March 7
ARKANSAS:
Arkansas panel backs expanding execution drug secrecy law----That approval
comes despite criticism that it would give officials broad power to withhold
information about executions.
An Arkansas Senate panel has advanced a proposal to expand the state's secrecy
surrounding its lethal injection drugs.
That approval comes despite criticism that it would give officials broad power
to withhold information about executions.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday endorsed by a 5-3 vote the proposal
expanding the 2015 law keeping secret the source of Arkansas' lethal injection
drugs. Arkansas has no executions scheduled and the state's supply of execution
drugs has expired.
The proposal would prohibit the state from releasing documents or information
that identify or could indirectly identify the suppliers and makers of its
execution drugs. The proposal would make "recklessly" disclosing the
information a felony.
Press groups and death penalty opponents say the bill would shield the state's
execution process from public scrutiny.
(source: KATV news)
COLORADO:
Colorado lawmakers consider ending little-used death penalty
Democrats who control Colorado’s legislature are rushing to act on a bill to
repeal the state’s little-used death penalty, holding a Senate Judiciary
Committee hearing Wednesday just 2 days after the proposal was introduced.
The fast-track tactic mirrors a contentious Democrat-led proposal to overhaul
oil and gas regulations to give local governments more authority over industry
operations and to prioritize human and environmental health over energy
promotion. That bill was released late Friday and passed a Senate committee
early Wednesday over the objections of Republicans and energy industry
executives who demanded time to study its content.
Lawmakers have tried before to repeal Colorado’s death penalty, which has been
applied just twice since 1967. Most recently, Gary Lee Davis died by lethal
injection in 1997 for the 1986 kidnapping, rape and murder of a neighbor,
Virginia May.
First-term Democratic Gov. Jared Polis supports the 2019 bill. John
Hickenlooper, Polis’ predecessor and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate,
indefinitely delayed the execution of one of three people on Colorado’s death
row in 2013. Hickenlooper said he had doubts about the fairness of the death
penalty and problems in obtaining the drugs required for lethal injection.
Denver Sen. Angela Williams, a bill sponsor, emphasized the fact that all 3
facing death in Colorado are African Americans as ample evidence of historic
racial inequities in the criminal justice system. She also pointed to the
difficulty of getting death penalty convictions — a unanimous jury verdict is
required — and the cost.
“Our criminal justice system demonstrates racial bias at every step of the
process, from the point of arrest all the way through to the point of
executions for heinous crimes,” Williams said at a Capitol news conference
Tuesday.
She was referring to Nathan Dunlap, sentenced to die for the ambush slayings of
4 people inside an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in 1993; and Robert Ray
and Sir Mario Owens, convicted of killing Javad Marshall-Fields and his
fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, as they drove on a suburban Denver street in 2005.
Marshall-Fields was the son of Rhonda Fields, a former House representative and
now a Democratic senator who has vocally supported the death penalty.
Marshall-Fields and Wolfe were graduates of Colorado State University.
“I’m concerned about the process being hurried and rushed,” Fields told
reporters Tuesday. “This seems a little choreographed to me.”
First-term Democratic Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was killed in the
2012 Aurora theater shooting, also has supported the death penalty.
Sullivan and other survivors were astonished when a jury refused to hand the
death penalty to James Holmes, who killed 12 people and wounded 70. Holmes was
sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The bill would apply to offenses charged on or after July 1.
The threat of the death penalty for felony murder often leads to agreements
with prosecutors to enter guilty pleas in exchange for life prison terms.
In November, Christopher Watts was sentenced to 3 consecutive life terms for
killing his pregnant wife and their 2 young daughters. In October, Scott Ostrem
was sentenced to three consecutive life terms for killing three people at a
Walmart in suburban Denver.
A proposal to repeal the death penalty this year in neighboring Wyoming’s
Republican-controlled Legislature drew far more support from lawmakers there
than ever before. Lawmakers cited cost and argued it may not deter violent
crime. Wyoming’s House passed death-penalty repeal but it failed in the Senate.
(source: The Coloradoan)
*****************
Bill to repeal death penalty in Colorado clears Senate Judiciary Committee
The bill to repeal Colorado’s death penalty has cleared the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
The bill now heads to the Senate floor for debate.
Senate bill 182 would abolish the death penalty in Colorado but would not
change the status of the 3 prisoners currently on death row.
However, Governor Polis has said he’d consider commuting their sentences.
(source: KOAA news)
*********************
Citing flaws in Colorado’s criminal justice system, lawmakers move to repeal
the death penalty----Bill ending capital punishment for murder heads to full
Senate for a vote
In 2004, Alex Perez, then in prison on a murder conviction, was charged with
killing a fellow inmate at the Limon Correctional Facility. He said he did not
do it, but was promptly placed in solitary confinement at the Colorado State
Penitentiary in Cañon City. Prosecutors sought the death penalty in the case.
In 2011, a jury acquitted Perez of the murder, in part due to the lack of
physical evidence.
“Even in Colorado, an innocent man can be convicted and executed. I know,
because it nearly happened to me,” Perez, 31, told a committee of lawmakers
during a nearly six-hour hearing Wednesday on a bill that would end capital
punishment in Colorado.
Perez urged lawmakers to pass the bill, and the Senate Judiciary Committee did
just that, voting along a 3-2 party line. The vote marks a historic step toward
making Colorado the 21st state to ban state executions for murder. The bill
heads now to a full vote of the Senate.
Since 2000, there have been 5 unsuccessful attempts to repeal capital
punishment in Colorado due to concerns of cost and racial biases in the
criminal justice system. But Democrats now control the state legislature and
the governor’s mansion, and optimism is high among members of the party. Gov.
Jared Polis has already said he would not just sign the bill, but also commute
the sentences of the three men on death row if the proposed ban passes. Alex
Perez testified on a bill to ban the death penalty on March 6, 2019. (Photo by
John Herrick)
Since the nationwide moratorium on death penalty was lifted in 1976 and later
reinstated in Colorado, the state has executed 1 man, Gary Lee Davis, a
convicted murderer and rapist. That was in 1997.
Ahead of the committee hearing, attorneys, district attorneys and elected
officials mingled in the hallway. Catholics, who spoke in support of the bill,
had black crosses on their foreheads for Ash Wednesday. Nearly 50 people had
signed up to speak, many of whom have testified on similar abolition bills in
the past.
Emotions on both sides of the debate ran high. Two of the three men on death
row were convicted of the 2005 murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and his
fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, both of whom were scheduled to testify in another murder
case.
Maisha Fields, sister of Javad and daughter of state Sen. Rhonda Fields, told
the committee that the execution of Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens, is justice.
“I had to testify multiple times just like I’m doing now,” Fields said. “I had
to be my brother’s voice on the stand just like I’m doing now. And everytime I
tell the story, it’s painful. And I don’t want to feel like it was all for
naught. I want to believe in the system, and the fact that we fought for the
death penalty, that it matters.”
A panel of Republican district attorneys laid out other arguments against
repealing the death penalty, too. They cited details of gruesome murders,
including the story of Chris Watts, who pleaded guilty to the 2018 killing of
his pregnant wife and 2 daughters, saying that it’s a needed punishment to
deter heinous crimes. Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said he used
the threat of a death sentence to get a murder confession from Watts, a
strategy that some attorneys have raised ethical concerns with.
The district attorneys also refuted costs estimates for death penalty cases and
cast doubt on wrongful convictions more generally. El Paso District Attorney
Dan May argued that in Colorado, “there has not been in the modern age … a
mistake with somebody who has been convicted and given the death penalty.” May
was a prosecutor on Perez’s case.
Nationwide there have been 164 people exonerated from death row since 1973,
mostly due to new evidence, according to a report by the Death Penalty
Information Center. Juan Melendez is one of them. He was arrested while working
in an apple orchard in Pennsylvania in 1984. Just days later, he told The
Colorado Independent, he was sitting in a 6-by-9-foot cell in Florida on death
row. He said he remembers watching the lights dim each time the electric chair
was used for an execution. He contemplated suicide with a plastic bag. After 16
years behind bars, he said another man’s taped confession to the murder was
released. The following year, he was exonerated. Melendez, too, came to the
state Capital on Wednesday to support repealing the death penalty.
“We can never release an innocent man from the grave,” Melendez said. He added,
“I don’t want to let what happened to me happen to anybody else.”
Opponents of the bill asked lawmakers to refer a measure to the ballot so
voters could decide the issue. Since 1976, no state has successfully repealed
the death penalty through a ballot measure, according to the National
Conference of State Legislatures.
The bill, sponsored by Angela Williams and Julie Gonzales, both Democratic
senators from Denver, was introduced Monday, and that provoked Sen. Fields and
others to argue that it was being fast-tracked and that in the rush to passage,
victims were being sidelined.
“Nobody has reached out to me,” Bobby Stephens, the lone survivor in the 1993
Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant shooting after Nathan Dunlap, who is now on
death row, told lawmakers.
The testimony from victims drew the attention of lawmakers serving on the
committee. But for many of them, they had already made up their mind.
“I concluded some good deal of time ago that it is the rarest of things for
people to change their mind and view about the efficacy of the death penalty,”
said Sen. Bob Gardner of Colorado Springs. He added that the death penalty is
necessary for the more egregious murders. “It is a matter of personal
philosophy and belief.”
In a statement after the vote, Williams called the death penalty “costly,
biased, and an ineffective deterrent of violent crime.”
Gonzales said a death sentence is “an arbitrary punishment that is irrevocable
and permanent.”
Sen. Pete Lee, a Democrat Colorado Springs who chairs the committee, said
sometimes the criminal justice system makes mistakes.
“We don’t always get it right,” he said. He added, “In death penalty cases,
there are no do-overs.”
(source: The Colorado Independent)
ARIZONA:
Time to end the death penalty
It's time for our Arizona Legislature to stop messing with the law and end the
death penalty. It cost way too much, a life sentence cost less, no one has been
put to death in years, and prison keeps the guilty off the street.
Punch Woods
Southwest side
(source: Letter to the Editor, Arizona Daily Star)
CALIFORNIA:
Paso murder suspect could face the death penalty in killing of pregnant
girlfriend
A man charged with double murder for allegedly stabbing to death his pregnant
girlfriend in their home near Lake Nacimiento could face the death penalty, the
District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release Wednesday.
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office filed a complaint in
Superior Court against Daniel Raul Rodriguez Johnson, 31, alleging two counts
of murder, carjacking, evading a peace officer, theft of a law enforcement
vehicle, resisting arrest and exhibiting a deadly weapon.
Johnson faces 1 count of murder for the killing of Carrington Jane Broussard,
27, who was 9 months pregnant, and 1 count of murder for the death of the
unborn fetus. Broussard was also the mother of 2 other children.
Carrington Broussard, 27, was killed on Sunday, March 3, 2019, allegedly by her
boyfriend. She grew up in San Miguel and attended Paso Robles High School.
Daniel Raul Rodriguez Johnson, 31, of Paso Robles, was arrested on Sunday,
March 3, 2019. He allegedly killed his pregnant girlfriend before fleeing in a
stolen CHP vehicle.
While Johnson was arrested after a bizarre chase and stand-off on Highway 46
between Templeton and Cambria, the complaint alleges the killings took place on
Saturday in the family’s home near Heritage Ranch in rural Paso Robles.
The complaint filed by the county District Attorney’s Office alleged the
existence of a special circumstance — that Johnson committed more than one
murder — which means District Attorney Dan Dow may elect to seek life without a
possibility of parole or the death penalty.
The last time the state of California executed someone under the death penalty
was 2006. There are currently 740 offenders on California’s death row.
(source: sanluisobispo.com)
OREGON:
Death penalty bill would give life sentences to death row convicts
Inmates on Oregon’s death row would be sentenced to life in prison under a new
bill that effectively ends capital punishment in the state, but some legal
experts say that provision could open up some of the prisoners to parole.
The inmates condemned to death would have to be resentenced under laws in place
at the time they originally were convicted, said lawyers who have handled death
penalty cases.
And those laws include the option of a life sentence with the possibility of
parole. In 1991, the state added life without the possibility of parole as a
3rd option for murder convictions.
Six men on death row were sentenced before the state added life without the the
possibility of parole.
Jeff Ellis, a lawyer and director of the Oregon Capital Resource Center, said
the Legislature can’t change a penalty retroactively by making it harsher than
the options available at the time.
“Because everyone is potentially eligible to receive life with the possibility
of parole,” he said, “I don’t think you can take that option away.”
Tung Yin, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, agreed, saying death row
inmates automatically sentenced to life are likely to challenge their new
sentences in court.
“And I would think they would have a good chance of success,” he said.
Ellis said the provision, which is part of a bill that redefines aggravated
murder and limits the death penalty to terrorism-related killings, is an effort
to “fix a problem that is longstanding in Oregon.”
Death penalty opponents have long cited capital punishment’s uneven application
among counties and its expense as some of the reasons to abolish it.
“It’s not just a problem going forward,” Ellis said. “It was a problem that
existed at the time that the individuals who are currently under death
sentences were sentenced to death. These are not just problems that cropped up
now.”
The bill filed this week redefines aggravated murder and no longer would allow
the death penalty as an option in cases involving the killing of a child under
12, killing more than one person, killing a police officer on duty or killing
someone during a rape or robbery.
Under House Bill 3268, aggravated murder would be limited to only crimes when 2
or more people are killed in a terror attack.
Josh Marquis, a retired Clatsop County district attorney and proponent of the
death penalty, said the bill is “an end run around voters” who approved the
death penalty in Oregon.
The changes, he said, would mean a serial killer “would face the same maximum
penalty as someone who shot a customer in a robbery.”
30 people – 29 men and 1 woman – are on Oregon’s death row. All but 1 of the
men are housed on death row at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem; the lone
woman is at Coffee Creek Correctional Institution.
One of them, Gary Haugen, this month filed what’s called a writ of habeas
corpus, asking the court to grant his release because the state has so far
refused to carry out his death sentence.
Haugen had waived his legal appeals in 2011 as a way of protesting the legal
system and demanded that the state carry out his death sentence. Haugen and
Jason Brumwell, who is also on death row, were convicted in the 2003 death of
inmate David Polin, who suffered a crushed skull and 84 stab wounds.
Marion County has 9 inmates on death row – more than any county in the state.
6 of them were sentenced to death for killings committed while they were behind
bars, said Paige Clarkson, district attorney for Marion County, home to 4 state
prisons, the Oregon State Hospital and a juvenile correctional facility. Under
state law, aggravated murder includes killings carried out by inmates in state
or local custody.
Returning those inmates to the general population would mean they wouldn’t
suffer any consequence for crimes they committed while incarcerated, she said.
Clarkson argued that a legislative change to the death penalty “ignores not
only the rule of law but the rights of victims to have confidence in the
sentence and faith in the system.”
She added that it would also undermine the judgment of the jurors who decided
on the death penalty after hearing the facts in these cases.
“Victims have a right to believe what happens in court means something,” she
said. “We are always going to stand for that as DAs.”
(source: oregonlive.com)
USA:
Death Penalty Fast Facts
Here’s a look at the death penalty in the United States.
Facts:
As of October 11, 2018, capital punishment is legal in 30 US states.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 25 people were executed in
the United States in 2018. The number of death sentences imposed was 42.
There were 2,738 people on death row in the United States on July 1, 2018, the
most recent date for which data is available from the Criminal Justice Project.
Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated by the US Supreme Court,
1,493 people have been executed (as of March 1, 2019).
Since 1973, there have been 164 death row exonerations (as of March 1, 2019).
Twenty-eight of them are from the state of Florida.
Between January 18, 2018, and February 28, 2019, 28 executions were carried out
in eight states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Federal Government:
The US government and US military have 63 people awaiting execution as of
December 21, 2018.
The US government has executed 3 people since 1988 when the federal death
penalty statute was reinstated.
Females:
There were 55 women on death row in the United States as of July 1, 2018, the
most recent date for which data is available from the Criminal Justice Project.
16 women have been executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty (as of
December 31, 2017).
Juveniles:
22 individuals were executed between 1976 and 2005 for crimes committed as
juveniles. March 1, 2005 – Roper v. Simmons. The Supreme Court rules that the
execution of juvenile offenders is unconstitutional.
Clemency:
Since 1976, 288 individuals have been granted clemency.
For federal death row inmates, the president alone has the power to grant a
pardon.
Timeline:
1834 – Pennsylvania becomes the 1st state to move executions into correctional
facilities, ending public executions.
1846 – Michigan becomes the 1st state to abolish the death penalty for all
crimes except treason.
1890 – William Kemmler becomes the 1st person executed by electrocution.
1907-1917 – 9 states abolish the death penalty for all crimes or strictly limit
it. By 1920, 5 of those states had reinstated it.
1924 – The use of cyanide gas is introduced as an execution method.
June 29, 1972 – Furman v. Georgia. The Supreme Court effectively voids 40 death
penalty statutes and suspends the death penalty.
1976 – Gregg v. Georgia. The death penalty is reinstated.
January 17, 1977 – A 10-year moratorium on the death penalty ends with the
execution of Gary Gilmore by firing squad in Utah.
1977 – Oklahoma becomes the 1st state to adopt lethal injection as a means of
execution.
December 7, 1982 – Charles Brooks becomes the 1st person executed by lethal
injection.
1984 – Velma Barfield of North Carolina becomes the 1st woman executed since
reinstatement of the death penalty.
1986 – Ford v. Wainwright. Execution of insane persons is banned.
1987 – McCleskey v. Kemp. Racial disparities are not recognized as a
constitutional violation of “equal protection of the law” unless intentional
racial discrimination against the defendant can be shown.
1988 – Thompson v. Oklahoma. Executions of offenders age 15 and younger at the
time of their crimes are declared unconstitutional.
1996 – The last execution by hanging takes place in Delaware, with the death of
Billy Bailey.
January 31, 2000 – A moratorium on executions is declared by Illinois Governor
George Ryan. Since 1976, Illinois is the 1st state to block executions.
2002 – Atkins v. Virginia. The Supreme Court rules that the execution of
mentally retarded defendants violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and
unusual punishment.
January 2003 – Before leaving office, Governor Ryan grants clemency to all the
remaining 167 inmates on Illinois’s death row, due to the flawed process that
led to the death sentences.
June 12, 2006 – The Supreme Court rules that death row inmates can challenge
the use of lethal injection as a method of execution.
December 17, 2007 – New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signs legislation
abolishing the death penalty in the state. The death sentences of 8 men are
commuted to sentences of life without parole.
April 16, 2008 – In a 7-2 ruling, the US Supreme Court upholds use of lethal
injection. Between September 2007, when the Court took on the case, and April
2008, no one was executed in the US due to the de facto moratorium the Court
placed on executions while it heard arguments in Baze v. Rees.
March 18, 2009 – Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico signs legislation
repealing the death penalty in his state. His actions will not affect 2
prisoners currently on death row: Robert Fry, who killed a woman in 2000, and
Tim Allen, who killed a 17-year-old girl in 1994.
November 13, 2009 – Ohio becomes the 1st state to switch to a method of lethal
injection using a single drug, rather than the 3-drug method used by other
states.
March 9, 2011 – Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announces that he has signed
legislation eliminating the death penalty in his state, more than 10 years
after the state halted executions.
March 16, 2011 – The Drug Enforcement Agency seizes Georgia’s supply of
thiopental, over questions of where the state obtained the drug. US
manufacturer Hospira stopped producing the drug in 2009. The countries that
still produce the drug do not allow it to be exported to the US for use in
lethal injections.
May 20, 2011 – The Georgia Department of Corrections announces that
pentobarbital will be substituted for thiopental in the three-drug lethal
injection process.
July 1, 2011 – Lundbeck Inc., the company that makes pentobarbital (brand name
Nembutal), announces it will restrict the use of its product from prisons
carrying out capital punishment.
November 22, 2011 – Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon places a moratorium on
all state executions for the remainder of his term in office.
April 25, 2012 – Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signs S.B. 280, An Act
Revising the Penalty for Capital Felonies, into law. The law goes into effect
immediately and replaces the death penalty with life without the possibility of
parole. The law is not retroactive to those already on death row.
May 2, 2013 – Maryland’s governor signs a bill repealing the death penalty. The
law goes into effect October 1.
January 16, 2014 – Ohio executes inmate Dennis McGuire with a new combination
of drugs, due to the unavailability of drugs such as pentobarbital. The state
uses a combination of the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone, according to the
state corrections department. The execution process takes 24 minutes, and
McGuire appears to be gasping for air for 10 to 13 minutes, according to
witness Alan Johnson, a reporter with the Columbus Dispatch. In May 2014, an
Ohio judge issues an order suspending executions in the state so that
authorities can further study new lethal injection protocols. In 2015, Ohio
announces that it is reincorporating thiopental sodium, a drug which it used in
executions from 1999-2011.
February 11, 2014 – Washington Governor Jay Inslee announces that he is issuing
a moratorium on death penalty cases during his term in office.
May 22, 2014 – Tennessee becomes the 1st state to make death by electric chair
mandatory when lethal injection drugs are unavailable.
July 23, 2014 – Arizona uses a new combination of drugs for the lethal
injection to execute Joseph Woods, a convicted murderer. After the injection,
it reportedly took him nearly 2 hours to die. A state review board later rules
that future executions will be conducted with a three-drug formula or a single
drug injection if the state can obtain pentobarbital.
September 4, 2014 – The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety issues a report
about the botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014. Complications
with the placement of an IV into Lockett played a significant role in problems
with his execution, according to the report. It took 43 minutes for him to die.
December 31, 2014 – Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley commutes the death
sentences of the four last men in the state scheduled for execution. It is one
of his final acts in office.
January 23, 2015 – The Supreme Court agrees to hear a case concerning the
lethal injection protocol in Oklahoma. The inmates claim that the state
protocol violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In a
June 29, 2015, ruling, the court upholds Oklahoma’s use of the drug midazolam
in its lethal injection procedure by a 5-4 vote.
February 13, 2015 – Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf halts all executions in his
state until a task force examining capital punishment in Pennsylvania issues
its final report, citing the state’s “error prone” justice system and “inherent
biases” among his reasons for the moratorium. Later, Wolf’s action is upheld in
court after Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams files a petition
claiming the moratorium is an unconstitutional takeover of powers. The
moratorium remains in effect after the report is published June 2018.
March 23, 2015 – Utah Governor Gary Herbert signs legislation making the firing
squad an authorized method of death if the drugs required for lethal injection
are unavailable. The firing squad was last used in 2010 to execute a convicted
murderer, Ronnie Lee Gardner.
June 29, 2015 – The Supreme Court rules, in a 5-4 decision, that the use of the
sedative midazolam in lethal injections is not a violation of the
constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Midazolam is 1 of 3 drugs
that are combined to carry out the death penalty in Oklahoma.
August 2, 2016 – The Delaware Supreme Court rules the state’s death penalty law
unconstitutional. Attorney General Matt Denn later announces that he will not
appeal the decision.
November 8, 2016 – Voters in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma are asked to
weigh in on the death penalty with referendum questions on ballots. In all
three states, majorities vote in favor of the death penalty.
April 2017 – Of the 8 prisoners Arkansas had planned to execute before the
state’s supply of a lethal injection drug expires, 4 are put to death: Ledell
Lee, Jack Jones, Marcel Williams and Kenneth Williams. The other 4 – Jason
McGehee, was later granted clemency and Stacey Johnson, Don Davis and Bruce
Ward – receive stays of execution that were later lifted.
April 20, 2017 – The FDA rules that imported vials of the execution drug sodium
thiopental, ordered by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Arizona
Department of Corrections, must be destroyed or exported within 90 days. The
FDA had seized the shipment in 2015. Sodium thiopental is not approved in the
United States.
April 25, 2017 – The Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission releases a report
recommending the continuation of the moratorium on the death penalty, citing
the need for significant reforms.
January 25, 2019 – Ohio Governor Mike DeWine delays execution of Warren Henness
pending an official assessment of the state’s execution system. This is in
response to a January 14 federal court decision regarding the severity of its
three-drug protocol. DeWine later announces that the state will have no
executions until a method that will stand up to legal scrutiny is established.
February 27, 2019 – The Supreme Court rules in favor of death row inmate Vernon
Madison, sending his case back to state court “for renewed consideration of
Madison’s competency.” His lawyers argue that states are forbidden from
executing individuals whose mental state precludes them from understanding the
reason for punishment. Madison, who has dementia, can no longer remember his
crime, the April 1985 killing of an Alabama police officer. There is a 5-3
ruling by the court as Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed after the case was
argued. (Chief Justice John Roberts concurs.)
(source: KTVQ news)
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