March 6
ALABAMA:
Alabama Prisoner Seeks U.S. Supreme Court Review of Attorney Conflict of
Interest Case
Whose interests does a lawyer represent, the capital defendant whose life is at
stake or the abusive father paying for his defense? Alabama death-row prisoner
Nicholas Acklin is seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of that issue because he
alleges that the lawyer who represented him at trial had a financial conflict
of interest that affected the way he represented Acklin in the penalty phase of
his capital trial. Nick Acklin’s father, Theodis Acklin, paid for the legal
services of Behrouz Rahmati to represent his son in the 1998 death-penalty
trial. 2 days before trial, as Rahmati belatedly investigated his client’s
background, he learned from Nick’s mother, Velma, that Theodis had physically
abused her, Nick, and Nick’s brothers, holding them at gunpoint and threatening
to kill them. Rahmati asked Theodis to testify about the abuse, believing that
the mitigating factor could help persuade the jury to spare Nick’s life.
Theodis then gave Rahmati an ultimatum: “You tell Nick if he wants to go down
this road, I’m done with him” and “done helping with this case.” Rahmati told
the jury nothing about the child abuse, instead presenting testimony from
Theodis that Nick had been raised in a “Christian home” with “good values.” The
jury then voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, and the trial court imposed
the death penalty, reasoning that, unlike “most killers” who are the products
of abusive childhoods, Nick had chosen to reject the good values with which he
had been raised.
Acklin’s petition for Supreme Court review is supported by friend-of-the-court
briefs filed by four legal ethics scholars and by former Alabama appeals court
judges and presidents of the Alabama State Bar. The brief of the legal ethics
professors urges the Court to overturn Acklin’s death sentence, saying that
Rahmati “labored under an acute and obvious conflict of interest” that violated
ethics norms and rules of professional responsibility applicable in every
jurisdiction in the United States. Once Theodis threatened to withdraw funding,
the scholars wrote, Rahmati had a clear conflict: “He could serve his client’s
interest by making the best argument possible against the imposition of the
death penalty, or he could protect his own interests by avoiding antagonizing
the paymaster.” At that point, they wrote, “ethics rules unanimously required
Rahmati to secure an alternative fee arrangement or obtain Acklin’s informed
consent to the conflict, or else seek to end the representation. None of these
things occurred.” Instead, without providing Acklin the advice of conflict-free
counsel, Rahmati had Nick sign a “waiver” stating that he did not want to raise
the abuse issue during his trial.
The former judges and bar presidents—including Alabama Supreme Court Chief
Justice Ernest Hornsby, Justice Ralph Cook, and Alabama Court of Criminal
Appeals Presiding Judge William Bowen—wrote that “The obligation of loyalty is
at its most acute in a death penalty case, where its disregard may cost one’s
client his life.” Rahmati’s conduct, they wrote, was an “utter abandonment of
his client’s interests” that was exacerbated by counsel’s incompetence. “Any
reasonable mitigation investigation would have revealed childhood abuse by
Acklin’s father months before trial,” they wrote, when “counsel could have
avoided the conflict by not becoming financially beholden to Acklin’s abuser.”
Counsel also violated the duty of candor to the court, the judges and bar
presidents wrote, “by knowingly presenting false and misleading testimony
[that] the trial court expressly relied upon … in sentencing Acklin to death,
while counsel stood silent.”
Nick Acklin’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his death
sentence and clarify the rules regarding attorney conflicts of interest. In
2013, an Alabama trial judge held an evidentiary hearing, ultimately rejecting
Acklin’s claim. The legal ethics scholars’ brief called that decision a
“departure from precedent and prevailing ethics norms.” The former judges urged
the Supreme Court to intercede, saying Acklin’s execution under these
circumstances would be unjust to him and would also damage “our system of
justice itself.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
TENNESSEE:
Hangings, electric chair used as capital punishment in 1800s, early 1900s
There is no history book that describes the hangings of men at the Knox County
Jail. I have never seen a report that tells how many died at the end of a rope.
Yet the newspaper articles I have read indicate there were quite a few white
and black men who paid the ultimate price for rape or murder. It seems that a
number of them were demented, but that did not count with a court of law in
those days.
I initially got interested in the subject when I read the fascinating account
of the hanging of John Webb on Aug. 13, 1875. His execution for murder drew
12,000 spectators from across the region who came on trains, in wagons, on
horseback and via other means to witness the spectacle. The usual county jail
hanging site and the larger field at the south end of the Gay Street Bridge
could not accommodate the massive crowd, so it was held in a large isolated
field. 2 other men were hanged the same day, and the Press and Herald declared:
"DOOMSDAY. 3 Executions in One Day. Webb, Berry, and Honeycut. The Majesty Of
The Law."
As I continue to read old newspapers in the McClung Collection at the East
Tennessee History Center that date to 1791, I find more and more information on
how we conducted capital punishment. I don't know the name of the 1st man to be
hanged, but the last one was John McPherson, who was hanged by Sheriff C.A.
Reeder on March 24, 1908. He had been convicted of murdering deputy sheriff
William Walker. He had also killed Grant Smith that same day.
The Jan. 12, 1909, Journal and Tribune reported that Reeder supported the
proposal to have people sentenced to death go to the electric chair in
Nashville. "No one knows the awful strain that a sheriff is under prior to the
performing of his duty under the law when about to execute the death sentence.
I can't explain it. A man can't explain it unless he has had to undergo it. It
virtually breaks me down," he said.
The Tribune of July 13, 1916, announced the first person to go to the electric
chair: "Julius Morgan, a negro of Dyer County, will be electrocuted at the
State Penitentiary at sunrise tomorrow. Morgan will be the first person to be
executed in Tennessee since the installation of the electric chair. The
condemned negro will pay with his life for criminally assaulting a young white
girl of Dyer County last March.
"Morgan is 22 years old. Criminal assault is the only crime for which the death
penalty can be imposed in Tennessee since the recent passage of the Bowers
Anti-Capital Punishment law."
Almost 6 years later the Tribune of Feb. 18, 1922, reported on the 1st white
man to die in the electric chair: "John Green was executed at the State Prison
at sunrise today for the murder of Robert Houston at the latter's home near
Johnson City July 17 last, being the 1st white man ever electrocuted in
Tennessee.
"Green had heretofore served twelve years for killing policeman Walter McPeak
of Johnson City. While at liberty he killed Houston, it is alleged out of
revenge. His electrocution is said to have been without incident."
(source: Opinion; Robert J. Booker is a freelance writer and former executive
director of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center----Knoxville News Sentinel)
****************
Sgt. Baker Act: ‘Justice delayed is justice denied,’ says House leader as bill
advances
A bill named after Sgt. Daniel Baker that removes a step in the death penalty
appeal process, was discussed by several lawmakers — including 3 from Dickson
County and a 4th who represents Dickson — before being approved.
The “Sgt. Daniel Baker Act” bill now moves on in both the state House and
Senate.
Baker was shot and killed in May 30 last year. Steven Wiggins and Erika
Castro-Miles have been charged with first-degree murder and the district
attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty for both. The trial is set for
August. Littleton, Curcio on ‘Baker Act’
State Rep. Mary Littleton, R-Dickson, who filed the House bill, was questioned
by Democratic representatives on why the legislation is needed at the Judiciary
Committee meeting Tuesday last week.
Littleton said the bill is about handling the appeal process in fair and "more
efficient manner” and added that her constituents often ask, “What can we do to
speed this process up?”
State Rep. Michael Curcio, R-Dickson, said he was "honored to have his name on
it and honored to have some of the family members here today."
Curcio said currently the state Court of Criminal Appeals looks over the cases
in "a very limited scope” and the case still ultimately goes to the state
Supreme Court.
Curcio added that the appeals court step is unnecessary and when a case is in
the Supreme Court, "everything starts over anyway.”
Rep. Bo Mitchell, a Democrat who is from Dickson County before moving to
Bellevue, asked if there were other ways to speed up the process.
"Are we expediting it by taking a court step away?,” Mitchell said.
He stated that Baker’s case is “clear cut. “There is no doubt…this person
(defendant) deserves whatever we can come up with."
"I am worried about the next one,” Mitchell added.
The state House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Republican who serves on
the Judiciary Committee, said the current process will only continue to “delay
justice. Period.”
“This is the best case scenario for the defendant, for the victim’s family, and
for the state’s interest is to get that back to the trial court as soon as
possible,” Lamberth said. “This would save 6 months to 3 years out of that
process. It keeps justice from being delayed. And justice delayed is justice
denied.”
The bill moved on from House Judiciary Committee to the House Finance, Ways,
and Means Committee meeting set for Wednesday.
Judge: Appeals Court not reason cases ‘take 30 years’
Judge John Everett Williams, the presiding judge of the state’s Court of
Criminal Appeals, rebutted the idea that his court might be drawing out the
death penalty cases.
"We are not the reason these cases are taking 30 years,” said Williams to the
Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 27.
Williams said death penalty cases in his court are normally handled in a 3-5
month period, are “given priority,” and there’s not “dilly-dallying around with
these type of cases."
"If you can handle the worst of the worst cases in the State of Tennessee in 5
to 6 months, you are working ladies and gentlemen,” Williams said.
Sen. Kerry Roberts, who represents Dickson County, said a few years ago he was
“pretty conflicted” about the bill, which was also presented at that time by
Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntington. Roberts passed on the bill at that time.
However, he approved the bill last week.
"I am doing this today because this is being presented by 2 of my House members
in memory of one of my late constituents,” Roberts said.
The Judiciary Committee approved the bill by 6-3 vote. The bill is scheduled to
go before the entire Senate on Thursday for possible approval.
Bill named after Baker
Littleton said the bill was named after Baker to “memorialize Sgt. Baker and to
continue his memory for those in Dickson County as well as around the state.”
The representative said the bill “is not influenced by his death or the pending
trial.”
“The purpose is to condense the amount of time between the date of death
sentence and court of last resort while still maintaining the U.S. Supreme
Court’s due process mandates,” Littleton said.
(source: The Tennessean)
KENTUCKY:
Accused killer could face death penalty in double homicide
Commonwealth’s Attorney Shane Young will seek the death penalty should the
double murder case against Shadrach Peeler of Elizabethtown go to trial.
Peeler, who is accused of killing two people and injuring 2 others Feb. 21 in
separate shootings, pleaded not guilty to six felony charges and a misdemeanor
Tuesday morning in Hardin Circuit Court.
Peeler appeared in front of Hardin Circuit Judge Kelly Mark Easton with
shackles on his hands and around his ankles. He was represented by public
defender Susie Hurst.
All Young would say on the decision was “the matter speaks for itself” after
telling the court he will file aggravators in the case to lead to seeking the
death penalty should Peeler be convicted.
Peeler was indicted last Thursday by a Hardin County grand jury.
Peeler, 35, who is being held in lieu of a $2 million cash bond in the Hardin
County Detention Center, reportedly shot Cherie Turner, 34, to death on West
Warfield Street and then went to a convenience store on North Miles Street,
killing store co-owner Subash “Su” Ghale, 40. He also is charged with injuring
2 other people at the store – 1 inside and 1 outside.
Authorities have not publicly identified a motive in the shootings.
Elizabethtown police have said Turner and Peeler lived together on West
Warfield Street. He was arrested shortly after police were called to the
convenience store around 11:30 p.m.
Peeler also is accused of shooting and injuring Prayash Baniya, 31, of
Elizabethtown, a store employee and close friend of Ghale, and Nadia Browne,
34, of Elizabethtown.
Baniya remains hospitalized at University Hospital in Louisville in critical
but stable condition. He was shot multiple times, including in the neck. Browne
was shot in the leg and has been released from the hospital.
Peeler will next appear in court at 1:15 p.m. April 30 for a pre-trial
conference.
He was 1 of 3 men scheduled to appear Tuesday in Hardin Circuit Court to face
murder charges.
(source: The News-Enterprise)
COLORADO:
Colorado law mandates which drugs be used for lethal injection. So what happens
when they are no longer made?----As Colorado debates the end of capital
punishment, a specific drug required by Colorado law -- sodium thiopental -- is
no longer available on the open market for executions
Since the state’s last execution more than 20 years ago, Colorado juries have
mulled capital punishment, and advocates on both sides have debated the merits
of its deterrent effect, its morality, its cost and any number of factors
related to its application.
But amid nationwide controversy surrounding availability of drugs used for
lethal injection, one other question remains: If necessary, would Colorado have
the ability to perform a legal execution?
The short-term answer is no. Yet both sides of the capital punishment debate
say that, despite efforts by manufacturers and others to restrict access to
drugs used in lethal injection, Colorado could likely find a source if the
execution process were to be set in motion.
But both sides also agree that would almost certainly trigger a fresh round of
legal challenges.
Colorado law not only mandates lethal injection, but also specifies use of a
specific drug — sodium thiopental — that is no longer available on the open
market for executions. The Colorado Department of Corrections said it would
look to other states for that or an available alternative drug (it lists
pentobarbital as a backup).
“Honestly, we don’t have a storage of lethal injection medications, and without
the necessary drugs, we’d be faced with a significant issue,” DOC spokeswoman
Adrienne Jacobson said. “If an execution had to be done today, this moment, no,
we couldn’t do that. But we would take any steps we needed to take.”
She added that the statute presents other possibilities, including the use of a
single-drug option rather than the state’s current three-drug protocol. The
statute specifies that the DOC must use the anesthetic sodium thiopental “or
other equally or more effective substance sufficient to cause death.” The other
drugs administered according to Colorado’s protocol are pancuronium bromide (to
cause paralysis and stop breathing) and potassium chloride (to stop the heart).
Just last week, Texas executed a prisoner with a single dose of pentobarbital.
Last summer, Nebraska became the first state to execute a prisoner with
fentanyl, a drug at the center of the nation’s opioid crisis.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office declined to respond to questions
about legal issues surrounding the state’s lethal injection protocol, noting
that it would have to advise or represent the DOC if such drugs became an
issue. Weiser, while an opponent of the death penalty, has said he would defend
the state’s capital punishment law.
Colorado’s only lethal injection execution occurred in 1997, when Gary Lee
Davis was put to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Virginia “Ginny”
May.
The state’s 3 death penalty cases currently underway, as well as the three men
already on death row, would still be subject to capital punishment under the
bill that legislators introduced on Monday, which would affect cases charged
after July 1. But Gov. Jared Polis recently told Colorado Public Radio that if
the legislature voted to do away with the death penalty, he would commute the
sentences of death-row inmates.
George Brauchler, district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, where all 3
men facing death were convicted, noted that 6 years ago, the DOC made inquiries
to see if the required lethal injection drugs might be available.
“There were at least two responses that yes, we could get you these drugs,”
Brauchler said, adding that he suspects that’s the route the DOC would take in
the future. “If (the drugs) don’t exist, they can certainly be compounded. It’s
not like it’s moon-based titanium, where we couldn’t create more of it. I don’t
think that’s a big issue.”
Brauchler said he hasn’t researched whether there is a substitute drug to
sodium thiopental that Colorado could use under the law that a court would find
sufficient.
“My guess is, if we try to come up with an alternative, that would stick us in
litigation for a while, while the courts decide whether this other substance
works,” he said.
Defense attorney David Lane, an opponent of the death penalty, agrees with
Brauchler that the DOC probably wouldn’t have too much difficulty finding the
necessary drugs, whether from some “mom-and-pop” compounding pharmacy or even
directly from another state that performs lethal injections.
But he also agrees with the prosecutor that more legal challenges would follow.
“There’s not been any full-blown lethal injection litigation yet in Colorado
because it hasn’t gotten to that point yet, but once we get there, there will
be lethal injection litigation in Colorado,” Lane said. “But lethal injection
challenges have generally failed across the country. There have been some
exceptions, but the best way for Colorado to avoid all that is to abolish the
death penalty, which should happen within the next month.”
Another issue factors into the mix: secrecy.
Statutes vary from state to state regarding the ability of government to
conceal from the public the source of their lethal injection drugs. In
Colorado, the ACLU filed suit in 2013 to force the DOC to provide details of
its protocol — including where it obtained its drugs. But a judge ruled that
the DOC did not need to do so.
The DOC released only a heavily-redacted document outlining the protocol.
“As I recall, I think that the useful piece of information that we got was just
the difficulty DOC was having to go through to find the drug,” ACLU public
policy director Denise Maes said. “Research we did separate and apart from the
open-records request was that the substance itself was hard to find, hard to
get.”
If Colorado tried to introduce a different drug, Maes said, the ACLU would
likely take another stab at forcing the DOC to reveal details about its
procedures.
“We certainly would take steps to bring attention to how the state is planning
to execute one of its own people, so we’d probably do the same open records
request, to find out where the state has gotten its drug from, what hoops it
had to go through to get it, what it paid for it,” she said. “We’d certainly
bring attention to that issue. I have no idea whether we’d have a legal claim
to stop (an execution).”
Nonetheless, she said that even while the question of Colorado’s ability to
perform a legal execution may not have immediate repercussions, it remains a
critical issue to resolve.
“I think it’s an important reason to talk about why we should even have a death
penalty if effectively you’ll never be able to carry one out,” she said. “…It’s
much more cerebral to talk about costs, or how it doesn’t work as a deterrent,
but how we actually execute people is super important.”
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center,
which takes no official position on the death penalty but has been sharply
critical of the means by which it is carried out, notes that pharmaceutical
companies’ resisting use of their drugs for executions have adopted
distribution policies to prevent that, forcing states with lethal injection to
turn to other sources.
“That has meant that states have had to obtain drugs either from compounding
pharmacies or on the ‘gray market’ or subterfuge,” he said. “States that want
to carry out the death penalty openly and honestly haven’t been carrying out
executions.”
In 2011, sodium thiopental, used in medical practice as an anesthetic, was
taken off the market by its sole manufacturer, Hospira, over concerns that it
was being obtained and used against the company’s policy for executions in the
United States. Hospira had moved production to Italy, Dunham explained, but
then took it out of production because the drug’s use in executions could have
subjected the company to liability issues in Europe, which does not use the
death penalty.
“It’s not an economically viable drug, so you’re not going have companies
coming in and generically producing it,” he said. “Nobody is going to go
through the FDA approval process for something that’s going to have the limited
purpose of executing prisoners.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently halted all executions in his state after a
federal judge in January criticized the use of midazolam, a sedative
administered in Ohio’s 3-drug protocol, as insufficient to render the prisoner
fully unconscious. That led to concerns that administration of the subsequent
drugs could cause severe pain. Testimony about botched executions in other
states added to that concern.
Several states started using midazolam after sodium thiopental became difficult
to obtain. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on an Oklahoma case in
2015 that use of midazolam is not unconstitutional, the Ohio judge said the
ruling left open the possibility for proof that the drug might present
“objectively intolerable risk of harm.”
(source: The Colorado Sun)
***********************
Colorado lawmakers introduce bill to abolish death penalty
Colorado State lawmakers will consider a bill this week to abolish the death
penalty.
Those who argue for the repeal say it's expensive, biased, and cruel. Opponents
say it should be left up to voters.
A sponsor of the bill, Senator Angela Williams who represents District 33 in
Denver says, "I believe that life in prison with no chance of ever getting out
is punishment enough."
Recently convicted killers Chris Watts and James Holmes were convicted of what
many would call heinous crimes, but they weren't sentenced to death. Only 1
person has been executed under the death penalty in Colorado since it was
reinstated in 1977. Gary Lee Davis was killed using lethal injection in 1997.
Co-sponsor and Democratic state Senator Julie Gonzales argues, "The death
penalty is irrevocable, it is cruel and it is unusual practice and for those
reasons, we should abolish it."
Gov. Jared Polis has expressed his support for the bill. He told Colorado
Public Radio that if the bill passes, he'd be inclined to take the three men
awaiting execution off death row.
"If the state Republicans and Democrats were to say, and I were to sign a bill
that said we no longer have the death penalty in Colorado, whether it's
formally in the bill or not, I would certainly take that as a strong indication
that those who are currently on death row should have their sentences commuted
to life in prison," Polis said.
The news isn't sitting well with Democratic state Senator Rhonda Fields. Two of
the men sitting on death row are responsible for the death of her son and his
fiancee. She says this legislation is moving forward too fast.
"It was just introduced yesterday, [Tuesday] there was a press conference and
[Wednesday] the bill will be heard, and it gives very little opportunity for
the victims to show up," Fields says.
She thinks the decision should be left up to voters, rather than lawmakers. The
hearing has its first hearing Wednesday afternoon before the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
(source: KRDO news)
ARIZONA:
“Lawmakers move to tighten Arizona’s death penalty law”
It makes no difference if the Legislature tinkers with aggravating factors for
the death penalty. No county, including the Maricopa County prosecutor, can
afford to use. It is far too expensive, and carrying out a sentence can take 25
years or more.
The death penalty is not used on the “most heinous” criminals or the “worst of
the worst.” It is used on the most winnable cases and it is used to score
political points by looking “tough” on crime.
In Arizona, a more important factor is killing the innocent. 10 times, we have
sentenced people to death row who never committed a crime. The last most recent
person released because of innocence was a woman. It's time to end a very bad
system.
John Yoakum
Downtown
(source: Letter to the Editor, Arizona Daily Star)
OREGON:
Oregon bill would abolish almost all death penalty cases
An Oregon bill filed on Monday would effectively abolish almost all use of
capital punishment in the state.
The proposal in the Oregon state House would only allow the death penalty in
cases where 2 or more people are killed in a terror attack, The Oregonian
reported.
The state currently allows the death penalty for aggravated murder cases, which
includes the killing of a child under 13, killing more than 1 person, killing a
police officer on duty or killing someone during a rape or robbery.
The bill would reclassify those crimes as 1st-degree murder and carry a maximum
sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, the newspaper
noted.
The state voted to abolish capital punishment in 1914, but it was revived in
1964, the newspaper reported. The most recent vote on the keeping the death
penalty was in the 1980s.
Former Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) in 2011 issued a moratorium on the death penalty
because he argued that it wasn’t handed down fairly. Current Gov. Kate Brown
(D) in 2015 extended the temporary prohibition.
While there are currently 30 people on Oregon’s death row, the state has not
executed an inmate since 1997. Only two men were executed in the past 50 years
after waving their rights to appeals before their deaths, The Oregonian
reports.
The measure’s chief sponsor, state Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D), said that he
believes people are “generally” supportive of eliminating the death penalty.
“I know it’s problematically applied and it’s extraordinarily expensive,”
Greenlick said.
The Oregon Justice Resource Center (OJRC), an anti-death penalty organization,
in 2016 found that the death penalty cost twice as much as those for life
sentences in the state.
OJRC spokeswoman Alice Lundell told the newspaper that while the House bill is
a positive step, it does not go as far as eliminating the death penalty
entirely.
She has also called on the governor to commute the sentences of the inmates on
death row.
Mary Elledge, an Oregon resident whose son Rob was murdered in 1986, opposes
the state House bill.
She told The Oregonian that the simple threat of execution could be effective
in murder cases, even though the state rarely executes inmates.
“The death penalty is a great bargaining tool,” she said.
There are currently 31 states where capital punishment is authorized, according
to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Several states, including New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland, have
abolished the death penalty in recent years through their state legislatures.
Several red states have made legislative pushes to end capital punishment in
recent months.
The Wyoming state Senate last month voted down a bill that would have repealed
the death penalty.
(source: thehill.com)
USA:
Ndume Olatushani and Jerry Givens: the death row inmate and the executioner
Ndume Olatushani spent 20 years on Tennessee’s death row for a crime he did not
commit. Jerry Givens was the chief executioner for the state of Virginia for 17
years, during which he oversaw the execution of 62 people. Though their
experiences with capital punishment could not be more opposed, both men are now
bound by a shared rejection of the death penalty. For Ndume and Jerry, the
possibility of killing an innocent person is the prime reason why they became
abolitionists. They also reject the notion that “you need to kill to
demonstrate that killing is wrong”. Equal Times sat down with them separately
during the 7th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, which took place in
Brussels last week. The event, held every three years, brings together
abolitionists from around the world to exchange stories, strategies and best
practices to fight against state-led executions, wherever they take place, with
no exception as regards to the crimes committed by those facing the gallows,
the firing squad or the lethal injection.
Ndume, can you tell us how you ended up on death row?
N.O.: I was falsely accused of robbing and killing a store owner in Memphis
Tennessee in October 1983. The crime actually happened 400 miles away from my
home in Saint-Louis, Missouri, where I was born and raised. I had never been to
Tennessee, and certainly not to kill anyone. But the prosecution claimed they
found my fingerprints on the car that was used in the crime. In fact, all the
evidence was fabricated and they withheld evidence in court that could have
acquitted me. Several people testified that I was in Missouri at the time of
the crime but it didn’t make any difference. I was found guilty and sent to
death row. It took 28 years [Editor’s note: Ndume spent 28 years in total in
prison, 20 of which were on death row], a lot hard work from my wife and a law
firm in New York before the evidence finally came home, showing that the
prosecution had lied at the trial about the fingerprints and that they withheld
the evidence showing I was innocent.
Jerry, how did you go from chief executioner to death penalty abolitionist?
J.G.: I was the chief executioner for the state of Virginia for 17 years, with
a total of 62 executions under my belt. Then, in 1999, I was forced to resign.
It’s a long story but I’m glad that I did because there was a guy by the name
of Earl Washington who was innocent and I came within two weeks of taking his
life [Earl Washington, who was sent to death row on murder charges, was fully
exonerated in 2000]. But God spared him and that helped me to know God answered
my prayers. Because I always prayed to God that he would never allow me to
execute an innocent person. I wasn’t at the trial when these people were
sentenced. I had to rely on the verdicts of a criminal justice system, a court
system I believed in giving a fair and impartial trial, but that’s not always
the case.
Ndume, how did it feel to be convicted of a crime you didn’t commit?
N.O.: I was angry. I was mad as hell. How could this happen? Of course, I knew
from the start of the trial that the stage was pretty much set against me. It
was an all-white jury in a city that was predominantly black. And there I was,
a young black man accused of killing a prominent white person in the city of
Memphis. I was well aware at the time of the systemic, institutionalised racism
in America, but I still didn’t think that this white jury would find me guilty
based on what was presented in court, but they actually did.
And how was life on death row?
N.O.: It’s horrible. Being in prison in the United States is horrible anyway
but sitting on death row…If you can imagine, I was living 23 hours a day in a 4
x 9 feet cell where I couldn’t fully stretch my arms. Every time you are
brought out they shackle you on the wrists, they shackle your feet, they chain
you up and they shelter you in a cage outside where you can stay for one hour.
That’s what it’s like. The food is no good. The medical [care] is no good. I
mean…it’s horrible. What kept me going was the fact that I knew I shouldn’t be
there in the first place. I always had my family and people around me to
support me. They gave me every reason to keep getting up, walking in the face
of adversity and dealing with it. I certainly didn’t want to lay down and roll
over and let them do what they intended to do to me without me giving them some
kind of fight.
Jerry, how do you know that there were no innocents amongst the 62 people you
executed?
J.G.: I was fortunate enough to talk to the guys prior to them being executed,
and 99 % of them admitted they did the crime. They wanted forgiveness. If you
look at the average death row inmates, they spend 15 to 30 years on death row
and if you stay in a cubicle for that long period of time – this is what
inmates said – the cell has a tendency to close in on you and it feels like you
are buried alive. A lot of them mentally, psychologically, are already dead and
they want to get it over with.
But do you think that capital punishment is a fair execution of justice, even
if someone is guilty?
J.G.: No, it’s not. Look, we used to have what’s called a ‘24-hour death
watch’. We would keep an eye on inmates to stop them from killing themselves…so
that we could kill them! Death is going to happen. It is the beginning of life
to come. God didn’t give us death for punishment. Men use it as punishment to
get revenge. We can’t get rid of death, but we could stop killing to
demonstrate to others that killing is wrong.
Ndume, how do you feel towards Jerry?
N.O.: I don’t want to hold anything personal against him but the fact that he
didn’t have something in him to say “I don’t care what my job is, if part of my
job is to do this shit, I’m going to do something else because I don’t want to
participate in this kind of madness” is unfortunate. Me, personally, I wouldn’t
do that job. You always have a choice. He may be just a cog in a wheel to make
the wheel turn, but nobody put a gun to his head. It’s a choice.
Jerry, what would you answer to Ndume? Do you have any regrets for executing
these people?
J.G.: Not really. It wasn’t my doing. It was the state of Virginia’s doing. I
didn’t execute anybody for myself. They were going to be executed regardless.
If I didn’t do it, someone else was going to do it. I prepared these guys for
life to come afterwards. I don’t think anyone else would have done that. I did
them a favour because a lot of them weren’t ready.
A few years ago, there seemed to be a momentum towards abolition in the US.
Several states had either abolished the death penalty or exonerated their death
row inmates. There were several high-profile cases, like Troy Davis. That
momentum seems all but gone, especially since the nomination, by Donald Trump,
of 2 conservative justices to the US Supreme Court. [Editor’s note: the US
Supreme Court could abolish the death penalty if it ever interpreted it as a
violation of the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution that bans
“cruel and unusual punishments”]. Is the Trump presidency a setback for the
abolitionist movement in the US?
N.O.: Of course. Until this guy got elected, people in the US were hopeful that
there would be some changes to how the death penalty is dealt with through the
court system. But having this clown elected is obviously a huge setback. His
hateful, racist rhetoric, the stuff he espouses and represents... But I’m still
hopeful though. I will continue to do what I’m doing by lending my voice and
just trying to make sure that people are educated about these issues. As long
as you have the death penalty, innocent people will be subjected to it. I could
have come out of prison, live life and never thought about it again, but I
refuse to do that. Knowledge makes us responsible. When you know something,
then you are responsible at this point. You can’t feign ignorance. And I think
the world should look at the US with disdain: the leader of the world,
supposedly, and yet it still practices this barbaric, antiquated notion that
somehow you can kill somebody to demonstrate that killing is wrong.
J.G.: It’s a 100 % setback. We are supposed to be moving forward. The American
system is broken, from top down, from the president on down. You never have a
perfect system. How can we stop the cycle of violence? One way is to stop the
killing.
(source: equaltimes.com)
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