March 20
TEXAS----2 new execution dates
Clifton Williams has been given an execution date for June 21, and Danny Bible
has been given an execution date for June 27----both should be considered
serious.
**************************
An execution date has been set for a 66-year-old man who used an ice pick to
stab a Houston woman to death after she asked to use the telephone at his house
in 1979.
Danny Paul Bible is scheduled to be executed June 27, according to NBC5
(KXAS-TV).
The brutal murder of 20-year-old Inez Deaton went unsolved for nearly 2
decades. The woman had been raped, stabbed 11 times and dumped on the bank of a
bayou.
Bible confessed to Deaton's killing after he was arrested in 1998 for a
Louisiana rape. He also confessed to 3 other killings in North Texas, as well
as numerous rapes.
4 years after killing Deaton, Bible killed his sister-in-law Tracy Powers, her
4-month-old son and her roommate, Pamela Hudgins. Their bodies were found near
Weatherford.
He pleaded guilty to Hudgins' murder in 1984 and was paroled after 9 years in
prison.
Bible has been linked to rapes in Montana, Louisiana and Texas. He was arrested
in 1998 after he forced his way into a woman's motel room in Louisiana and
raped her. He bound and gagged the woman before stuffing her into a duffel bag,
but she was able to break free and call police, according to the San Antonio
Express-News.
His attorneys argued in federal appeals that Bible is no longer a threat to
society because he is confined to a wheelchair. A prison van taking him to
death row in 2003 crashed, disabling him, killing a corrections officer and
killing the driver of another vehicle.
"He can't get out of a wheelchair by himself. He can't lift his arms. He can't
do anything," attorney Margaret Schmucker said after the U.S. Supreme Court
refused an appeal from the death row inmate in 2016.
3 Texas death row inmates are scheduled for execution before Bible, including
Erick Davila of Fort Worth.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
*********************
Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----30
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----548
Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #
31----------Mar. 27----------------Rosendo Rodriguez III--549
32----------Apr. 25----------------Erick Davila-----------550
33----------May 16-----------------Juan Castillo----------551
34---------June 21----------------Clifton Williams--------552
35---------June 27----------------Danny Bible-------------553
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
FLORIDA:
Florida to seek the death penalty against Conway killer
The state of Florida is reported seeking the death penalty against Michael
Lawrence Woodbury, the 42-year-old former Mainer who shot and killed three
people at the Army Barracks store in Conway in 2007.
Woodbury, who is serving a life sentence for those killings, was indicted by a
Florida grand jury on March 13 on a 1st-degree premeditated murder charge
following a homicide that took place last September in the Okeechobee
Correctional Institution.
On Sunday, Matteo Tullio of the Okeechobee News reported that the indictment
referenced the Sept. 22, 2017, killing of a fellow inmate named Antoneeze
Haynes.
Haynes had been serving 5 life sentences since 1993 for the crimes of attempted
murder, robbery, burglary and 2 counts of kidnapping committed during a 1990
home invasion.
The News' Tullio reported that "according to an investigative summary conducted
by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Woodbury had barricaded the cell
door and began to attack Haynes" with a combination lock tied to a sock.
"Woodbury also placed the lock around his middle finger and punched Haynes,
targeted his head, hands and ankles," the story said, adding, "Woodbury also
reportedly told correctional officers he had a large knife and would kill
Haynes along with the first correctional officer that tried to enter the cell."
Woodbury remained barricaded in the cell for hours until Maj. Frank Gatto
arrived and began to negotiate with him. After several more hours, he gave up
and allowed officers to handcuff him through the cell door.
"Woodbury was taken to confinement and Haynes was taken to the infirmary and
then transported to Raulerson Hospital, where he was pronounced dead," Tullio
wrote.
According to the Okeechobee News, Judge Jerald Bryant of Florida's 19th
Judicial Circuit, said Florida would seek the death penalty for Woodbury's
latest crime.
Longtime Conway residents will remember July 2, 2007, as the day when Woodbury,
then 31 and from Windham, Maine, walked into the Army Barracks at 347 White
Mountain Highway and shot store manager James Walker, 34, and 2 customers from
Massachusetts, William Jones, 25, and Gary Jones, 23.
Walker and William Jones died at the scene, and Gary Jones died later at Maine
Medical Center. The two Joneses were not related but were close friends who had
been camping in Maine. The 2 campers walked in on Woodbury and apparently tried
to halt his bid to steal gas money for the stolen cars in which he had been
living.
The day after the shootings, Woodbury gave himself up to a Fryeburg, Maine,
patrol officer in a forested stretch of railbed in that town.
Woodbury has been serving a life sentence without parole in Florida since 2009.
Reached Monday, Jackson Police Chief Chris Perley said he would not object to
putting Woodbury to death.
At the time of the Army Barracks killings, Perley was with the Conway Police
and was the second officer to arrive. When Woodbury fled the scene, he helped
search the wood line with another officer. He said police worked the case for
18 hours straight.
"Michael Woodbury's conduct, both proven here in the state of New Hampshire and
as alleged in the state of Florida, shows that true evil does exist in the
hearts of some," Perley told the Sun. "Protection against those persons who
would do harm to others is the highest order of responsibility for those of us
that serve to protect the public from such terror.
"If his recent conduct is true, he should suffer the greatest penalty available
to ensure no innocent persons ever suffer at his hands again," Perley said.
Asked for comment, Jane E. Young, Associate Attorney General for the state of
New Hampshire, said Monday, "The Florida authorities are the ones to make
charging and sentencing decisions since the crime happened in Florida.
"The Attorney General's Office has no comment on the current charges as the
defendant pled guilty to 3 counts of 1st-degree murder for the crimes he
committed in Conway and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
of parole for those crimes."
In 2012, the Sun reached out to Woodbury on the 5th anniversary of his crimes.
He responded in a letter that he handwrote entirely in capital letters.
"I went into that place with the plan of carjacking that man's vehicle," said
Woodbury. "This is the true reason I pled out to 3 life sentences so fast. My
lawyer and I was worried if I did not plead out, ASAP, the Feds was going to
try and give me the death penalty for capital murder in the commission of a
carjacking. Besides my lawyer and I, you are the 1st to know this. I don't care
now, the Feds missed their shot."
According to New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, which prosecuted Woodbury
in 2007, it would be up to New Hampshire's U.S. Attorney to bring the
carjacking charge against Woodbury.
The U.S. Attorney isn't inclined to recharge Woodbury, said Public Information
Officer Theresa A. Leppard at the time.
"The state handled the homicide charges with life sentences, so the United
States Attorney's office would not waste resources prosecuting the case," said
Leppard.
In his 2012 letter to the Sun, Woodbury said he spends his days working out,
meditating on the mind of Satan and studying astrophysics. He said he had
renounced violence with 1 notable exception.
"I may still be a 'Satan-worshipping-predator,' but I will never again bring
violence into the equation," Woodbury stated. "The exception being those who
rape children."
Along with the note, Woodbury also provided a copy of a report from a Florida
prison alleging that Woodbury bloodied and strangled another inmate who
apparently told Woodbury he was a child molester. The report was dated May 11,
2009.
"I observed inmate Elliot lying on the floor in what appeared to be blood,"
wrote the corrections official. Inmate Woodbury was standing beside inmate
Elliot also covered in what appeared to be blood. When I questioned Inmate
Woodbury as to what happened he stated 'he was a child molester.'"
Woodbury said he had served time in Florida from 1996-2002 on a bank robbery
charge.
New Hampshire and Florida prison officials refused to comment in 2012 on the
reason he was moved.
(source: conwaydailysun.com)
GEORGIA:
Motion: Prosecutors excluded black jurors in 7 death-penalty cases----DAs'
notes said jurors were 'slow' or 'ignorant' or 'fat'
In handwritten notes, Columbus prosecutors described prospective
African-American jurors as "slow," "ignorant," "con artist" and "fat." They
also jotted a "B" or an "N" next to black people's names on jury lists and
routinely ranked them as the least desirable jurors. This astonishing system of
race discrimination, revealed in a court motion filed Monday, was intended to
exclude black people from juries in 7 death-penalty cases against black
defendants in the 1970s.
The motion was filed on behalf of Johnny Lee Gates, who is serving a sentence
of life without parole for the 1976 rape and murder of Katrina Wright. It
contends that Gates deserves a new trial because prosecutors made a concerted
effort to keep black people off his jury. In Gates' case, the prosecution
struck all 4 prospective black jurors.
"Every person accused of a criminal offense has the right to a fair trial
that's free of race discrimination," said Patrick Mulvaney, a lawyer with the
Southern Center for Human Rights and a member of Gates' legal team. "Mr.
Gates's trial was undermined by race discrimination from the start."
In court filings, Gates' lawyers say the prosecution's alleged discrimination
against black jurors "was harmful to the community and the integrity of the
judicial system."
The Muscogee County District Attorney's Office has yet to explain or defend the
exclusion of black jurors by its prosecutors in the 1970s. Instead, in a recent
court filing, it said Gates' claims should be rejected because he is relying on
just 7 capital cases. To prevail, Gates must show systematic exclusion of
blacks "in case after case, whatever the circumstances, whatever the crime and
whoever the defendant or victim may be," the DA's office said.
The DA's office had repeatedly refused to turn over its jury notes to Gates'
lawyers until Senior Superior Court Judge John Allen ordered prosecutors to
release the records to the plaintiffs in March.
Gates was convicted and sentenced to death during a 3-day trial in 1977. He was
re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2003 while
appealing his case on claims he is intellectually disabled.
Prosecutors said Gates sexually assaulted and killed Wright, a 19-year-old
German immigrant who had moved to Columbus just 12 days earlier to be with her
husband, a soldier at Fort Benning. Gates posed as a gas company employee to
gain entry into the apartment, prosecutors say.
Gates took $480 in cash from Wright. He then bound her hands and gagged and
blindfolded her before shooting her in the head with a .32-caliber pistol,
prosecutors said.
Although Gates gave a videotaped confession, his description of what happened
did not fully match with the physical evidence in the case, say lawyers from
the Georgia Innocence Project, who also represent Gates. They have obtained
court orders for DNA testing.
The 2 prosecutors who tried the case against Gates were then-District Attorney
William Smith and his assistant DA Douglas Pullen, who later succeeded Smith as
district attorney.
Smith was involved in 4 of the 7 death-penalty cases that were tried from 1976
to 1979, the motion said. In 3 of those cases, all 15 prospective black jurors
were struck by the prosecution. In the 4th case, involving defendant William
Henry Hance, prosecutors struck 10 of the 13 prospective black jurors, allowing
2 African-Americans to decide his fate, the motion said.
But in Hance's case, "an all-white jury was impossible because the pool of
prospective jurors had more black citizens than the prosecutors had strikes,"
the motion noted.
Pullen was involved in 5 of the death-penalty trials, and all of them had
all-white juries. In those cases, 27 of the 27 prospective black jurors were
struck by the prosecution, the motion said.
Michael Lacey, a Georgia Tech mathematics professor, reviewed the jury strikes
made by prosecutors in these seven capital cases. The probability that black
jurors were removed for race-neutral reasons was
.000000000000000000000000000004 %, Lacey said in a sworn statement filed by
Gates' legal team.
Pullen's name surfaced in recent years in the case against Timothy Foster, a
black man who was sentenced to death in Floyd County for killing a 79-year-old
widow in 1986. Pullen, while still a prosecutor in Columbus, assisted with jury
selection in Foster's trial in Rome. In that case, prosecutors struck all four
prospective black jurors.
In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court condemned the prosecution for improperly
assembling an all-white jury in Foster's case and repudiated their stated
reasons for striking all 4 prospective black jurors. The ruling referred to the
prosecution team's color-coded jury notes that listed potential black jurors as
"#B1," "#B2," "#B3" and so on.
"(T)he focus on race in the prosecution's file plainly demonstrates a concerted
effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury," Chief Justice John
Roberts wrote for a 7-1 majority.
In Gates' case, prosecutors' notes designated prospective white jurors with a
"W" and prospective black jurors with an "N." One set of notes ranked
prospective jurors on a scale of "1" to "5," with 1 being the least desirable
and 5 being the most favored to have on the jury.
All four prospective black jurors were designated as a "1," with no explanation
why. A note explaining why the only white juror received a "1" said he was
"opposed" to capital punishment but could still impose the penalty.
Listed below are the 7 African-American death-penalty defendants prosecuted in
Muscogee County in the late 1970s; the number of prospective black jurors
removed by prosecutors; the number of African-American jurors who served as
jurors; and the status of the defendant.
Joseph Mulligan: 1976; 4 of 4; zero; executed in 1987.
Jerome Bowden: 1976; 8 of 8; zero; executed in 1986.
Johnny Lee Gates: 1977; 4 of 4; zero; serving life sentence.
Jimmy Lee Graves: 1977; 4 of 4; zero; paroled in 2012.
Williams Brooks: 1977; 4 of 4; zero; serving life sentence.
William Henry Hance: 1978; 10 of 13; 2; executed in 1994.
William Spicer Lewis: 1979; 7 of 7; zero; serving life sentence
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
OHIO:
Defense attorney explains death penalty cases
Locally there are 3 death penalty cases, all in different stages of legal
proceedings.
There's the James Worley case in the trial phase. He is accused of kidnapping
and murdering 20-year-old Sierah Joughin.
Another death penalty case in Columbus, is against Brian Golsby and is in
mitigation. He's accused of kidnapping and murdering Reagan Tokes, an Anthony
Wayne High School graduate and former OSU student.
The 3rd case is near the end of the death penalty process. William Montgomery
was found guilty of killing Debra Ogle and Cynthia Tincher in 1986.
Montgomery has been on death row for 31 years and is scheduled to die by lethal
injection on April 11th, but the Ohio Parole Board recommended clemency so he
now waits for Governor John Kasich with the final say on the ruling.
1 local defense attorney said having 3 death penalty cases at once is more than
normal. He explains how they are ran much differently from a non-death penalty
case.
"I can remember everything that happened that night crystal clear," explained
Richard (Rick) Kerger, an attorney practicing law since 1974.
Rick Kerger is a defense attorney who has worked on several death penalty
cases. A number of years ago, he had to watch one of his clients be put to
death.
"I've known people who are dying," explained Kerger. "I never knew anybody who
was going to die exactly at midnight and it's a very different sensation when
you are going through it."
He said emotions are high during every phase of a death penalty case especially
those that hit close to home.
"It's always about people," said Rick Kerger. "This is not some abstract
concept. It's about those two young women who were killed, it's about the men
that are accused of killing them, it's about their families. The emotions in
there are raw." Kerger said death penalty cases generally involve a longer
trial, but that's not where it ends. There's mitigation, the chance to spare
the defendant's life, and even still what could be decades of appeals.
"The reason the process takes so long is we want to be sure we got the right
person because if you convict somebody wrongly you have necessarily let the
criminal get free," said Rick Kerger, a defense lawyer.
Death penalty cases do cost a lot of money too, over a million dollars on
average. The cost covers incarceration, appeal, and much more.
"Part of the problem I see in the system is once it reaches the decision it's
very hard to get it overturned," explained Kerger. "I think the thinking is
look, if you had a fair trial that's all you need. You don't need a perfect
trial."
While Rick Kerger's job is to keep his clients off death row, he does say
jurors' other option, life in prison without parole, is also a very bleak
sentence with little hope.
(source: WTOL news)
TENNESSEE----2 new execution dates
Edmund Zagorski has been given an execution date for October 11, and David
Miller has been given an execution date for December 6; both dates should be
seen as serious.
(source: RH)
MISSOURI----impending execution
This Death Row Inmate's Blood-Filled Tumors Could Make His Execution Especially
Cruel and Unusual----Russell Bucklew suffers from a rare disease.
Missouri death row inmate Russell Bucklew is scheduled to die on Tuesday. But
Bucklew suffers from a rare medical condition, and his lawyers say that the
execution drug that will be used could come with gruesome consequences and
constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
For nearly all his life, Bucklew has been afflicted with cavernous hemangioma,
a rare disease that causes tumors to form in his face, head, neck, and throat.
Prison staff intend to use pentobarbital, a sedative, to execute him, but this
could cause his tumors to burst. Cheryl Pilate, one of Bucklew's lawyers told
the Associated Press on Monday, he would likely experience "a gruesome
execution with choking and gagging on blood and the infliction of excruciating
pain."
Bucklew, who is 49 years old, has been on death row for more than 20 years for
the 1996 murder of Michael Sanders in Cape Giradeau, Missouri. Sanders was the
new boyfriend of Bucklew's former girlfriend Stephanie Ray. Bucklew shot
Sanders in front of his children, Ray and her children, and then kidnapped Ray
and took her to a secluded area. After raping her, he drove her to the St.
Louis area as a hostage where a high-speed chase and shootout with a state
trooper ensued. Bucklew was arrested and held in the Cape Girardeau County jail
but escaped a few months later in June by hiding in a trash can that was taken
out of the prison. While on the run, he went to the home of Ray's mother and
attacked her with a hammer, but she survived. 2 days later, Bucklew was
apprehended and jailed. In 1997, he was convicted of kidnap, rape, and murder,
and sentenced to death.
Missouri first attempted to execute Bucklew in May 2014, but the US Supreme
Court granted a stay in order to allow Bucklew's claims that his execution
would be painful to work its way through the lower courts. Bucklew's lawyers
argued that given his illness, he could not be humanely executed, and this
cruel and unusual punishment would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment. In
Glossip v. Gross, the US Supreme Court said that when the Eighth Amendment is
used to challenge a method of execution a "reasonable alternative" must be
proposed by the inmate.
In the 2014 appeal, Bucklew's lawyers suggested that the state use nitrogen gas
to execute him (the state of Oklahoma recently proposed it as an alternative to
lethal injection). According to court documents, Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor of
surgery and anesthesiology at Emory University said that "substantial risk"
exists that Bucklew will "suffer from extreme or excruciating pain." But last
June, a federal judge ruled that because Bucklew could not actually show that
death by nitrogen would reduce the risk of suffering, his execution should
proceed.
Missouri uses a 1-drug protocol in its executions in which death row inmates
are injected with a large dose of the sedative pentobarbital. According to a
Buzzfeed News report, the state's drug supplier is a pharmacy with a history of
selling contaminated drugs, and anti-death penalty advocates argue that
contaminated pentobarbital would also cause a painful death for Bucklew.
Last week, in the appeal Bucklew's lawyers filed with the US Supreme Court,
they asked for the court to spare his life and painted a grim picture of what
could happen during the execution. "As he struggles to breathe through the
execution procedure," they wrote, "Bucklew's throat tumor will likely rupture
... filling his mouth and airway with blood, causing him to choke and cough on
his own blood."
(source: Mother Jones)
************
3 options remain for Missouri man scheduled to be executed today
A federal court judge, the U.S. Supreme Court and Republican Governor Eric
Greitens are the options left for convicted killer Russell Bucklew, whose
execution is set for later today. The attorney for Bucklew says lethal
injection could be gruesome and painful because of Bucklew's brain and neck
tumors.
An appeal is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that states his throat tumor
would probably rupture, causing him to choke on his own blood. Bucklew was
moments away from execution in 2014 when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened for
the same argument.
The governor's spokesman, Parker Briden, says he cannot comment on whether a
request has been made to block Bucklew's execution.
In 1996, the 49-year-old Bucklew was convicted of murdering a Cape Girardeau
man involved with his ex-girlfriend. Police say Bucklew killed Michael Sanders
in front of Sanders and his estranged girlfriend. He also raped the woman, held
her hostage and got into a shootout with state troopers. Bucklew survived a
bullet to the head during that shooting.
Missourinet is planning to cover today's scheduled execution. The procedure can
occur anytime between 6 p.m. today and 6 p.m. tomorrow.
The last person to be executed in Missouri was Mark Christeson in January 2017.
(source: missourinet.com)
ARIZONA:
Supreme Court refuses to reconsider death penalty in Arizona case
The Supreme Court refused again Monday to decide whether the death penalty is
unconstitutional.
The action came in a case from Arizona in which lawyers asked the court to
strike down both the state's capital punishment system and the nation's.
The court's 4 liberal justices said Arizona's system, under which most
defendants convicted of1st-degree murder are eligible for the death penalty,
may be unconstitutional. But they said the case was not ready for the high
court's review.
The justices have in recent years sided with death row defendants for specific
reasons, ranging from racial discrimination and intellectual disability to
incompetent lawyers. But in their most important case, they ruled 5-4 in 2015
that even a controversial type of lethal injection can continue to be used in
executions.
That case produced the dissent that led to Monday's order. Justice Stephen
Breyer, backed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said then that the nation's
40-year-old system of capital punishment should be reexamined because a
declining number of death sentences were sometimes unreliable, often arbitrary,
and nearly always led to such long delays before execution that they no longer
serve as a deterrent.
Since then, lawyers for death row inmates have tried to get the justices to
reconsider whether capital punishment is constitutional.
"A national consensus has emerged that the death penalty is an unacceptable
punishment in any circumstance," former U.S. acting solicitor general Neal
Katyal argued in the latest case. "And this court's opinions, supported by
reams of evidence, are trending unmistakably toward that consensus."
His client, Abel Daniel Hidalgo, killed 2 men in Arizona in 2001 and, by the
time he was found and charged, had killed 2 women in Idaho in 2002.
The question in the case, as in most death penalty disputes, wasn't about guilt
or innocence but whether the penalty is dished out fairly. Arizona lists so
many potential aggravating circumstances in its capital punishment statute that
almost every 1st-degree murderer is eligible for execution, Katyal claimed.
Arizona officials had asked the court to turn down the case, citing Hidalgo's
heinous crimes and refuting claims that the death penalty is unfairly
administered. The decline in executions, the state said in court papers, is due
largely to problems states have had in obtaining the drugs needed for lethal
injections.
"Despite the logistical difficulties, states have continued in their unwavering
efforts to constitutionally impose and carry out capital sentences," the
state's solicitor general, Dominic Draye, wrote. "If anything, the lengths to
which states must presently go is proof of their commitment to maintaining
capital punishment."
The court's action was unsigned, but Breyer wrote a 10-page concurrence laying
out possible grounds for declaring Arizona's system unconstitutional. He
concluded that the factual record was not fully developed. Justices Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed.
To back up their claim, lawyers for Hidalgo had obtained evidence through
public records requests to claim that aggravating circumstances required to
seek a death sentence were present in 856 of 866 1st-degree murder cases in
Maricopa County between 2002 and 2012. That would surpass rates in other states
with an active death penalty statute and suggest that the penalty covers too
many crimes.
The court also heard from several groups opposed to the death penalty, such as
Amnesty International, and from former Arizona judges, prosecutors, defenders
and legislators who agree with opponents.
"Years of experience and study demonstrate that the death penalty serves no
legitimate end and is a grossly disproportionate form of punishment," the Fair
Punishment Project wrote.
(source: USA Today)
CALIFORNIA:
California's death penalty avoids legal challenge at Supreme Court
California's death penalty law sidestepped a legal challenge Monday when the
U.S. Supreme Court denied review of a similarly wide-ranging law in Arizona.
An Arizona death row inmate had asked the court to consider whether the state's
law violated constitutional standards because it makes virtually every
1st-degree murderer subject to potential capital charges. When the high court
struck down all state death penalty laws in 1972, it said those laws must
reserve the death penalty for those convicted of the worst categories of
murders.
If the court had taken up the inmate's case and struck down the Arizona law,
the ruling could have overturned death penalty laws in other states including
California, where a study found that 95 % of all 1st-degree murder convictions
over a 25-year period could have been charged as capital crimes.
But after considering the case at closed-door conferences for 4 months, the
justices rejected the appeal Monday, leaving intact an Arizona Supreme Court
ruling that upheld the state law.
The vote was unanimous. But the court's 4 liberal-leaning justices, led by
Justice Stephen Breyer, issued a separate opinion saying the case raised
serious issues.
To meet constitutional standards, a state law "must genuinely narrow the class
of persons eligible for the death penalty," said Breyer, joined by Justices
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
He said the Arizona court, in upholding the law, "seemed to suggest that
prosecutors may perform the narrowing requirement" by deciding which murders
were serious enough for capital charges. Past Supreme Court rulings require
states, in their laws, to set those limits rather than leaving the task up to
prosecutors, Breyer said.
But he said this was the wrong case to make the decision, because the condemned
prisoner, whose lawyers cited academic studies on the breadth of the Arizona
law, did not persuade the state's courts to hold hearings on the actual scope
of the law and how it is applied. Such a record is necessary to determine
whether the law is unconstitutionally broad, Breyer said.
In a 2015 opinion, Breyer and Ginsburg said the death penalty itself probably
violated constitutional standards because it was applied arbitrarily, after
long delays, and because it was likely that some innocent people had been
executed. Breyer wrote another opinion in 2016 saying California's death
penalty appeared to be constitutionally defective.
The Arizona case involved Abel Hidalgo, convicted of 2 2001 murders in Maricopa
County. His lawyers said studies showed that, over an 11-year period, 99 % of
all 1st-degree murders in that county could have been prosecuted as capital
crimes. The state's law, originally drafted narrowly, "now provides prosecutors
and jurors with unfettered discretion," defense lawyers said.
In response, Arizona's lawyers said the law provides "clear, objective
standards" for capital murders.
The California death penalty law also started narrowly, covering only selected
categories of intentional killings, such as murder of a police officer, murder
for financial gain and multiple murders. But that law, passed by legislators
over Gov. Jerry Brown's veto in 1977, was expanded by a 1978 voter initiative
and later court rulings and now applies to most types of 1st-degree murders,
including some committed unintentionally in the course of another crime.
The state has the nation's largest death row, with 746 condemned prisoners. It
has not executed anyone since January 2006, but a number of inmates could be
scheduled for execution within the next year because of a 2016 initiative
limiting review of execution methods, and Supreme Court rulings rejecting
challenges to lethal injection drugs in other states.
The case is Hidalgo vs. Arizona, 17-251.
(source: San Frtancisco Chronicle)
USA:
Trump's death penalty plan for drug dealers a 'step backwards,' experts say
President Donald Trump on Monday rolled out his 3-part plan to tackle the
opioid epidemic -- including some programs long championed by public health
advocates -- but it's the proposal to impose the death penalty on drug
traffickers that has raised the most eyebrows.
"This isn't about being nice anymore," Trump told the crowd at a New Hampshire
event. "These are terrible people, and we have to get tough on those people. We
can have all the blue-ribbon committees we want. But if we don't get tough on
the drug dealers, we're wasting our time -- just remember that, we're wasting
our time -- and that toughness includes the death penalty."
Trump also offered support to policies increasing access to the opioid overdose
antidote naloxone, calling for more medication-assisted treatment programs and
highlighting a new high-profile advertising campaign to discourage America's
youth from trying drugs, similar to the "Just Say No" campaigns from the Reagan
era.
However, public health experts roundly condemned the death penalty proposal,
with some saying it renews the failed rhetoric from the war on drugs in the
1980s.
"We can't execute our way out of this epidemic," said Dr. Andrew Kolodny,
co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University.
"To be talking about the death penalty sounds to me like a step backwards."
Trump's opioid plan to take 3-pronged approach, including death penalty for
high-volume traffickers
Dr. Guohua Li, a professor of epidemiology and anesthesiology at Columbia
University who has studied the epidemic for more than a decade, also cast doubt
on the effectiveness of such a policy.
"Criminal justice can play a complementary role in addressing the opioid
crisis," Li said, "but relying on the criminal justice system to address public
health problems has proven unwise, costly, ineffective and often
counterproductive."
The opioid epidemic claimed 64,000 lives in drug overdoses in 2016 and has
killed more than 500,000 people since 2000, according to the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. Trump has declared the epidemic a public health
emergency -- and public health experts said that's where the focus should be.
"Like the epidemics of Ebola and Zika," Li said, "the opioid crisis will
ultimately be resolved through a public health approach by public health
professionals working in the CDC, state and county health departments, and
academic institutions in collaboration with other government agencies and
community organizations across society."
In New Hampshire, Trump laid out his vision for tackling the opioid crisis,
saying his approach would be 3-pronged: reducing demand through education,
cutting off the flow of illicit drugs and saving lives by expanding
opportunities for evidence-based addiction treatment.
But he most emphasized that it was time get tough on drug dealers.
Opioid overdose among children nearly doubles, study says
"You know it's an amazing thing. Some of these drug dealers will kill thousands
of people during their lifetime -- thousands of people -- and destroy many more
lives than that," Trump said. "They'll get caught, and they'll get 30 days in
jail, or they'll go away for a year, or they'll be fined."
"So if we're not going to get tough on the drug dealers who kill thousands of
people and destroy so many people's lives, we are just doing the wrong thing,"
the president said. "Toughness is the thing they most fear."
His comments were met with applause.
"Whether you are a dealer or doctor or trafficker or a manufacturer, if you
break the law and illegally peddle these deadly poisons, we will find you, we
will arrest you, and we will hold you accountable."
Trump stressed the death penalty would be sought for the "big pushers, the ones
who are really killing people." At one point, he referenced an unspecified
country that he claimed doesn't have a drug problem because it has "zero
tolerance for drug dealers."
"Take a look at some of those countries," Trump said. "They don't play games.
They don't have a drug problem."
However, he acknowledged that the United States may not support this plan.
"Maybe our country is not ready for that. It's possible ... and I can
understand it," he said. "Maybe, although personally, I can't understand that."
Some of the president's proposals have been endorsed by experts. Naloxone, the
overdose antidote, is extremely effective and can start working in minutes.
Harm reduction groups and needle exchanges have been distributing it since
1996, and the CDC says more than 26,000 overdoses have been reversed since
then.
Many addiction specialists consider medication-assisted treatment the gold
standard of addiction treatment. It utilizes behavioral therapy as well as
medications like buphrenorphine and methadone that can reduce cravings and
withdrawal symptoms from opioid use.
A senior White House official said the administration would not be waiting for
Congress to propose legislation on the death penalty proposal, saying it is
something the Justice Department is "examining to move ahead with to make sure
that's done appropriately."
Opioid Crisis Fast Facts
The official declined to give an example of when the death penalty might be
used, referring all questions to the Department of Justice. "Obviously, there
are instances where that would be appropriate," the official said.
Li said the government's action to impose more severe penalties for drug
trafficking crimes is "understandable and, if implemented judiciously and with
other more substantive and comprehensive interventions, is likely efficacious."
But he cautioned, "the increased penalty by itself, however, is unlikely to
make a significant impact on the opioid epidemic."
John Blume, a law professor at Cornell University and director of the
university's Death Penalty Project, said the Federal Drug Kingpin Act, which
allowed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in which a homicide
occurred during the commission of a drug transaction, yielded "few kingpins or
major dealers -- and mostly ensnared poor, African-American, mid- to low-level
persons involved in the drug trade."
"There is no reason to believe this new call for capital punishment in homicide
cases for drug dealers will be any more successful," Blume said.
Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance,
a nonprofit group that seeks to end the war on drugs, called the policy "deeply
cynical."
"There's a lot Trump should be doing; instead, he's resorting to recycled drug
war rhetoric, using his usual bombastic approach to rally his base,"
Sanchez-Moreno said. "It reveals a lack of interest in helping the people who
are affected by this crisis, and he's using it for purely political goals."
She said Trump's announcement wasn't surprising, just disappointing. "He's been
praising President (Rodrigo) Duterte in the Philippines forever, and that's
somebody who advocates going out and murdering people who use drugs," she said.
The Trump administration, she said, needs to "drop its obsession with killing
and locking people up and instead focus resources on what works: harm-reduction
strategies and access to evidence-based treatment and prevention."
On Twitter, the reaction was similar, with people wondering whether the
administration would seek the death penalty for executives at pharmaceutical
companies or for doctors at so-called pill mills. Others questioned the logic
behind the move.
Has the death penalty solved anything, ever?-- Ivan Jarden (@ivesjar) March 19,
2018
Dr. Leana Wen, director of public health in Baltimore, echoed that sentiment.
"The war on drugs has not worked," she said. "The last thing we need is to
further criminalize the disease of addiction. We need for everyone to
understand addiction is a disease, that treatment exists and recovery is
possible." What is needed, she said, is tens of billions of new money for the
epidemic. "We already know what works," she said. "We just need the funding to
get us there."
Kolodny added that it makes some sense to seek stricter penalties for major
fentanyl suppliers and pill mill doctors for pushing drugs that can kill, but
he said that seeking the death penalty seems to be an overreach.
"The reality is, most people who are selling drugs are suffering from opioid
addiction, and they sell drugs to support their own habit," Kolodny said.
"When I start hearing about the death penalty, it just seems to me we're going
in the wrong direction."
(source: CNN)
*****************
Attorney General Sessions backs Trump call for death penalty in drug cases
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday backed a plan outlined by
President Donald Trump aimed at combating the opioid crisis by vowing to seek
the death penalty "wherever appropriate" against drug traffickers.
"Drug dealers show no respect for human dignity and put their own greed ahead
of the safety and even the lives of others," he said in a statement, adding
that the Justice Department "will continue to aggressively prosecute drug
traffickers."
(source: Reuters)
*******************
Van Jones rips Trump death penalty proposal as 'divisive' and 'stupid'
CNN's Van Jones tore into President Trump's proposal to sentence some drug
traffickers to the death penalty.
"Nobody on the ground is saying what we really need is the death penalty for
drug dealers, what we really need is tougher, harsher sentences," Jones said on
CNN late Monday, noting he has met with sheriffs and pastors in the past.
"I don't know where he's getting that stuff. That is 180 degrees from what the
people on the ground are saying."
Jones said people he's talked to are saying drug dealers need more help,
compassion and education.
"Sometimes they see they need better Bible studies, that would be higher on the
list than death penalty for drug dealers," Jones said.
"This death penalty thing is a complete nonstarter," he continued.
"It's divisive and it's stupid and I think it's an offense to the people who
are really trying to solve this problem."
Trump earlier Monday spoke in New Hampshire about his plans to combat the
opioid epidemic.
"If we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we're wasting our time," said
Trump, who has praised other countries' use of the death penalty for drug
traffickers for weeks.
His plan to seek stiffer penalties for high-volume drug traffickers includes a
mandate to the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty when appropriate
under current law.
A Justice Department official wrote in an email that "under current law, the
federal dmcyeath penalty is available for several limited drug-related
offenses." The move faces high hurdles with advocates and some lawmakers
slamming the measure as the wrong approach to curbing the crisis.
(source: thehill.com)
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