the Innocence Project and the NAACP finds that 70 % are people of color, with 73 % of those being African-American. It is no accident that the complicated, multi-layered legal system filters out the accused who are affluent and white while leaving low-income minorities to a predestined fate.

Admittedly, California has not executed a convict for 10 years, but if anything, this should be more of a reason to definitively put an end to the practice. In fact, since 1978, despite the 743 inmates on the state's death row, only 13 inmates have been executed. These prisoners live in a murky in-between state, where they must await their legal sentence despite the state's limited will to carry it out. Yet Prop 66, a ballot initiative aimed at shortening the time allowed for legal appeals, would only exacerbate the inaccuracies and injustices of the criminal sentencing. Additionally, at a whopping cost of $384 million per execution, the death penalty is 18 times more costly than life in prison without parole - the sentence that would replace the death penalty under Prop 62.

For the legions of voters who have become disillusioned this election cycle by ???establishment??? candidates and the perception of voter inefficacy, the California ballot initiatives present a real opportunity to affect direct change on a very specific issue. A vote to end the death penalty is not enough and perhaps in some ways counterproductive if it serves to make us complacent, with the most cruel and unusual manifestation of a network of subtler injustices gone. Nonetheless, it is equally likely to be the next step in a continuing and productive discussion in the United States about mass incarceration and institutional inequalities. There is reason beyond blind optimism to believe this will occur. Citing Proposition 34 from 2012, Bryan Stevenson, author of bestselling novel "Just Mercy," opines that at the time, "the ballot initiative lost by only a couple of percentage points. Almost banning the death penalty through a popular referendum in an American state would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier." Perhaps this time we can expect victory.

(source: Opinion, Jasmine Liu----The Stanford Daily)

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