March 20
OHIO:
Ohio attorney general chastises judge over death penalty
A federal judge improperly praised Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's decision to delay an
execution based on the judge's scathing critique of the state's lethal
injection method, the state attorney general said.
In a court filing earlier this week, Attorney General David Yost said
Magistrate Judge Michael Merz' remarks were an improper use of the judge's
position.
At issue is a series of execution delays ordered by DeWine, a Republican, after
Merz raised concerns about Ohio's lethal injection method.
After the governor issued his first delay - of the February execution of death
row inmate Warren Henness - Merz said that decision "embodies excellent public
policy."
The judge also said he was "deeply gratified" by DeWine's expression of trust
in Merz' lethal injection ruling.
"The Court fully expects that the Governor will do whatever is needed legally
to keep the public commitment he has made, the important first step being the
reprieve of Warren Henness," Merz wrote last month.
The attorney general said judges "are not supposed to use the federal bench as
a bully pulpit to influence state policy."
The judge's "statements needlessly (and perhaps unintentionally) entangle the
federal judiciary in a policy dispute on a hot-button issue," Yost said.
A message was left with Merz about Yost's remarks.
DeWine has ordered the prisons department to come up with a new lethal
injection method, a process that could take months or years.
Yost says that wouldn't prevent the state from carrying out executions earlier
with its current system.
The governor "has announced his intention to develop a new protocol, but he has
never suggested that he would deny death-row inmates the choice to use the
current protocol," Yost said.
Ohio could still use the current method if a federal appeals court rejects
Merz' criticism of Ohio's method or if the state can't come up with a new
method, Yost said.
Merz said on Jan. 14 that Ohio's system could cause inmates severe pain because
the 1st drug, the sedative midazolam, doesn't render them deeply enough
unconscious. He suggested inmates could experience a sensation similar to
waterboarding.
But Merz stopped short of halting executions, saying attorneys for Henness
hadn't shown that viable execution alternatives exist in Ohio.
Afterward, the governor postponed Henness' execution until September and then 3
more executions into the fall and then 2020.
"Ohio's not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has
found it to be cruel and unusual punishment," DeWine said in January.
A DeWine spokesman confirmed that executions could resume if Merz' order was
overturned by a higher court, or if the state created a new lethal injection
method that was found constitutional.
"If the court decision was overturned on the basis of fact, the governor would
certainly look if situation has changed," press secretary Dan Tierney said
Tuesday.
Henness was sentenced to death for killing 51-year-old Richard Myers in
Columbus in 1992. Myers had been helping Henness find a drug treatment for his
wife, authorities said.
(source: Associated Press)
TENNESSEE:
TENNESSEE LAWMAKERS 1 STEP CLOSER TO SPEEDING UP DEATH-ROW EXECUTIONS
As U.S. executions hover near historically low levels, a bill passed by the
Tennessee House aims to remove 1 state court’s review before putting inmates to
death which ultimately would speed up the process of getting a death row inmate
– to execution
The House voted 73-22 Monday for legislation to skip Tennessee’s Court of
Criminal Appeals and provide automatic state Supreme Court death penalty
reviews. The Senate could follow this week.
Court of Criminal Appeals Judge John Everett Williams has said his court’s last
four death penalty reviews took 3 to 6 months. Federal courts account for most
of the sometimes-3-decades of death penalty court reviews.
Tennessee executed 3 inmates last year.
(source: 1057news.com)
ARKANSAS:
Plan on execution competency favored
Legislation to create a new method for determining the competency of death-row
prisoners -- after the old method was found unconstitutional -- was endorsed
Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee.
In a pair of 4-3 decisions handed down in November, the Arkansas Supreme Court
said a state law granting the director of the Department of Correction the
authority to determine whether a condemned prisoner is competent for execution
violates the inmate's due-process rights.
House Bill 1792, by Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, would change the law to
require that the prison director conduct an evidentiary hearing "that comports
with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment" before determining
competency.
The bill is 1 of 2 proposals being pushed by the state attorney general's
office that seek to change state death-penalty law to comply with Supreme Court
decisions, in hopes that Arkansas will then be able to carry out executions
again.
The House Judiciary Committee approved HB1792 by a voice vote Tuesday, sending
the bill to the full House.
(source: arkansasonline.com)
IOWA:
No death penalty, ever
Our friend from the Iowa Interfaith Alliance was nervous last week about a
proposal to reinstate the death penalty in Iowa for the first time in a
half-century. It made us nervous, until we heard that members of the House
really aren’t talking about it. But the Interfaith Alliance says that it needs
to pick up a few votes in the Senate to make certain this barbaric practice
does not return to Iowa.
We have had the opportunity to read a new book called Solitary by Albert
Woodfox. Anyone who believes in capital punishment should read it. Woodfox
landed in prison as a teen after a juvenile life on the hustle in New Orleans.
In the notorious Angola prison, he was framed for the murder of a prison guard
despite physical evidence that was ignored and eyewitness testimony that was
suppressed. Because he insisted that the prison system was cruel and inhumane,
and because he insisted that the criminal justice system is racist, Woodfox was
kept in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day in a rat-infested cell, for 40
years for a murder he didn’t commit. By any account, Angola was cruel and
inhumane, and there is little doubt that Louisiana’s criminal justice and law
enforcement regimes were set up to maintain a Jim Crow order.
Iowa incarcerates a far higher number of blacks than whites. So does Minnesota.
So does nearly every state. There are far more people of color on death row
than whites, and it is not because people of color are more criminally prone,
and certainly not more prone than anyone else of capital offenses. Recently
enacted prison reform acknowledged as much. Then how can the death penalty be
fairly applied, if we have not come to terms with the fact that the justice
system sometimes — and in some places, often — produces different results for
people of different colors?
That is not to say that any judge or lawyer is racist, but the facts are the
facts. Law enforcement authorities tell us that minorities do not commit crimes
at any higher rates than whites. Yet our death rows are predominantly black.
Albert Woodfox could have been one of them.
So could the death row inmates found to be innocent by Northwestern University
journalism students, and other projects, using witness reports and DNA
evidence. Albert Woodfox could have been one of them. He is reason enough that
the death penalty should be abolished across the nation.
If you believe in our Constitution, capital punishment and solitary confinement
are cruel and inhumane.
If you are pro-life, you are against the death penalty.
If you are realistic, you know that innocent people like Albert Woodfox do get
railroaded. How can we have that on our conscience?
If you think the threat of capital punishment will keep that school shooter
from shooting, think again. There is no evidence that capital punishment
prevents crime. If so, there would be no one on Texas’s death row.
If you want revenge, move to Iran or Saudi Arabia. Revenge is not a part of our
constitutional culture. Justice is.
Iowa has a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole for capital
offenses like murder. We are protected. We don’t need to kill somebody to
prevent murder.
We should consider the story of Albert Woodfox. How can you call for the death
penalty when you know an innocent man could be in the gallows? Is that a risk a
civilized society can take?
Not here, not now. Not ever again.
(source: The Storm Lake Times)
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