Feb. 22
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Still fighting the death penalty in NH
To the Editor:
Now is the time for all concerned citizens who are interested in abolishing the
existing death penalty in New Hampshire to come to our aid. Almost 3 years ago,
I started the Monadnock Concerned Citizens group to repeal and abolish the
death penalty in New Hampshire. I'm now a member of the board of directors of
the New Hampshire Coalition to abolish the death penalty, and the 2 groups
haven't given up on our goal, but we are facing 3 major hurdles:
1. A new proposed bill, HB 351 expands the death penalty to anyone who causes
the death of someone 18 years or younger.
2. The NHC is operating on a very small tight budget, and we need your
financial help. Donations can be made to NHCADP, P.O. Box 632, Concord, NH
03302.
3. The current governor, and the Senate majority are pro-death supporters.
The new governor and legislators will control repealing or adding new laws for
the next two years. We must now kill HB 351 and you can help. Donate and call
your representative to vote against the bill, if it comes to the floor.
I will continue to work with both groups, and keep you informed through radio
and newspapers.
DALE PREGENT--Keene
(source: Letter to the Editor, Union Leader)
PENNSYLVANIA:
DA considering death penalty in double-homicide
The Lycoming County district attorney is considering seeking the death penalty
against Jordan Rawls if he is convicted in a 2016 double-homicide case,
according to the court administrator. A 2nd attorney will be hired for the
defense.
Rawls, 24, of 1024 Race St., is 1 of 2 suspects charged in the Oct. 31 double
homicide of Kristine Kibler, 50, and her son, Shane Wright, 25, in their home
on Poplar Street in Newberry.
During their meeting Tuesday morning, the county commissioners considered
hiring E. J. Rymsza, at $125 per hour, as a 2nd attorney in the defense of
Rawls.
District Attorney Eric R. Linhardt confirmed he is considering seeking the
death penalty, but he stressed a final decision has yet to be made.
"Mr. Rawls is potentially eligible for the death penalty because there are
multiple victims and because the murders occurred during the course of a
robbery," Linhardt said. "There are 2 penalties available to us: Life without
parole or death."
By law, 2 attorneys must be hired for a death-penalty case, according to J.
David Smith, county solicitor.
Adrianne Stahl, court administrator, said Rymsza will attempt to find
mitigating evidence in the case in an effort to convince Linhardt not to pursue
the death penalty.
The estimated cost for attorney fees in a death-penalty case could run at least
$200,000, not including other court costs, said Stahl. If Linhardt decides not
to pursue the death penalty, the attorney fees would be roughly $50,000, she
said.
Linhardt said the cost of prosecution is only one of many factors considered.
"Ultimately, the most important factor is whether we conclude that of the
penalties available, Mr. Rawls most deserves death," Linhardt said.
Ronald Travis, also at $125 per hour, was the 1st attorney hired to handle the
case. Stahl said if Rymsza is able to find enough evidence to convince Linhardt
not to pursue the death penalty, then his contract will end and Travis will
remain the sole attorney.
"2 heads are better than 1," Stahl said. She said hiring Rymsza could "save
someone's life and the county lots of money."
"Spending a little bit now could save the county a lot of money down the road,"
Commissioner Rick Mirabito agreed.
The commissioners will vote to approve the agreement with Rymsza during their
Thursday meeting.
(source: sungazette.com)
DELAWARE:
Dover man on death row resentenced to life in prison
A Dover man on death row for 1st-degree murder has had his death sentence
vacated, officials from the Delaware Department of Justice confirmed Tuesday.
Juan J. Ortiz, who had been on death row since 2003, is now sentenced to
mandatory life in prison without benefit of probation or parole.
Ortiz had been convicted of 1st-degree murder for the 2001 shooting death of
his live-in girlfriend Deborah Clay.
Court documents in that case show Ortiz had shot his girlfriend with a 12 gauge
shotgun while she was taking a shower and then set their mobile home on fire.
Last year the Delaware Supreme Court ruled the state's death penalty as
unconstitutional. The Court declared that ruling as retroactive, meaning the
state's death row inmates would be resentenced.
(source: WMDT news)
VIRGINIA:
U.S. Supreme Court rejects appeal from Virginia death row inmate who shut down
Virginia Tech's campus in 2006
The nation's highest court on Tuesday refused to hear the appeal of a Virginia
death row inmate who killed a hospital security guard and sheriff's deputy
during an escape that sparked a massive manhunt that shut down Virginia Tech's
campus in 2006.
William Morva argued that he should have been allowed to present evidence that
he wouldn't pose a threat to prison guards or others if he was sentenced to
life in prison. But the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a ruling from the 4th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting Morva's claims.
Morva's attorneys didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on
Tuesday.
Morva had been in jail for about a year awaiting trial on attempted robbery
charges when he was taken to a Blacksburg hospital for treatment of an injury
in August 2006. After arriving at the hospital, he overpowered a Montgomery
County sheriff's deputy and used the deputy's pistol to shoot an unarmed
security guard, 32-year-old Derrick McFarland, being fleeing.
Morva's escape set off a police manhunt that forced Virginia Tech to cancel
classes on the first day of the academic year and warn students to stay inside.
A day after McFarland's killing, Morva fatally shot Montgomery County Sheriff's
Deputy Eric Sutphin, who had been searching for the inmate on a walking trail
near the Blacksburg campus. Later that day, police found Morva lying in a ditch
with the sheriff's deputy's gun on the ground nearby.
Attorneys for Morva, now 35, told the Supreme Court that he was unfairly
prevented from presenting evidence at trial to refute prosecutors' argument
that Morva would threaten the lives of prison guards and others if allowed to
live. Morva's trial lawyers had said a forensic psychologist would have shown
jurors that Morva wasn't dangerous in prison, but they were blocked from
presenting that testimony.
"With that testimony excluded, the prosecution argued freely to the jury -
without fear of any meaningful rebuttal - that Mr. Morva would endanger the
lives of prison guards unless sentenced to death," his attorneys told the
Supreme Court.
Morva is 1 of 6 inmates on Virginia's death row. A circuit court will hold a
hearing on Friday to set an execution date for another inmate, Ivan Teleguz,
who was convicted in 2006 of hiring another man to kill his ex-girlfriend.
(source: Associated Press)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Justices reject appeal from South Carolina death row inmate
The Supreme Court has turned away an appeal from a South Carolina death row
inmate who pleaded guilty to killing an off-duty police officer during a
multistate crime spree in 2004.
The justices on Tuesday left in place a lower court ruling that rejected Mikal
Dean Mahdi's claims that his lawyer didn't do enough to present evidence of his
troubled childhood.
Mahdi said his lawyer relied on a single expert witness instead of calling
family members and others to offer more details about Mahdi's years growing up
with an abusive father.
Prosecutors said that during his crime spree Mahdi killed a North Carolina
convenience store clerk, carjacked a sport-utility vehicle in South Carolina
and later killed Orangeburg Public Safety Capt. James Myers on Myers' farm.
(source: therepublic.com)
FLORIDA:
Death penalty dropped for 4 former students accused of Homestead murder
The State has waived the death penalty for 4 of 5 former students accused of a
gruesome machete murder in Homestead.
A judge came to the decision during a hearing, Tuesday, for the suspects
involved in murdering 17-year-old Amaya Guardado, back in June of 2015.
Christian Colon, Joseph Cabrera, Desiray Strickland and Jonathan Lucas will now
face life in prison if convicted of 1st degree murder.
"We're very happy they waived the death penalty against Christian Colon," said
Colon's attorney, Jimmy Dellafera, "and we thank the State Attorney's Office.
Many times, these cases take forever to get a waiver of the death penalty.
Based on these children's ages, I think they did exactly the right thing in
this matter."
The state will only seek to execute the alleged ringleader, 22-year-old Kaheem
Arbelo.
(source: WSV news)
***********************
'We choose life,' say churches calling to stop executions----Darlene Farah,
whose daughter Shelby was murdered in 2013, calls for an end to the death
penalty surrounded by church leaders in the state Capitol on Tuesday.
As state lawmakers prepare to pass legislation requiring juries vote
unanimously to sentence convicted murderers to death, a coalition of churches
has a different idea: Abolish the death penalty entirely.
Members of the Florida Council of Churches and representatives from the AME and
Catholic denominations on Tuesday called on lawmakers to pass a moratorium on
executions, citing high cost of death penalty appeals, the possibility of
wrongful convictions and the impact on victims' families being forced to relive
their loved one's murder repeatedly in court.
"Even if we pass unanimous juries, we still haven't solved the economic issues
and we still haven't solved the fact that families keep being dragged through
this trauma over and over again," said Rev. Russell Meyer, a Lutheran pastor
from Tampa and executive director of the Florida Council of Churches.
What's more, they say, there is a moral problem with the state killing people
-- even the most depraved criminals.
"The church has come today on the issue of life and death," said AME Rev. James
Golden. "We choose life."
The religious groups are meeting with lawmakers to urge them to pass a
moratorium. Lawmakers will consider death penalty legislation today and
Wednesday, and activists plan to speak up in those hearings.
So will Darlene Farah, a Jacksonville mother whose daughter Shelby was murdered
in 2013. Farah has been urging the court not to give a death sentence to her
daughter's killer, who she says she has worked to forgive.
"I know what it feels like to have a child taken away from you," Farah said.
"The mother of the person who committed the murder is going to have her chld
taken away from her."
(source: Bradenton Herald)
************************
We now have 6 drug cartel associates saying they did the murder for which Kris
Maharaj sentenced to death
Kris Maharaj, an elderly British citizen, has filed a final appeal against his
wrongful conviction in Florida 30 years ago, which saw him sentenced to death.
Krishna 'Kris' Maharaj, a 78-year old British businessman, was arrested in the
US in 1986 and sentenced to death. He has spent 3 decades in prison, despite
compelling evidence of his innocence, collected his lawyer, Clive Stafford
Smith. The US courts commuted his death sentence in 2002, but have dismissed
subsequent evidence suggesting he was framed.
"We now have no fewer than 6 cartel associates saying they did the murder for
which Kris Maharaj was originally sentenced to death. The terrible possibility
is that the US federal court will not allow us a hearing, based on the bizarre
laws that govern such applications. I hope we can persuade them, but the
injustice Kris has faced for 3 decades is why he and I are both so upset that
Boris Johnson refused to intervene on his behalf. After all, what is a British
passport for?"
Since Kris's original conviction, 6 people affiliated with a Colombian drug
cartel have said they committed the murders for which he was sentenced to
death. Kris's final appeal to the US federal courts was filed earlier this
month, and asks for this new evidence to be heard.
Kris and his MP, Conservative Sir Peter Bottomley, have asked the UK Government
to submit a so-called 'amicus' briefing to the court, supporting Mr Maharaj's
request to be given the opportunity to demonstrate his innocence.
However, the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has declined to submit such a
briefing. In a letter sent in December, the Foreign Office said: "The Minister
does not think it is appropriate to do so on this occasion", and did not give
any further reasoning.
The decision appears to be at odds with previous UK actions in US legal cases.
3 years ago, the Foreign Office commissioned four lawyers from an international
law firm to intervene on behalf of oil giant BP, in litigation surrounding the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill, because the case "implicates the rights of one of
the United Kingdom's largest companies".
The appeal for Kris is filed amid concerns for his wellbeing. Last month, he
was hospitalised for several weeks after becoming seriously ill with a rare
skin condition. Mr Maharaj is already confined to a wheelchair, after he
contracted a similar illness in 2011.
(source: repireve.org.uk)
ALABAMA:
U.S. top court spurns Alabama death row inmate; Sotomayor outraged
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a death row inmate's
challenge to Alabama's execution method, prompting liberal Justice Sonia
Sotomayor to assert that the court should have considered whether the lethal
injection procedures amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
The court rejected an appeal by Thomas Arthur, convicted in the 1982 shooting
death of his girlfriend's husband. In November, the court granted Arthur's
request to put his execution on hold, but only because conservative Chief
Justice John Roberts chose to side with the court's four liberals as a
courtesy.
Sotomayor, in a strongly worded an 18-page opinion joined by fellow liberal
Stephen Breyer dissenting from the court's refusal to hear the case, further
exposed the rift among the 8 justices over the death penalty.
"He has amassed significant evidence that Alabama's current lethal junction
protocol will result in intolerable and needless agony," she wrote, referring
to Arthur's argument that Alabama's lethal injection method violated the U.S.
Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Arthur had proposed being executed by firing squad instead.
Sotomayor said American society's acceptance of different methods of execution
has changed over time, as science reveals the level of suffering involved.
States have cast aside hanging, electrocution and gas chambers for this reason,
turning since the 1980s to an injection of lethal chemicals.
"What cruel irony that the method that appears most humane may turn out to be
our most cruel experiment yet," Sotomayor wrote.
The justices have sharply disagreed among themselves over capital punishment.
In 2015, they upheld Oklahoma's lethal injection process in a 5-4 ruling even
as Breyer and fellow liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg raised concerns about
whether capital punishment violated the Eighth Amendment.
Breyer repeated his concerns on Dec. 12 on the same day the court rejected four
other death penalty appeals. But the court has shown no signs it will take up
the broader question of the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Arthur has been on death row for more than three decades since being convicted
of fatally shooting Troy Wicker as he slept.
Lawyers for Arthur have said lower courts are divided over how to interpret the
Supreme Court's 2015 Oklahoma decision. Their challenge focused on part of that
ruling that said an inmate contesting a method of execution based on the risk
of severe pain must show there is a "known and available alternative."
Arthur's lawyers asked the Supreme Court to clarify several issues, including
whether prisoners can only pick available alternatives that are already
available in the state where they are to be executed and whether, if they are
proposing a lethal injection drug, they have to show the drug is readily
available.
Under Alabama law, death by firing squad is not available, Sotomayor noted. As
a result, the legal rule set by the Supreme Court in the 2015 case "permits
states to immunize their methods of execution - no matter how cruel or how
unusual - from judicial review and thus permits state law to subvert the
federal constitution," she wrote.
Sotomayor said the meaning of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and
unusual punishment should be determined not by the standards that prevailed
when the amendment was adopted in 1791 but instead by the evolving standards of
decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.
The case focused on the use of a sedative called midazolam as part of the
lethal injection drug cocktail. Sotomayor said examples are piling up with
evidence of midazolam's inability to render an execution painless.
Sotomayor wrote, "Execution absent an adequate sedative thus produces a
nightmarish death: The condemned prisoner is conscious but entirely paralyzed,
unable to move or scream his agony, as he suffers what may well be the chemical
equivalent of being burned at the stake."
(source: Reuters)
*************************
Supreme Court denies execution by firing squad
The Supreme Court refused Tuesday, over the vehement dissent of 2 justices, to
let a death-row prisoner in Alabama choose a firing squad over a lethal
injection cocktail that has caused several botched executions in recent years.
The court's unsigned and unexplained denial represented the latest chapter in
its running debate over the morality of the death penalty and the methods used
to carry it out - a debate enlivened in 2015 when 2 justices said the time had
come to decide whether capital punishment is constitutional.
At that time, the court ruled 5-4 that states could continue to use a
controversial form of lethal injection that critics say can lead to severe pain
and suffering, even if a sedative makes it impossible to tell whether the
condemned prisoner can feel its effects. The court also said prisoners must
identify a "known and available alternative" means of execution - something
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called "a macabre challenge."
That's what Alabama's Thomas Arthur did. Citing the risks identified from the
use of the sedative midazolam, he asked that a firing squad carry out the
execution that had been scheduled six times since he killed his girlfriend's
husband in 1982, only to be blocked by legal challenges.
But a federal appeals court ruled - and the Supreme Court apparently agreed -
that Arthur failed to prove the lethal injection would be painful. What's more,
the court said, Alabama does not authorize the use of a firing squad.
Sotomayor, joined by Justice Stephen Breyer - the court's leading critic of the
death penalty - wrote a blistering 18-page dissent in which she said states can
now "immunize their methods of execution, no matter how cruel or how unusual,
from judicial review."
If Arthur was imprisoned in Oklahoma, where firing squads are authorized, he
would be able to avoid lethal injection, she noted. Oklahoma is one of the
states, along with Ohio, Arizona and Alabama, where executions using midazolam
have caused prisoners to writhe in apparent pain over the past 3 years.
"Even if a prisoner can prove that the state plans to kill him in an
intolerably cruel manner, and even if he can prove that there is a feasible
alternative, all a state has to do to execute him through an unconstitutional
method is to pass a statute declining to authorize any alternative method,"
Sotomayor said. "This cannot be right."
(source: USA Today)
*****************************
Sotomayor questions whether lethal injection is 'our most cruel experiment yet'
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote Tuesday that lethal injection "may
turn out to be our most cruel experiment yet" in the search for a humane manner
in which to carry out the death penalty.
Sotomayor, along with Justice Stephen G. Breyer, dissented from the court's
decision not to hear the case of Thomas Douglas Arthur, Alabama's oldest
inmate, who killed his girlfriend's husband in 1982. The court, with Chief
Justice John G. Roberts Jr. providing a "courtesy" 5th vote, recently delayed
Arthur's execution while deciding whether to take his case.
As is the court's custom, the majority did not give a reason for passing up
Arthur's case.
Sotomayor's dissent was just the latest example of how the court is split over
the death penalty, although clearly a majority of the court still finds it
constitutional. Breyer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have called for the
court to accept a case that would allow briefing on that question but have
found no other takers.
Sotomayor in her Tuesday dissent did not question the constitutionality of the
death penalty but criticized the methods by which it is carried out. In the
past, she has been especially wary of Alabama???s procedures.
Arthur had objected to the use of the drug midazolam in his planned lethal
injection, saying it has led to unconstitutional levels of pain and suffering
in previous executions. The Supreme Court upheld the drug's use in 2015's
Glossip v. Gross, and said objecting inmates must prove the drug would cause
severe pain and propose another means of execution.
Arthur proposed a firing squad. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th
Circuit turned him down, saying that he had not met the burden of proving
midazolam would cause pain so severe it would be unconstitutional and that the
state of Alabama did not sanction firing squads.
Sotomayor called the Glossip decision's test "a macabre challenge" but said
Arthur had met it.
"After 34 years of legal challenges, Arthur has accepted that he will die for
his crimes," Sotomayor wrote. "He now challenges only how the state will be
permitted to kill him."
Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion for the court's liberals in Glossip and
Tuesday repeated assertions that midazolam might only mask pain and suffering
during lethal injections, not relieve it. The court in the past has said
needless suffering during executions is unconstitutional.
Death by firing squad may be more instant and cause less suffering, Sotomayor
wrote. But in any case, denying Arthur that choice makes the test the court
authorized in Glossip irrelevant, she said. "Under this view, even if a
prisoner can prove that the state plans to kill him in an intolerably cruel
manner, and even if he can prove that there is a feasible alternative, all a
state has to do to execute him through an unconstitutional method is to pass a
statute declining to authorize any alternative method," Sotomayor wrote. "This
cannot be right."
While Sotomayor has not joined the call to consider whether the death penalty
can ever be constitutionally applied, she has become an outspoken critic of how
it is carried out.
Referring to hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber and lethal injection, she
said: "Evolving standards have yielded a familiar cycle: States develop a
method of execution, which is generally accepted for a time. Science then
reveals that - unknown to the previous generation - the states' chosen method
of execution causes unconstitutional levels of suffering."
Lethal injection, she said, may be the latest in that pattern.
"What cruel irony that the method that appears most humane may turn out to be
our most cruel experiment yet," she wrote.
(source: al.com)
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