March 20
COLORADO:
Debate over ending Colorado’s death penalty part of national conversation----If
the bill clears the state Senate’s first floor debate, it’s nearly ensured a
signature by Gov. Jared Polis
The death penalty has been declared all but dead in Colorado, where no one has
been executed since 1997 or even been sentenced to death in a decade —
including in horrific crimes such as the Aurora theater shooting and
Christopher Watts’ murder of his wife and 2 young daughters.
Still, the visceral debate over capital punishment here — where the state
Senate will take a key vote as soon as Wednesday on whether to take it off the
table altogether — is part of a larger national conversation. Across the United
States, but especially in the West, the death penalty is falling out of favor
with prosecutors, juries, courts and state lawmakers from both parties.
Last year, in particular, was a watershed year as not one person was executed
and only 7 people were sentenced to death west of Texas — a 40-year low,
according to an analysis of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit
that advocates for reforming the death penalty system.
Abolition or major reforms of the death penalty have recently been debated in
Wyoming, Oregon and Utah with mixed results. The Washington State Supreme Court
last year ruled capital punishment unconstitutional. And California Gov. Gavin
Newsom has issued an executive order pausing all future executions.
A number of factors are contributing to states backing away from capital
punishment, including cost and a lack of access to the drug cocktail needed to
execute someone by lethal injection.
In addition, there have been increasing concerns that not everyone convicted of
major crimes is actually guilty — the Innocence Project has used DNA evidence
to exonerate 20 people on death row — and that it is disproportionately applied
to nonwhites. A 2015 University of Denver study found that prosecutors in
Colorado were more likely to seek the death penalty against black and Latino
defendants than against white defendants.
“We see more and more people favor the death penalty in principle but not in
practice,” said Robert Dunham, the executive director of the center. “The death
penalty they favor is not in place. That’s been one of the major changes in the
legislatures in the West.”
This week’s Senate floor debate and vote are crucial for supporters of repeal.
Democrats hold a narrow majority in the Senate, and positions on the death
penalty don’t strictly follow party lines.
The last time Colorado Democrats made a serious attempt to abolish capital
punishment was in 2013. When then-Gov. John Hickenlooper signaled he’d veto the
bill making its way through the legislature, lawmakers spiked it.
Just two months later, after having a change of heart about the death penalty,
the governor indefinitely stayed the execution of Nathan Dunlap, who was
convicted of murdering 4 of his former co-workers at a Chuck E. Cheese
restaurant in Aurora.
Hickenlooper’s decision was met with extraordinary criticism. His executive
order can only be overturned by another governor, something Gov. Jared Polis is
not inclined to do. And the 2 other men on death row — Sir Mario Owens and
Robert Ray, who were convicted in the 2005 murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and
Vivian Wolfe — are in the midst of appeals and their executions have not been
scheduled yet.
More recently, juries have declined to sentence even the most heinous criminals
to death, including James Holmes, who killed 12 people at an Aurora theater,
and Dexter Lewis, who stabbed 5 people to death at a Denver bar. And last year,
Weld County prosecutors made a plea deal to give Watts, who last year killed
his wife and 2 children, life in prison.
Public support for the death penalty also has dropped significantly since it
peaked at 80 % in 1994, according to Gallup. However, a small majority of
Americans — 56 % — still favor it for people convicted of murder.
There is a wide partisan gap. According to Pew Research, 77 % of Republicans in
2018 supported the death penalty, while only 35 percent of Democrats did. 52 %
of unaffiliated voters support capital punishment.
“There’s a difference between popular opinion and those tasked with carrying
out capital punishment,” said Amber Widgery, a senior policy analyst at the
National Conference of State Legislatures, which monitors policy trends across
the states. “With mounting cost and logistical difficulties, lawmakers are
taking a hard look and asking themselves if they can sustain this.”
Nebraska is a case study in the split between policymakers and the public. In
2015, state lawmakers voted to repeal capital punishment, but the next year
voters restored the death penalty at the ballot box. The rebuke of lawmakers
was financed in large part by the state’s wealthy Republican governor and his
family.
Robert Blecker, a professor of criminal law and constitutional history at New
York Law School, said he worries that abolition of the death penalty is part of
a larger problem: the erosion of punishment.
“Punishment itself is dying,” he said. “The question is, if we abolish the
death penalty, do we diminish justice?”
Blecker, who believes the death penalty should be reserved for “the worst of
the worst of the worst,” has spent thousands of hours researching and
interviewing criminals who live on death row as well as those who have been
given life without the chance of parole. His findings suggest that the
punishment handed down rarely matches the scope of the crime.
“Some people deserve to die, and we have a moral obligation to execute them,”
he said, adding that juries should need to decide capital cases using a much
higher threshold than “beyond a reasonable doubt” of guilt.
If the Colorado legislation to repeal the death penalty makes it through the
Senate, the state House will take up the bill next. The lower chamber is
considered far more liberal than the Senate, and the bill is all but ensured
passage there. Polis has also pledged to sign the bill if it makes it to his
desk.
(source: Denver Post)
UTAH:
A Utah death row inmate wants to use the words of a dying man to help prove the
LDS Church meddled in his trial
He called him charitable and inspirational, someone who was a “better man than
many walking outside the prison.”
Chuck Thompson, a onetime Latter-day Saint bishop, penned these words of praise
about death row inmate Douglas Lovell, according to the inmate’s attorney, as
part of a book Thompson wrote while battling terminal cancer.
Lovell’s attorneys want that book admitted into court to help prove The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meddled in his 2015 trial.
Four years ago, a jury sentenced Douglas Lovell to be executed for killing
39-year-old Joyce Yost in 1985. Lovell is appealing the decision, arguing the
church affected the outcome by telling his former religious leaders to either
not testify or limit what they said on the stand.
Lovell’s attorneys had planned to have a handful of former bishops and others
who worked at the prison testify about the positive interactions they had with
Lovell. They did not dispute that Lovell killed Yost but instead asked jurors
to spare him the death penalty. His was a life worth saving, they said, that he
had been a model prisoner for three decades who donated most of the meager
money he earned at the prison to charity.
But Lovell wrote in an affidavit that on the eve of his trial, another former
mentor of his came to him in tears, asking him not to call him as a character
witness. The man told Lovell that a “member above him” in the church told him
he could not testify.
Four other bishops and a woman serving a Latter-day Saint mission at the time
of the trial also reported they were told to either not testify or give only
short answers, so it would not appear they were representing the church. The
LDS Church has a neutral stance on the death penalty.
One of those bishops was Thompson. He testified only briefly, telling jurors he
had a standing appointment with Lovell, whom he characterized as a model
prisoner. As did many other church members called to testify, he told the jury
he was there “under order of subpoena.”
But Thompson wrote an email to another witness after the trial, according to
court filings, and said he had to walk a “delicate tightrope” as he testified
while being monitored by attorneys hired by the church.
He wanted to help Lovell, he wrote, without running afoul of his religious
leaders and their wishes.
"I was instructed to say as little 'opinion' as I could and followed council,"
he wrote in the email.
Some kids have been navigating Utah’s court system alone. But lawmakers passed
a measure that will provide all youths with a lawyer. Some kids have been
navigating Utah’s court system alone. But lawmakers passed a measure that will
provide all youths with a lawyer.
A Latter-day Saint spokesman has said any limitations in the testimony of
witnesses was agreed to by Lovell’s trial attorneys, adding that church leaders
generally do not participate in legal proceedings when the church is not
directly involved.
“In this case, these leaders were required by subpoena to appear in court,”
spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a 2016 statement. “Their statements represent
their personal experiences and opinions. They do not speak for the church. Our
hearts go out to the victims of this unspeakable crime.”
The Utah Supreme Court has ordered an evidentiary hearing for Lovell, asking a
district court judge to decide whether one of Lovell’s court-appointed
attorneys “performed deficiently” by failing to object to purported
interference by church lawyers and failing to properly prepare witnesses.
Thompson would have testified at this upcoming hearing — but shortly after
Lovell was convicted in 2015, Thompson was diagnosed with brain cancer.
He died in 2017. He spent much of those last two years writing a short book
about his life called, “The Mountain.”
Thompson wrote about his 5 years working with inmates as a “Maximum Security
Bishop” — including his interactions with an unnamed inmate, whom he describes
as a “model prisoner.”
Lovell’s appellate attorney, Colleen Coebergh, said the inmate described in
Thompson’s book is Lovell, and argued the writings appear to be Thompson’s last
effort to “set the record straight.”
She’s now asking a judge to allow Thompson’s book to be admitted as evidence,
arguing in court papers that Thompson’s writings show his true feelings about
Lovell — what he could not tell jurors on the witness stand because of the
limitations placed on him by church attorneys.
Thompson’s book centers around spiritual teachings and life lessons, as well as
detailing his own struggles with depression. He wrote about the importance of
charity and helping others, and shared details about an inmate he knew who
helps those incarcerated with him and who donates his money to a charity.
“He has influenced many inside and outside the prison,” the book reads. “It
makes a small difference but he sacrifices from behind bars when those of us on
the outside do nothing. He is an inspiration to many who visit, including the
founder of the charity.”
The Utah attorney general’s office has asked the judge not to allow the book to
be a part of the hearing, saying it’s too vague and never mentions Lovell by
name. It also argues that Thompson wrote the book over a two-year period and is
not considered a “dying declaration” that would make it admissible in court.
The state attorneys further argued that Thompson’s book is irrelevant to the
question the judge has to decide: Did Lovell’s trial attorney, Sean Young,
“perform deficiently”?
Besides the issue with the church attorneys, Lovell has also raised questions
about Young’s preparation before the trial.
Lovell's lead trial attorney, Michael Bouwhuis, wrote in an affidavit that
Young, his co-counsel, was assigned to interview and prepare 18 witnesses,
including former church members, Lovell's family members, and an inmate who
said Lovell positively affected his life.
Of those 18, only 2 have said that they were contacted by Young before trial —
but the conversations were brief and mostly concerned when they would testify,
not the substance of what they would say.
Young’s public defender contract was terminated after Lovell’s trial, and he
later had his law license suspended for 3 years.
A judge has not yet ruled whether Thompson’s book will be a part of Lovell’s
hearing. That evidentiary hearing is scheduled to begin in early April and is
expected to continue through the month. If a judge finds that Young was
deficient, Lovell can use that finding to argue that he should get another
trial because of ineffective assistance of counsel.
If he does get another trial, it would be the 3rd time Lovell would face the
possibility of the death penalty.
A judge initially sentenced him to die by lethal injection in 1993, after
Lovell struck a plea deal that spared him execution if he could lead
authorities to where he hid Yost’s remains in the mountains east of Ogden.
Despite days of searching, her body was never found.
In 2011, the Utah Supreme Court ruled Lovell could withdraw his guilty plea
because he should have been better informed of his rights during court
proceedings. That led to the 2015 trial, in which a jury deliberated for 11
hours before deciding he should be executed.
(source: Salt Lake Tribune)
CALIFORNIA:
San Quentin’s chaplain: California’s death penalty moratorium has given us hope
On Wednesday morning, San Quentin State Prison, California’s largest, awoke to
some surprising news. Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order placing a
moratorium on the state’s death penalty. While this does not end the death
penalty in California (that can only be done by a voter referendum), it ensures
that the 737 men and women on death row will not be executed as long as Gov.
Newsom is in office.
In addition to granting a reprieve for death row inmates, he ordered the
dismantling of the machinery of death at San Quentin—closing the old gas
chamber and the newer lethal injection facility. Within hours, workers at San
Quentin had removed the chairs, gurneys and associated equipment needed to
carry out executions.
As the Catholic Chaplain at San Quentin, I have religious services for the men
on death row on Wednesdays. That day I was eager to hear their reactions. I
wondered what the mood on “the row” would be.
Over the 8 years I’ve worked at San Quentin, I have had many conversations with
men on death row. It is always strange to discuss executions with them. It is
uncomfortable in the way that talking about cancer with a terminally ill friend
or family member sometimes can be.
Everything about the death penalty system seemed to be designed to deny hope.
Most of the men have shared with me how they experience every day the searing
recognition that society has deemed them no longer worthy to live. They have
lived with this condemnation hanging over them like a curse for years,
sometimes for decades. The mood in “East Block”—where most of the death row
inmates are housed—is usually somber. The building is dark and the shadows
deep. Many more inmates have died from suicide than from executions since the
death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s. Despair pervades the East Block, and
I always feel the spiritual oppressiveness of the place.
When you walk up to the entrance to death row, the first thing you see are the
large letters on the black metal doors that read “CONDEMNED.” Everything about
the death penalty system seemed to be designed to deny hope.
On Wednesday morning, then, I was surprised at first by how subdued their
reactions seemed. I think they were initially trying to process the news. After
years of uncertainty and resignation, they were grappling with a very
unfamiliar feeling in the death house—hope. These are men who life has not
treated very well to begin with. My impression was that they didn’t want to
“jinx” the good news by getting too enthused about it.
We are only at the beginning of our mission to correct the injustices in our
criminal justice system.
Nonetheless, everyone I spoke with was grateful for the reprieve. One man,
sitting in a small, gray, padlocked holding cell, said that he thought the
governor’s action was courageous and that it was a positive first step toward
abolishing the death penalty.
I have never had the impression that the men on death row feared executions.
What they (and most prisoners) fear the most is dying sick and old, all alone
in a dark cell, forgotten by all who mattered to them. This is why I believe
life without the possibility of parole is even crueler than the death penalty.
Working on death row has given me a unique vision of the spiritual life.
Catholics do not generally hear it preached, but we have to remember that Jesus
spent his last night on death row. So did Peter and Paul and John the Baptist,
James, Steven and many of the early followers. It is also important to remember
who the most well known victim of the death penalty is: our savior. The early
church was also no stranger to prisons. Sadly, our contemporary church often
is. Through his own words and deeds, however, Pope Francis has been leading us
back to remembering men and women in prison. Like many popes before him, every
time he visits inmates he embodies Christ’s words in the Matthew’s Gospel, “I
was in prison and you visited me.”
Still, we have a long way to go as a church; future generations will question
why we Catholics have not done more to address the sin of mass incarceration.
We are only at the beginning of our mission to correct the injustices in our
criminal justice system.
It is inspiring that Gov. Newsom framed his opposition to the death penalty in
moral terms, citing his own Catholic faith and his education by Jesuits in
informing his decision. Not only did Gov. Newsom give the inmates on death row
a reprieve, he gave all of us a brief reprieve from so much darkness in the
world, in our political culture and in the church. In a word, he gave us hope.
(source: George Williams, American Magazine)
********************
These are Humboldt County’s Former Death Row Inmates, Who Will Now Live Out the
Rest of Their Lives in Prison
The last 2 surviving men to be sentenced to death in Humboldt County will
seemingly escape capital punishment, after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an
executive order last week to halt the executions of all 737 death row inmates
in California.
Convicted murderers Jackie Ray Hovarter and Curtis Floyd Price will now spend
the rest of their lives in prison without the possibility of parole, despite
receiving death sentences in Humboldt County for the violent crimes they
committed in the 1980s.
In 1989, Hovarter was found guilty of kidnapping, raping and murdering
16-year-old Danna Walsh of Willits while driving his truck route for the
Louisiana-Pacific pulp mill in Samoa. According to court documents, Hovarter is
believed to have strangled Walsh to death before dumping her body along the Eel
River near Scotia Bridge in August of 1984.
Hovarter was not charged with Walsh’s death until he was found guilty of
kidnapping, bounding, raping and shooting a second teenage girl from Fields
Landing 4 months after Walsh’s death. The unnamed 15-year-old miraculously
survived the incident, and was able to identify Hovarter and recount the
gruesome details of the attack.
“He took the gun from his pocket and placed the pillow over it,” court
documents read. “[The unnamed teenager] asked him whether he was going to shoot
her. He said he would not and then shot her in the head. She became dizzy, fell
to the ground, and tried to remain motionless. Defendant kicked her twice and
asked her whether she was dead. He then shot her in the head again.
Miraculously, neither bullet penetrated her cranium. Defendant untied her from
the tree, dragged her to the river, and tried to roll her in. She got into the
current and floated away, managing to untie her hands.”
Hovarter, 66, is currently housed in San Quentin State Prison. Until last week,
it was the last California prison to carry out court-ordered executions. The
prison’s execution room, formerly a gas chamber, was converted into a lethal
injection room in 1995 after judges ruled that the use of gas was cruel and
unusual punishment. The chamber was promptly dismantled last week following
Gov. Newsom’s order.
In 1991, a Eureka man named Curtis Floyd Price — now 71 — was also sentenced to
die in Humboldt County by a jury of his peers.
Price was found guilty of fatally shooting Richard Barnes in Los Angeles, and
later beating Elizabeth Ann Hickey to death in her Humboldt County residence.
He was also found guilty of burglary, robbery with the use of a firearm,
receiving stolen property and conspiracy.
According to Justia.com, prosecutors had evidence to believe that Price was a
member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and was ordered by gang leaders to carry out
the killing of Barnes — the father of an Aryan Brotherhood member — for
testifying against other members of the gang. Prosecutors argued that Price
later killed Hickey — Barnes’ stepdaughter — to obtain the guns in her home, or
to prevent her from incriminating him in the Barnes murder case.
As a result of Newsom’s order, Price will likely be the last man to be
sentenced to death in Humboldt County. Although Californians voted twice in the
last the last decade to preserve the death penalty, Gov. Newsom gave a number
of reason why he chose to bypass the will of the people.
In a state-issued press release, Newsom stated that California taxpayers have
spent more than $5 billion since 1978 to execute 13 people. The governor also
said that the death penalty system is discriminatory against people of color,
the poor and the mentally ill, citing a 2005 study that found that people
convicted of killing white people were 3 to 4 times more likely to be sentenced
to death than those convicted of killing black or Latino people.
“The intentional killing of another person is wrong, and as Governor I will not
oversee the execution of any individual,” Newsom is quoted as saying in the
press release. “Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure.
It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown,
or can’t afford expensive legal representation. It has provided no public
safety benefit or value as a deterrent. It has wasted billions of taxpayer
dollars. Most of all, the death penalty is absolute. It’s irreversible and
irreparable in the event of human error.”
Newsom’s mention of “human error” was in reference to the 164 death row inmates
who have been freed from U.S. prisons since 1973, after they were found to have
been wrongfully convicted — 5 of which were sentenced right here in California.
Newsom’s order has drawn vehement criticism from those close to the victims
killed by death row inmates, like Placer County Sheriff Devon Bell, who
addressed the governor’s order in a Facebook video last week.
In the video, which received almost half a million views, Bell shows his
disappointment that Luis Bracamontes will not be put to death for the murder of
Detective Michael Davis Jr., who Barcamontes shot and killed with an AR-15
rifle while Davis was pursuing him for the murder of another officer, Deputy
Sheriff Danny Oliver of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.
“I am profoundly saddened and heartbroken to hear that Governor Newsom has
suspended the death penalty in California,” Bell said in the video. “For us at
the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, it’s opened a fresh wound.”
Bracomontes made national headlines for smiling as he threatened to kill more
officers during his murder trial in 2018.
However, Gov. Newsom also received positive support for his action. Senator
Kamala Harris and and state senator Mike McGuire both issued statements
publicly praising the governor last week.
“This is an important day for justice and for the state of California,” Harris
is quoted as saying in a press release. “I applaud Governor Newsom for his
decision to place a moratorium on the death penalty. As a career law
enforcement official, I have opposed the death penalty because it is immoral,
discriminatory, ineffective and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
McGuire went so far as to call capital punishment “archaic,” and echoed the
governor’s sentiments that the death penalty system is inherently racist.
“The death penalty is an archaic and unjust system, disproportionately
condemning people of color and those with disabilities,” McGuire stated. “I
commend Governor Newsom for his decisive action today to place a moratorium on
the death penalty in California. There is absolutely no evidence that the death
penalty makes Californians safer, and it is both incredibly costly and
burdensome. This is the right step to take, while the legislature and the
administration work together to make our criminal justice system stronger and
more just.”
(source: lostcoastoutpost.com)
USA:
Student Opinion----Should We Abolish the Death Penalty?
In 2018, the United States executed 25 people and over 2,700 prisoners remain
on “death row.” It is one of only 56 nations in the world that still practice
capital punishment.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on capital
punishment in his state. Watch the one-minute video above announcing his
decision.
Should the United States as a country stop using the death penalty? Is it ever
justified, such as for the most heinous crimes? Or do you think it is always
cruel and unusual punishment? Alternatively, do you think it should be
suspended for practical reasons, such as because it is costly or sometimes
unfairly administered?
In “California Death Penalty Suspended; 737 Inmates Get Stay of Execution,” Tim
Arango writes:
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on capital punishment on Wednesday,
granting a temporary reprieve for the 737 inmates on the state’s death row, the
largest in the Western Hemisphere.
The move is highly symbolic because legal challenges have already stalled
executions in California; the last one was in 2006. But death penalty opponents
hope that because of California’s size and political importance, the governor’s
action will give new urgency to efforts to end executions in other states as
popular support for the death penalty wanes.
Mr. Newsom, a longtime opponent of capital punishment, cited its high cost,
racial disparities in its application and wrongful convictions, and questioned
whether society has the right to take a life.
“I know people think eye for eye, but if you rape, we don’t rape,” he said.
“And I think if someone kills, we don’t kill. We’re better than that.”
He continued, “I cannot sign off on executing hundreds and hundreds of human
beings, knowing — knowing — that among them will be innocent human beings.”
Supporters of capital punishment said the move went against the will of the
state’s residents. California voters have rejected an initiative to abolish the
death penalty and in 2016, they narrowly approved Proposition 66 to help speed
it up.
“I think this would be a bold step and I think he’s got to be aware of the
political downside,” said Michael D. Rushford, president of the Criminal
Justice Legal Foundation, an organization in Sacramento that favors the death
penalty and helped draft the ballot proposition, speaking before the governor’s
announcement. “Voters have had multiple opportunities in California over 3
decades to abandon the death penalty and they’ve shut them down at every
chance.”
The article continues:
After the news of Mr. Newsom’s decision broke, Mr. Trump said on Twitter:
“Defying voters, the Governor of California will halt all death penalty
executions of 737 stone cold killers. Friends and families of the always
forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!”
Speaking several hours later, Mr. Newsom said he had met with families of
victims and they had expressed passionate but conflicting views on capital
punishment. But the governor made it clear that his decision came down to his
own conscience, prodded by impending decisions such as whether to support the
state’s lethal injection protocol.
An executive order Mr. Newsom signed on Wednesday does three things: grants
reprieves to the inmates currently on death row — they will still be under a
death sentence, but not at risk of execution; closes the execution chamber at
San Quentin prison; and withdraws the state’s lethal injection protocol, the
formally approved procedure for carrying out executions.
“3 out of 4 nations in the world know better and are doing better,” Mr. Newsom
said. “They’ve abolished the death penalty. It’s time California join those
ranks.”
The article concludes:
Opponents of the death penalty, including Mr. Newsom, have long argued that the
practice is rife with racial disparities and is not justified by the high cost
to state taxpayers. One study, in 2011, found that California pays $184 million
a year to sustain capital punishment — or close to an accumulated $5 billion
since the practice was reinstituted in 1978.
In February, Mr. Newsom intervened in a high-profile death row case that for
years activists have claimed was a prime example of racial injustice.
Kevin Cooper, a black man who was convicted of 4 brutal murders by stabbing in
1983, has long maintained his innocence. His supporters have put forward
evidence that he was framed by San Bernardino officers. Mr. Newsom ordered DNA
testing in the case, something that state officials had refused to do in the
past.
The possibility of wrongful convictions — nationally, more than 150 people on
death row have been exonerated since the mid-1970s, according to the National
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty — has also energized the opposition
movement, around the country and in California.
Last April in California, a man who had been on death row for 25 years for
murdering a young girl, a former farmworker named Vicente Figueroa Benavides,
was freed after a court determined that testimony given at his trial was false.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
— Do you support or oppose the use of the capital punishment? Should it be
abolished in the United States?
— Do you think the death penalty serves a necessary purpose, like deterring
crime, providing relief for victims’ families or imparting justice? Or is
capital punishment “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore prohibited by
the Constitution?
— What is your reaction to Gov. Newsom’s moratorium announcement? Which of his
arguments for a moratorium do you find most persuasive? Which are the least?
— The article states:
But in 2016, Californians doubled down on the death penalty, approving a
measure that streamlined the appeals process, which has typically taken about
25 years in California for condemned prisoners. The initiative, which was
backed by many law enforcement officials and prosecutors, passed with 51 % of
the vote, belying California’s national image as place where politics was
steadily moving to the left. It was approved at the same time that voters
legalized marijuana.
Do you think Mr. Newsom was right to issue a moratorium despite recent votes in
support of the death penalty by California’s residents? Do you think it
violates the will of the state’s residents, or should he follow his own
conscience? Should public opinion matter in cases like capital punishment?
— How concerned should we be about wrongful convictions? Do you have concerns
about the fair application of the death penalty, or about the possibility of
the criminal justice system executing an innocent person? Do the recent cases
of Kevin Cooper and Vicente Figueroa Benavides, cited in the article, affect
your views?
(source: Jeremy Engle, New York Times)
*****************
Feds to seek death penalty against ex-Briarcliff cop Nick Tartaglione in
quadruple slaying
Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Nicholas Tartaglione, a
former Briarcliff Manor police officer accused in the killings of 4 men in
Orange County nearly 3 years ago.
That decision has been pending since Tartaglione's arrest in December 2016 and
was conveyed to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas Tuesday morning by Assistant
U.S. Attorney Michael Gerber.
It is the 2nd time in recent months that prosecutors opted to pursue capital
punishment in the Southern District of New York, where death penalty cases are
generally rare.
Decades of alleged sexual abuse by area doctor detailed in unique lawsuit
Defense lawyer Bruce Barket, who said he was notified Thursday, didn't mince
words as he left the federal courthouse in White Plains.
"Unfortunate, despicable, unnecessary, unjust, egregious, thoughtless,
pointless, those are all words that came to my mind," Barket said, adding
"outrageous" to the list.
Tartaglione is accused in the deaths of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel
Luna and Hector Gutierrez, who went missing April 11, 2016, after going to a
bar in Chester, that was owned at the time by Tartaglione's brother.
Their bodies were discovered eight months later, the day after Tartaglione's
arrest, on property he had previously rented in Otisville.
Prosecutors contend that Luna was lured to the bar to be confronted over money
he owed from a drug deal. He brought the others along - Miguel Luna and
Santiago were relatives and Gutierrez was a family friend - and they had
nothing to do with the drug deal.
Martin Luna's death was ruled a homicide but the autopsy did not reveal how he
was killed. The other men were each shot in the head. Prosecutors have said
Tartaglione was not present when the three men were shot because he had left
with Martin Luna's body.
Death penalty cases rare
In September, prosecutors announced they were pursuing the death penalty
against Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of killing eight people when he drove a
truck down a Hudson River bike path in lower Manhattan on Halloween 2017.
The last death penalty case in the Southern District of New York was a decade
ago. Khalid Barns, the leader of a Peekskill drug ring, was found guilty of
killing 2 drug dealers in Manhattan but was spared the death penalty when the
jury opted instead for life imprisonment.
The last execution in New York for a federal crime was in 1953 when Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg were executed following their conviction on espionage charges.
Barket and other lawyers for Tartaglione worked on a mitigation package for
more than a year to head off pursuit of the death penalty. In December they met
with officials at the Department of Justice in Washington but failed to
convince them.
Barket has declined to discuss details of why the death penalty should not be
pursued and on Tuesday would not again.
"The first part of the trial that we will have, and we are preparing for, is
the innocence phase and that's what we're preparing for as much as anything
else," he said.
He said that Tartaglione took the news about the government's decision "pretty
well, all things considered."
"He's more concerned about the time, the extra time it will take," Barket said.
"He's focused like we all are on the 1st part of the trial."
A formal notice of intent to seek capital punishment that the government must
present to the defense will be completed in the coming weeks, Gerber said.
Karas adjourned the case until May 3 for the defense to consider pre-trial
motions they want to pursue related to both the case itself and to the death
penalty. No trial date has been set.
Tartaglione's father and relatives of the victim declined to comment as they
left the courthouse.
(source: lohud.com)
*************************
Death Penalty Opponents Gain Unlikely Allies: Republicans
No one would ever question Dave Danielson’s credentials as a Republican. As a
17-year-old in his home state of New Hampshire, he led a local group of teenage
Barry Goldwater supporters in 1964 and went on to vote for every Republican
presidential candidate since.
He also shared the GOP’s support for the death penalty. But seven years ago,
after winning election to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Danielson
re-examined that stance after a friend asked how he could reconcile
state-authorized executions with his deeply ingrained belief in the sanctity of
life. It was a dichotomy he’d never pondered, he recalled.
“I had never considered that conflict until he brought it up,” Danielson said.
After days of soul searching, he reversed course. “I just said I could not
support the death penalty,” Danielson, 72, a retired marketing manager from
Bedford, New Hampshire, recalled recently. “I came from one side of the coin to
another.”
In decades past, the notion of a conservative Republican opposing the death
penalty seemed largely counterintuitive. But a growing number of elected
Republicans are now breaking with partisan orthodoxy to not only oppose the
death penalty but also help lead efforts to repeal it in more than a half-dozen
states, often in conflict with leaders and colleagues in their own party.
The repeal efforts, which in most cases would replace the death penalty with
sentences of life without parole, reflect a steep two-decade decline in
executions nationwide, as well as growing overall opposition to the practice.
Last week, the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, imposed a
moratorium on executions in the nation’s most populous state, granting at least
a temporary reprieve for all 737 condemned inmates on California’s death row.
Gavin acted even though voters in California twice rejected a death penalty
repeal, in 2012 and in 2016.
President Donald Trump, who is calling for use of the death penalty against
drug dealers, said in a tweet that he was “not thrilled” by the California
moratorium, saying it shields “737 stone cold killers.” Death penalty
supporters say the ultimate punishment gives closure to victims, helps prevent
crime and is a just outcome for those who commit heinous offenses.
Although as many as 3/4 of the nation’s Republicans still support the death
penalty, according to polls, GOP lawmakers are increasingly aligning with
Democrats to oppose capital punishment.
In New Hampshire, dozens of Republicans, including Danielson, voted in March
for a death penalty repeal bill in the Democratic-led state House of
Representatives. The state Senate, also controlled by Democrats, is widely
expected to duplicate the House in ultimately passing House Bill 455 by a
veto-proof margin.
Repeal bills with Republican sponsors have been introduced in at least seven
other states this year. In solidly red Wyoming, a bipartisan repeal bill
advanced well beyond expectations in the Republican-controlled legislature,
passing the full House and a Senate committee before being killed by the full
Senate.
A major factor behind changing public attitudes on the death penalty —
including the shift among Republicans — stems from law enforcement advances and
DNA science that have cleared wrongly convicted defendants, including 164 death
row inmates who had been awaiting executions in 28 states.
Questions involving racial disparities and other issues have left Americans
almost evenly split over whether the death penalty is being fairly applied,
according to a 2018 Gallup Poll.
Republicans pushing repeal legislation cite hefty taxpayer costs, the death
penalty’s disputed effectiveness as a deterrent, and the moral incongruity
between Republicans’ “pro-life” positions and the legalized taking of a life. A
strong libertarian strain also is reflected in conservative distrust of
government-sponsored executions.
A 2012 study by the then-National Research Council, now called the National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, found that “fundamental flaws”
in previous research made it impossible to determine whether the death penalty
“increases, decreases, or has no effect” on murder rates.
Numerous other studies have delved into the death penalty’s financial impact,
concluding that capital punishment results in millions of dollars in extra
costs because of longer trials, years of appeals, added legal expertise,
sequestered juries, beefed up security on death rows and other factors. A Duke
University study concluded that death penalty prosecutions cost North Carolina
at least $11 million a year.
“Conservatives pride themselves on limited government, useful and effective
application of tax dollars and protecting the sanctity of life,” said Hannah
Cox, national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a
project of Equal Justice USA, a Brooklyn-based advocacy organization. “When you
look at the death penalty, it’s not doing any of those things. It’s a very big
government program, it wastes millions and millions, and those resources are
not spent on anything to deter crime.”
“Odds are we have already executed someone who’s innocent,” she added, “and
odds are we’ll do it again.”
Her organization, which was launched in 2013 at the Conservative Political
Action Conference, known as CPAC, in Washington, D.C., has served as an
umbrella for conservative opposition to the death penalty.
Republican lawmakers this year have backed repeal efforts in Kansas, Kentucky,
Missouri and Montana, as well as in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Washington
state, where lawmakers want to statutorily bring the Evergreen State in line
with a 2018 state Supreme Court ruling that struck down the death penalty
there. Colorado state Sen. Kevin Priola is the solitary Republican sponsoring
repeal legislation in his state.
Nationally, 25 people were executed and 42 were sentenced to death in 2018,
compared with a peak of 98 executions in 1999 and more than 300 death sentences
a year in the mid-1990s. The death penalty has been abolished or overturned in
20 states and remains in place in 30 others, although four states where it is
still on the books — Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and now California — are
under moratoria by governors.
Public support for the death penalty also is at or near a 4-decade low,
according to surveys by the Gallup Poll and the Pew Research Center. Nearly 80
% of Americans supported the death penalty in the late 1990s, but support was
around the mid-50s in polls taken over the past 2 years. Public support stood
at 49 % in a 2016 Pew survey. (The Pew Research Center and Stateline both are
funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.)
77 % of Republicans registered support for the death penalty in a 2018 Pew
survey, a drop of 10 % points since 1996. During the same period, death penalty
support tumbled by 36 % points among Democrats, from 71 to 35 %.
“We’re in the middle of a major change in the United States on the death
penalty,” said Rob Dunham, executive director of the nonpartisan Death Penalty
Information Center. The center, based in Washington, D.C., provides analysis
and information and doesn’t take a position for or against the death penalty
though it “is critical of the way it’s administered,” Dunham said.
“In the 1990s, the death penalty was a wedge issue,” Dunham said. “It was
highly partisan, and any candidate [Democrat or Republican] who said he or she
was opposed to the death penalty was facing almost certain electoral defeat.
Now we’ve reached a stage where it appears to have little or no influence in
statewide elections.”
In many red states, there appears to be little or no evidence of Republican
change of heart over the death penalty. In Texas, the largest of the red states
and one that has made headlines in the past for high numbers of executions,
Democratic state Rep. Jessica Farrar of Houston said she has had no Republican
support for the death penalty repeal bill that she has introduced each session
for nearly a decade.
But at the same time, Texas has followed the national trend of declining use of
the death penalty, and there are signs that attitudes may be changing.
Texas accounted for more than 1/2 of all U.S. executions last year — 13 — but
sentences there have nevertheless fallen from a peak of 48 death verdicts in
1999 to single digits in 9 of the past 10 years.
The nationally publicized case of Texan Michael Morton, who was exonerated by
DNA evidence in 2011 after serving nearly 25 years of a life sentence in the
wrongful conviction of his wife’s death, also has heightened concerns.
“It keeps me up at night when I realize that there could be innocent people in
our prisons and on death row,” said Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach, a
conservative who is chairman of the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and
Civil Jurisprudence.
Leach said he has confidence in the jury system and continues to support the
death penalty but thinks an in-depth review of the penalty and a possible
moratorium should “be on the table to ensure all of the death row inmates
actually deserve to be there.”
In other states, some of those fighting to strike down the death penalty
started out as supporters. Colby Coash, the former state senator in Nebraska
who led a 2015 effort to repeal the state’s death penalty, said his change of
heart came after some friends in his dormitory at the University of Nebraska
invited him to go to a party outside the state prison the night of a scheduled
execution.
“It was a pretty ugly scene,” Coash said, recalling how one somber group held
candles in opposition to the execution while his group tailgated and drank beer
as a band played.
“It was like New Year’s Eve, so we did a countdown” toward the midnight
execution, Coash recalled. Afterward, he said, “it didn’t sit right with my
heart. I’d been raised better than to celebrate a man’s death, to celebrate the
end of a life.”
As a state senator in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature, Coash took the lead in
pushing legislation in 2015 to repeal the death penalty. Although the
legislature is officially nonpartisan, lawmakers are aligned with political
parties, and Coash successfully built strong support among fellow Republicans
who held the majority.
Legislative approval of the bill made Nebraska the first red state in more than
40 years to repeal the death penalty, but the measure ran into opposition from
GOP Gov. Pete Ricketts, a staunch death penalty advocate. After the legislature
overturned Ricketts’ veto, he responded by funding a petition drive for a 2016
public referendum that reinstated the death penalty.
In Wyoming, minority Democrats who had long opposed the death penalty turned to
like-minded Republicans in a pragmatic effort to push the measure in the
GOP-dominated legislature.
State Rep. Charles Pelkey, a leading Democrat who carried the repeal bill last
year, said he recognized the importance of “letting Republicans take the lead”
in 2019 if the bill were to have any hope of success.
“This is the farthest we’ve ever gotten,” Pelkey said. “Republicans are
absolutely essential.”
The leader this year was Republican Rep. Jared Olsen, a 31-year Cheyenne lawyer
whose family has been in Wyoming for 5 generations. Working with a broad
coalition that included the League of Women Voters and the Catholic Diocese of
Cheyenne, as well as Democratic allies, Olsen appealed heavily to libertarian
sentiments by pointing out the $750,000 annual cost to maintain a death penalty
system.
Other Republican efforts haven’t progressed as far. In neighboring Montana,
Rep. Mike Hopkins of Missoula argued that his repeal bill would end a practice
that was both expensive and inefficient, but the measure was rejected by a
House committee. All 11 Republicans voted against it; all eight Democrats voted
for it.
“Ironically enough,” said the Republican lawmaker, “the only thing that’s
actually had the death penalty applied to it in Montana is my bill to repeal
the death penalty.”
In New Hampshire, the legislature is now under Democratic control after the
November elections, but Republicans have nevertheless played a substantial role
in death penalty repeal efforts. The bill cleared the House on a vote of
279-88, with the support of 72 Republicans. Eighty-three Republicans and five
Democrats voted against it. The Republican governor, Chris Sununu, has promised
a veto, but the legislature has the votes to override him.
Republican Dave Danielson was among those who participated in the House debate,
telling colleagues that the death penalty system was a needless burden on
taxpayers. After the House vote, Danielson said he got a call from the friend
who had questioned his earlier support of the death penalty. “I’m proud of
you,” Danielson said the man told him.
(source: pewtrusts.org)
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