March 30
TEXAS:
Brett Kavanaugh Explains Why He Voted to Grant Buddhist Inmate's Stay of
Execution----The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 Thursday night to grant Patrick
Murphy's petition for a stay.
Patrick Murphy, whose case I wrote about yesterday, was convicted under Texas'
law of parties in the 2000 murder of a police officer. While he didn't pull the
trigger, Murphy was involved in the robbery that led to his compatriots
committing murder.
"I'm not challenging the guilt of the crime," he told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth
this week. "My role was basically really to be the getaway driver."
Despite not having been directly involved in the murder, various courts have
refused to grant him a stay of execution. But Murphy also alleged that his
First Amendment right to freedom of religion was being violated. He converted
to Buddhism while incarcerated, but the State of Texas would not allow his
spiritual adviser to be by his side in the execution chamber, since the Rev.
Hui-Yong Shih is not an employee of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
A federal district and circuit court would not grant Murphy a stay, meaning
only the U.S. Supreme Court (or executive clemency) could spare his life. The
Court came through on Thursday night, ruling:
The State may not carry out Murphy's execution pending the timely filing and
disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless the State permits
Murphy's Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the State's
choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution.
Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were the only justices who would have denied a
stay. While the Court as a whole did not explain its reasoning, Justice Brett
Kavanaugh did publish a concurring opinion detailing his own decision.
"In this case, the relevant Texas policy allows a Christian or Muslim inmate to
have a state-employed Christian or Muslim religious adviser present either in
the execution room or in the adjacent viewing room," Kavanaugh wrote. "But
inmates of other religious denominations—for example, Buddhist inmates such as
Murphy—who want their religious adviser to be present can have the religious
adviser present only in the viewing room and not in the execution room itself
for their executions."
"In my view, the Constitution prohibits such denominational discrimination," he
said.
There were 2 possible solutions, he added. The state could let religious
advisers of all faiths in the execution chamber, or confine them to the viewing
room. The key is equal treatment. The state cannot give preferential treatment
to Christian or Muslim inmates over Buddhist prisoners, Kavanaugh said.
The Court's ruling surprised some observers, because it seemed to rule the
opposite way in a similar case in Alabama last month. Dominique Ray, a Muslim
inmate, wanted his imam to be by his side before he died. The state would not
oblige for security reasons, since it does not employ any Muslim imams. But in
that case the Court's decision didn't rest on the constitutional question: The
justices ruled 5–4 that Ray had waited too long to file a petition for relief.
That did not seem to be an issue in this case, at least for Kavanaugh. The
justice wrote in a note at the bottom of his concurring opinion that "Murphy
made his request to the State in a sufficiently timely manner, one month before
the scheduled execution."
According to UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh (of Volokh Conspiracy fame), the
Court's most recent ruling may also reflect a backlash "from scholars whose
views the justices respect" following their decision in the Ray case. "And of
course justices should be open to changing their minds when they are persuaded
that they were likely mistaken," he tells NPR.
Regardless of their reasoning, the ruling is most certainly a positive. As Ilya
Somin notes today at The Volokh Conspiracy:
Whatever can be said about the procedural question, it's a good thing that the
justices have taken a major step towards clearing up any confusion over their
stance on the substantive one. Whether in death penalty cases or elsewhere, it
is indeed impermissible for the government to discriminate on the basis of
religion.
Murphy will now go back to death row.
(source: Joe Seyton, reason.com)
******************
Why Did Brett Kavanaugh Change His Mind About the Rights of Religious
Minorities in the Execution Chamber?
Why did the Supreme Court halt Patrick Henry Murphy’s execution and not
Domineque Ray’s? On Thursday night, the justices barred Texas from killing
Murphy, a Buddhist, because the state refused to let a Buddhist spiritual
adviser accompany him in the execution chamber. Yet just last month, a majority
of the court let Alabama kill Ray, a Muslim, even though the state would not
let his imam accompany him during the lethal injection. At least one
conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, intervened to help Murphy but let Ray
die alone. Why?
Kavanaugh’s explanation for his change of heart—that Murphy brought his claim
earlier than Ray—is dubious if not outright wrong. Perhaps, in truth, they feel
duly shamed by the bipartisan public backlash to their callous treatment of
Ray. Maybe they were stung by Justice Elena Kagan’s fierce dissent in the Ray
case. Or maybe a white Buddhist inmate like Murphy is simply more sympathetic
to the conservative justices than a black Muslim inmate like Ray. Whatever the
reason, Thursday’s decision marked an overdue embrace of the basic respect for
religious liberty that the Constitution affords religious minorities.
Murphy and Ray’s cases are, legally, nearly indistinguishable. Both men wanted
a spiritual adviser present when the state was due to execute them. But Alabama
would not allow an imam to accompany Ray, and Texas would not allow a Buddhist
adviser to accompany Murphy. Both states, however, were willing to provide a
Christian chaplain to death row inmates at execution. (Texas, unlike Alabama,
also allows a Muslim spiritual adviser to attend executions, which would be of
no benefit to Murphy.) Ray and Murphy sued, noting that this discriminatory
treatment of religious minorities clearly violates the First Amendment’s
Establishment Clause by favoring one religion over another.
In February, by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court turned Ray away and let Alabama
kill him, over Kagan’s scathing dissent. The majority claimed that Ray made his
request too late. On Thursday, the court blocked Texas from killing Murphy. The
majority believed that Murphy, unlike Ray, made his request in what Kavanaugh
called “a sufficiently timely manner.” And so it forbade the execution unless
Texas “permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual adviser or another Buddhist reverend
of the State’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the
execution.”
On the surface, the court’s belief that Murphy’s request was timelier than
Ray’s might seem plausible. Murphy asked for a spiritual adviser one month
before his execution date, while Ray asked for one less than two weeks prior to
his execution on Feb. 7. But Ray did not discover that he could not have his
imam present until Jan. 23. That’s because Alabama statute states that an
inmate’s spiritual adviser of choice “may be present at an execution,” and Ray
understandably assumed that law authorized his imam to “be present” at his
execution. It wasn’t until Jan. 23 that the state provided Ray with
confidential regulations that only allow a Christian chaplain in the execution
chamber. After Ray discovered this secret rule, he filed his federal lawsuit in
five days, seeking a stay of execution until he could secure his imam’s
presence. As Cassy Stubbs, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s
Capital Punishment Project, told Slate, “there is no evidence that Ray sat on
the claim or was dilatory in any way.”
Why did the Supreme Court spare Murphy but not Ray?
Murphy, by contrast, has had notice of Texas’ death chamber regulations for
years. Since 2012, the state’s official policy has excluded all but prison
employees from the chamber during executions. And there are no Buddhist
spiritual advisers who work for the prison. This rule, unlike Alabama’s, is
public. Moreover, when the state confirmed that it would not allow a Buddhist
spiritual adviser to attend his execution, Murphy waited more than two weeks to
file a lawsuit. In all pertinent details, Murphy’s claim was less timely than
Ray’s—as both the federal district and appeals court explained in denying his
suit. And when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Murphy’s claim, one
justice wrote separately to chastise his longtime attorney, David Dow, for his
alleged history of attempting to thwart executions through frivolous
last-minute suits.
So why did the Supreme Court spare Murphy but not Ray? In his brief concurring
opinion, Kavanaugh wrote cryptically that “under all the circumstances of this
case, I conclude that Murphy made his request to the State in a sufficiently
timely manner”—which, again, is highly debatable. Chief Justice John Roberts
and Justice Samuel Alito did not note their votes, so it is unclear if they
agreed to halt the execution or dissented silently. (Only Justices Clarence
Thomas and Neil Gorsuch publicly dissented.) Thus, we know with certainty only
that Kavanaugh flipped.
The most generous explanation of Kavanaugh’s vote is that Kagan persuaded him
that he failed to honor Ray’s constitutional rights. Her dissent in that case
was so devastating, so comprehensive and meticulous, that it may have opened
Kavanaugh’s eyes to the bigotry on display. Kagan described the court’s
treatment of Ray as “profoundly wrong,” a direct affront to the Constitution’s
“core principle of denominational neutrality.” Alabama’s justification for its
flagrant “religious discrimination” was laughably pretextual. Perhaps Kavanaugh
absorbed this dissent, along with widespread, bipartisan public backlash, and
changed his mind. He may have also realized the horrible optics of the court’s
insensitivity to the religious liberty of Muslims as it bends over backward to
appease conservative Christians. Or he might just be more solicitous to the
religious freedom of a white Buddhist than to that of a black Muslim.
Whatever the reason Kavanaugh flipped, it is gratifying that a majority of the
court finally grasps the grave constitutional harms inflicted by discriminatory
execution policies. Texas and Alabama seek to favor compel religious minorities
to die without spiritual comfort. The Constitution obviously forbids such
intentional religious inequality. And despite the best efforts of Texas,
Alabama, and several conservative justices, executioners cannot suspend the
First Amendment in their death chambers.
(source: slate.com)
********************
The Supreme Court Just Halted This Texas Death Row Inmate’s Execution
Patrick Murphy was granted a rare stay of execution by the US Supreme Court in
a 7-2 vote that took place two hours after he was scheduled to be executed.
Murphy’s religious discrimination claim argued that because he was a converted
Buddhist, he needed a spiritual adviser to help him get to the Pure Land after
death. Only prison employees are allowed to be in the execution chamber, and in
the Huntsville Unit in Texas only Christian and Muslim clerics are on staff.
“As this Court has repeatedly held, governmental discrimination against
religion—in particular, discrimination against religious persons, religious
organizations, and religious speech—violates the Constitution,” Justice Brett
Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion. Because inmates of other religious
denominations are provided with clerics, he wrote, allowing Murphy to have a
Buddhist spiritual adviser by his side in the death chamber infringes on his
religious freedom.
The court’s decision on Murphy, a white man who converted to Buddhism, sharply
contrasts with their decision regarding Domineque Ray, a black Muslim death row
inmate who was recently executed in Alabama after the US Supreme Court ruled
5-4 in February to lift a stay granted by a federal court. Ray, who was
sentenced to death for the 1995 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, argued
that his religious rights were being violated because Alabama would not allow a
Muslim cleric into the death chamber. Like Texas, Alabama only allows prison
employees to be inside the chamber, but there are no others but Christian
clerics on staff.
“Ray has put forward a powerful claim that his religious rights will be
violated at the moment the state puts him to death,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote
in a dissent. But the high court did not review the religious aspect of the
case, instead it focused on a procedural issue, noting that the timing of the
claim was too late for consideration—a charge the court’s liberal justices
rejected.
Murphy is one of the last living members of a group known as the Texas 7. One
of the men died by suicide before he was arrested, and the rest were sentenced
to death. 4 of them have already been executed. In late 2000, Murphy and 6
other men, escaped from the Connally Unit in South Texas and went on a crime
spree that ended on Christmas Eve. While several members of the group were
robbing a sporting goods store, someone called the police. Murphy was outside
in the getaway car when he spotted police officer Aubrey Hawkins responding to
the call. Murphy radioed his accomplices urging them to leave the store. When
the men came outside, 5 of them started shooting, killing Hawkins.
Earlier this week, Patrick Murphy sought to halt his execution by requesting a
30-day reprieve from Gov. Greg Abbott, which the governor did not respond to
before the Supreme Court ruling. Although he was not the killer, Murphy was
sentenced to death under the controversial “law of parties.” As the Texas
Tribune explains:
Under Texas law, Murphy is just as culpable as the men who fired their weapons
at Hawkins because he was participating in the robbery, and a jury determined
that either Murphy was acting with the intent to help in the crime, or, even if
he had no intent to kill anyone, the murder “should have been anticipated as a
result” of the robbery. To be sentenced to death, the jury must have agreed
that Murphy at least anticipated the death. Texas lawmakers have filed bills
that are seeking to change the statute to not allow death sentences for
accomplices.
“It is unconscionable that Patrick Murphy may be executed for a murder he did
not commit that resulted from a robbery in which he did not participate, at the
exact moment when lawmakers are considering whether anyone possibly convicted
under [the law of parties] should be eligible for the death penalty,” David Dow
and Jeff Newberry, lawyers for Murphy, said in a statement 2 days before their
client’s scheduled execution date.
Now, Murphy gets more time argue his religious discrimination claim, but the
state has a simple option to speed his execution. They can permit a Buddhist
spiritual adviser to accompany him in the death chamber.
(source: Mothe rJones)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Jury seated in death-penalty case. Winston-Salem man accused of assaulting and
murdering 2-year-old boy in 2015.
Starting Monday, a Forsyth County jury will begin hearing the graphic details
of how a 2-year-old died in 2015.
The panel of jurors will have to decide ultimately 2 things — whether Charles
Thomas Stacks intentionally assaulted and killed Jaxson Sonny Swain, leaving
bite marks over his body, and if so, whether Stacks deserves to be put to
death.
Stacks, 33, is on trial for 1st-degree murder and felony child abuse inflicting
serious bodily injury in Jaxson’s death in August 2015. He is also facing a
charge of heroin possession.
If he is found guilty of 1st-degree murder, a jury will then have to determine
whether Stacks will get the death penalty or life in prison without the
possibility of parole.
The jury of 12, plus three alternates, was impaneled just after 3 p.m. Friday.
The alternates will participate in deliberations only if one of the 12 jurors
cannot. Jennifer Martin, C. Ruffin Sykes, Amara Hunter and James Dornfried are
the prosecutors. Nils Gerber and Stephen Ball are representing Stacks.
Opening statements start at 9:30 a.m. Monday in Courtroom 5A. The trial is
expected to last 4 to 6 weeks.
According to prosecutors, Charles Stacks and his wife, Megin Stacks, lived in a
house at 5450 Grubbs St. They were friends with Jaxson’s mother, Candace Swain,
who had been staying at the house off and on for the last 2 weeks of Jaxson’s
life. The Stackses had 4 children. Charles Stacks was stepfather to 3 of
Megin’s children, and he was the biological father of 1 of her children.
Paramedics and Winston-Salem police officers were called to the Stackses’ house
on Aug. 16, 2015, and found Jaxson unconscious and lying in a bathtub of cold
water. He was taken to Brenner Children’s Hospital, where he died three days
later.
Police and prosecutors say Charles Stacks was the only one taking care of
Jaxson at the time he was found unconscious. Charles Stacks told Winston-Salem
police that Jaxson urinated on himself and that he took the child into the
master bedroom to change his diapers, according to testimony at a hearing
earlier this month on pre-trial motions. Charles Stacks said he placed Jaxson
on a coffee table and went to get the diapers.
When he turned around, Jaxson was vomiting and then fell off the table, hit his
head and started seizing.
Forsyth County prosecutors have argued that Jaxson had catastrophic and acute
injuries so severe that if he had lived, he would not have been able to walk or
talk again.
Ron Davis, a retired detective with the Winston-Salem Police Department,
testified at an earlier hearing this month that he talked to a doctor at
Brenner Children’s Hospital and observed Jaxson briefly. He said Jaxson had 2
black eyes and had bruises all over his body. The doctor told him that the
right side of Jaxson’s skull had to be removed to relieve swelling of the
brain, Davis said in court.
In previous hearings, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Martin has said
Jaxson’s testicles were swollen. Davis said he saw bruise marks on Jaxson’s
body that were in different stages of healing and he immediately called the
police department’s forensic unit to send people to take photographs of
Jaxson’s injuries.
The autopsy said Jaxson died from bleeding around his brain that was caused by
blunt-force injuries.
A key witness in the case will be Candace Swain, who is expected to be one of
the first people prosecutors will call to the stand.
Gerber and Ball have not publicly said whether Charles Stacks will take the
stand. He is under no obligation to testify because he is presumed innocent and
the burden is on prosecutors to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a hearing earlier this month, Martin said that Candace Swain was a heroin
addict and that Charles Stacks was a mid-level drug dealer. She described 5450
Grubbs St. as a drug den. She said at the time of Jaxson’s death, Candace Swain
was working as a prostitute in exchange for money and drugs.
She also said Charles Stacks might have been angry at Candace Swain because she
owed him $300 and he was frustrated at taking care of Jaxson. Gerber and Ball
have vehemently denied those allegations and said Candace Swain owed $80.
An investigative report by the medical examiner indicates that Candace Swain
maintained at one point that her son’s injuries were not the result of abuse.
She told investigators that the bruising on Jaxson’s face happened when he was
sliding on a bed leaned against a wall and the bed fell on him.
Megin Stacks is also facing charges. On Monday, a Forsyth County grand jury
indicted Megin Stacks on charges of felony accessory after the fact to felony
child abuse and misdemeanor obstruction of justice. She is accused of putting a
diaper on Jaxson, cleaning up the crime scene and telling her children not to
cooperate with the investigation into his death, according to the indictments.
No trial date has been set in her case.
(source: Winston-Salem Journal)
FLORIDA:
Florida Man Exonerated 42 Years After Wrongful Conviction and Death Sentence
42 years after he and his nephew were wrongfully convicted of murder in Florida
and he was sentenced to death, Clifford Williams, Jr. (pictured) has been
exonerated. Submitting a report from its Conviction Integrity Unit that found
“no credible evidence of guilt and … credible evidence of innocence,” Duval
County prosecutors asked a Jacksonville trial court to dismiss all charges
against Williams, now 76 years old, and his nephew, Nathan Myers, now 61.
Williams is the 165th former death-row prisoner to be exonerated in the United
States since 1973.
Williams and Myers were tried and convicted in 1976 for the murder of Jeanette
Williams and the wounding of her girlfriend, Nina Marshall. Marshall told
police that 2 men had entered their bedroom at night and fired shots from the
foot of the bed. She identified Williams and Myers as the shooters. However,
the physical evidence — never presented by defense counsel — revealed that the
bullets had been fired from outside, through the bedroom window, and had come
from a single gun. Defense counsel also ignored 40 alibi witnesses whom
Williams and Myers had indicated would be able to testify that they had been
next door at a birthday party at the time the shooting occurred. The defense
presented no witnesses. The 1st trial resulted in a mistrial. In the 2nd trial,
which lasted 2 days, prosecutors argued, without presenting any supporting
evidence, that the men committed the murder because Jeannette Williams
supposedly owed them a $50 drug debt. The jury convicted Williams and Myers but
recommended that they be sentenced to life. Judge Cliff Shepard — a notoriously
harsh trial judge — overrode the jury’s sentencing recommendation for Williams
and sentenced him to death. Shepard accepted the life recommendation for
18-year-old Myers.
Prosecutors began reinvestigating the case after newly elected State Attorney
Melissa Nelson created the first Conviction Integrity Unit in the state in
2018. The unit issued its report, authored by Conviction Integrity Review
Director Shelley Thibodeau, in February. The report noted that no physical
evidence linked Williams or Myers to the shooting and that “the physical and
scientific evidence actually contradicts [Marshall’s] testimony about what
happened.” The report also found that another man, Nathaniel Lawson, had
confessed to several people that he had committed the killings and that a 1976
police report noted his presence near the crime scene around the time of the
murder. Thibodeau concluded that "[t]he culmination of all the evidence, most
of which the jury never heard or saw, leaves no abiding confidence in the
convictions or the guilt of the defendants.”
Williams had been trying unsuccessfully for years to get anyone interested in
the case, and responded emotionally after the hearing. “My mother died while I
was on death row,” he told Florida Times-Union reporter Andrew Pantazi. Through
tears, he said, “I just wanted to get out and see my kids. There wasn’t nobody
but them.”
29 wrongfully convicted death-row prisoners have been exonerated in Florida,
the most in the nation. In 21 of the 23 Florida exonerations for which the
jury’s sentencing vote is known, judges imposed the death penalty by overriding
a jury recommendation for life or following a non-unanimous jury recommendation
for death. Florida now requires a unanimous jury recommendation before a judge
can impose a death sentence.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
*******************
Lawyers seeking compensation for freed death-row inmate call Seminole state
attorney's resistance 'perverse,' 'Orwellian'
Lawyers for a former death-row prisoner who was freed last November slammed the
efforts of the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney’s Office to deny him
compensation for his time spent behind bars, calling them “absurd,” “perverse”
and “Orwellian” in court documents filed this week.
After prosecutors dropped all charges against Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin during
his 2nd murder trial in November, his lawyers requested Aguirre-Jarquin be
compensated under Florida’s Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act,
a 2008 law providing $50,000 for each year somebody was wrongfully
incarcerated.
Aguirre-Jarquin, 38, spent 14 years behind bars for the brutal slayings of his
next-door neighbors, Cheryl Williams and her mother Carol Bareis. He would
potentially be entitled to $700,000.
“Every single day during those 14+ unbroken years behind bars, Mr. Aguirre had
to wake up when he was told, eat when he was told, go to bed when he was told —
everything when he was told,” his lawyers wrote in a court document filed
Thursday. “He missed every birthday, every anniversary, every celebration of
his family and friends during those years, every new memory that they created
together without him.”
In a February court filing, Assistant State Attorney Stewart Stone said he
opposed Aguirre-Jarquin’s efforts to receive compensation and legal recognition
as someone who was unjustly imprisoned. Stone said Aguirre-Jarquin filed his
motion too late, and also said he has serious doubts about Aguirre-Jarquin’s
innocence.
The law says those making claims of wrongful incarceration need to file a claim
within 90 days of the reversal of a conviction. To be eligible for
compensation, Stone argues Aguirre-Jarquin should have filed his claim in late
2016, after the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new trial.
Though the state’s high court reversed his conviction, Aguirre-Jarquin remained
behind bars because the State Attorney’s Office announced its decision to
re-try him the same day.
“At that time, of course, Mr. Aguirre was still wrongfully incarcerated,” his
lawyers wrote in Thursday’s court motion. “He couldn’t breathe free air, walk
on the beach, or even watch his beloved Carolina Panthers play football — and
yet, the State says, he should have at that time been asking for compensation
on the ground that he had been … wrongfully incarcerated. Never mind that he
was still incarcerated.”
“The Court should reject that State’s Orwellian interpretation of the Act,
which is (among other apt adjectives) equal parts ironic, perverse, and
absurd,” his lawyers said.
Stone earlier argued there is still “substantial evidence” that Aguirre-Jarquin
is guilty of killing Williams and Bareis.
“The evidence is sufficient to show that Clemente Aguirre committed these
murders, and the [decision to drop the charges] certainly was not an expression
of Aguirre’s innocence in any manner whatsoever,” Stone wrote in a February
court filing.
Aguirre-Jarquin was convicted and sentenced to die for the 2004 stabbing deaths
of Williams and Bareis. In reversing his conviction, the Florida Supreme Court
cited new evidence, including testimony that Williams’ daughter, Samantha
Williams, had repeatedly confessed to the killings. Prosecutors abandoned their
attempt to re-try him in November after testimony emerged that called Samantha
Williams’ alibi into question.
She has not been charged in the case.
Aguirre-Jarquin became the 28th man freed from Florida’s death row. The state
has had more people absolved from the death penalty than any other state in the
country.
When asked for comment on Thursday’s filing, a spokesman for State Attorney
Phil Archer’s office referred to a statement Archer gave in February.
“The Florida Statute that the Petitioner and his attorneys are trying to use to
obtain compensation from the State of Florida does not apply in this case,”
Archer said in the statement. “Without a change to the existing law, I am
obligated to contest the petition, providing an opportunity for the Court to
rule if this is an appropriate avenue to address their demands for
compensation.”
Aguirre-Jarquin’s petition will be heard before Circuit Judge John Galluzzo
April 4.
(source: Orlando Sentinel)
*********************
Here's why I'm a conservative and against the death penalty
Friends and readers generally tag yours truly as a conservative, though I do
view some issues with a liberal lean. Capital punishment is one of those
issues.
I’m no bleeding heart. During my 30 years with Miami-Dade Police, 16 working
homicides, I’ve been witness to hundreds of premeditated killings, gore, deadly
riots and inhumanity of people killing other people. For those who plot and
carry out grisly murders, I believe they should receive the harshest of
punishments. But not death.
Who decided death to be harsh? Is it harsh when an inmate pleads for a rapid
end of life, as did Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing? Is it harsh
when we condemn our pets to die by a needle because it’s “humane?” Is eternal
sleep a punishment?
The new governor of California recently made news by banning executions for all
its 737 death row inmates. In fact, California has not executed an inmate in 13
years.
There are many reasons to halt executions. The top of the list is the fear and
probability that even one innocent human being may be, or has been, executed.
That probability is simply too high. We can look to our own justice system in
Florida and find many cases where truly innocent persons were convicted of
crimes they did not commit, such as William Dillon and Wilton Dedge, both
featured in FLORIDA TODAY's podcast Murder of the Space Coast. There are others
whose guilt is very dubious, as with another subject of the podcast, Gary
Bennett, now in his 35th year in prison.
These cases are the ones we know about in Brevard County. What about the rest
of the country? The men named above did not get the death penalty, though they
wrongfully spent over 2 and 3 decades in prison.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 20 death row
inmates released since 1992 based at least in part on DNA evidence showing them
to be innocent. DNA material only appears in a fraction of violent crimes.
Murder cases do not always yield such evidence.
The only guarantee that innocent people will never be executed, is to abolish
capital punishment. That’s the only guarantee.
A 2014 study by the National Academy of Sciences reports that at least 4 % of
death row convicts are actually innocent. What are we waiting for?
There are other reasons to abolish capital punishment, such as:
• Costs: Numerous studies have been conducted that clearly show that
maintaining the death penalty consumes at least double, or triple, the cost of
imposing life sentences.
• No deterrent: More studies have determined that the death penalty does not
deter violent crime.
• Death row inmates in Florida are confined to solitary confinement in a
concrete and steel cell, 24 hours a day, with no air conditioning and no social
interaction. Gary Alvord, 66, died of natural causes on death row where he
spent almost 40 years. Many inmates spend more than 3 decades in isolation.
• Economic inequities: The rich get the best lawyers. The poor get the worst
lawyers.
• Barbarism: The U.S. has the seventh highest number of executions in the
world, among such company as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan.
• Eighteen states have banned the death penalty. Of 32 states still on the
books, only 5 have been active in carrying out executions, including Florida.
• Execution by injection is not punishment: The real punishment is suffering
death row for 20 to 40 years.
• People change: Often, especially after decades in isolation, we are no longer
executing the same person who committed the crime. Napoleon Beazley, a
17-year-old Texas boy robbed and shot a man for his car. At his execution in
May of 2002, Beazley spoke his final words:
“The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless,” he
said. “But the person that committed that act is no longer here — I am.”
Capital punishment has one redeeming aspect. It’s often used as a wedge to
secure guilty pleas in order to avert trials.
That’s a poor reason for maintaining the risk.
(source: Opinion; Marshall Frank is a retired police captain from Miami-Dade
County----Florida Today)
LOUISIANA:
Bill filed to abolish death penalty
A Republican State Senator in Louisiana has pre-filed a bill that would do away
with the death penalty.
If State Senator Bill Claitor's bill is approved in the legislature, it would
then be up to voters to approve in the November election.
If voters approve, the changes won't take effect until January 2020.
Claitor said if this bill passes, it will not affect those currently on death
row in Louisiana.
(source: KTAL news)
ARKANSAS:
Sister act----Prejean still opposes death penalty by Francisca Jones | Today at
1:00 a.m.
Sister Helen Prejean, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St.
Joseph, will speak on her opposition to the death penalty April 4 in Little
Rock. She says she wants to "wake up ordinary people to why the death penalty
should be an issue of concern to us average citizens."
Witnessing the execution of death-row inmate Elmo Patrick Sonnier in 1984
sparked Sister Helen Prejean's mission of advocacy against the death penalty,
and her experience as Sonnier's spiritual adviser would be chronicled in her
1993 best-selling book, Dead Man Walking.
Two years later, Dead Man Walking was made into an Academy Award-winning film
with the same name and was later adapted into an opera. Her latest book, River
of Fire, will be released in August. A prequel to Dead Man Walking, Prejean
says it tells the story of her "awakening" to faith while growing up in
Louisiana.
Go & Do
Sister Helen Prejean
When: 6:30 p.m. April 4
Where: Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1000 N. Mississippi St. in Little Rock
Cost: $20
Information: lovesaintmarks.eventbrite.com
Awakening is also how Prejean describes the goal of her forthcoming talk and
book signing at Little Rock's Saint Mark's Episcopal Church on April 4. She
says she wants to "wake up ordinary people to why the death penalty should be
an issue of concern to us average citizens."
The Death Penalty Information Center's annual survey found that there were 25
executions carried out last year, marking the fourth consecutive year that
fewer than 30 were conducted in the United States.
"We see a decline in the practice of the death penalty; and where it is
happening it's because some prosecutors or governors have staked their
political career, or they get political points for pushing for the death
penalty," Prejean says. "That's the reason right there why we can essentially
abolish [the death penalty], because it's arbitrary and capricious in its
application."
Race, socioeconomic status and one's location in the United States also affect
the use of the death penalty. Black prisoners outnumber white prisoners on
death row by a substantial margin, Prejean says, and the poor don't have the
resources to hire attorneys and "fight the prosecutor step for step."
"You cannot find one rich person on death row," Prejean says.
Arkansas was the focus of international attention in April 2017 when the state
set out to execute 8 men in 11 days because the state's supply of midazolam, an
anti-anxiety drug that wasn't originally intended to have a sedating effect,
was expiring at the end of that month. Midazolam is 1 part of a 3-drug
combination used by the state for executions.
4 of the men were executed, and 4 received court stays. Prejean publicly
opposed the 2017 executions on Twitter.
Prejean's talk comes just weeks after a bill cleared the Arkansas Senate that
would exempt records concerning the drugs used in executions from the Freedom
of Information Act. Prejean says the lack of disclosure the bill is set to
condone would make the secrecy around executions "even more profound."
"One of the things I've discovered ... is that because people are not close to
what it actually means for a state to execute a citizen ... then they're not
horrified by it, and they don't think about it very much because it doesn't
touch them," she says.
Prejean plans to take the audience at Saint Mark's through what it means for
the state to execute people, and explore what that execution means for victims'
families. She will do that by offering facts and figures, but also through
recounting her experiences and those of family members she has witnessed.
"I've found you can give all the statistics in the world to people, but it
doesn't change minds and hearts," Prejean says. "You got to talk about real
people."
The Rev. Patricia Matthews, an assistant rector at Saint Mark's, noted that the
Episcopal Church has a longtime stance against the death penalty. The church
first took its stand in 1958 and reaffirmed its stance in 2015.
"While we have compassion for victims of all crimes, we also believe that no
one's outside of God's love," Matthews says. "We know the system is broken and
biased [against nonwhites] ... and that it's a theological thing to kill
someone, because that suggests that there's no chance for redemption in this
world."
Episcopalians in Arkansas have called for a moratorium on the death penalty in
the state in the past, and last year Saint Mark's hosted a performance of
death-row inmates' stories through the Northwest Arkansas-based Prison Story
Project. Art created by death-row inmates will be on display at Prejean's talk,
and the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will make literature
available at the event.
Discipleship and Evangelism coordinator Kyran Pittman of Saint Mark's recalled
seeing Prejean speak at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock 20 years ago
and says that while the issue of the death penalty was ongoing, the Catholic
nun has a gift for addressing audiences with warmth and substance.
"[Prejean is] very ardent and passionate in her stance against the death
penalty," Pittman says. "What I remember about hearing her speak was her
profound respect for the families of victims, and her very solid reasoning
behind why she feels the state has no business administering capital
punishment. It's not simply an emotional argument she makes."
(source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
OKLAHOMA:
Oklahoma state trooper's killer won't get new sentencing hearing
A man convicted and sentenced to death for the 1999 fatal shooting of an
Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper will not receive a new sentencing hearing, a
federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White, in an opinion and order issued Thursday,
found that Kenneth Eugene Barrett’s trial counsel was “deficient” but that
Barrett was not “prejudiced by counsel’s performance.”
Barrett, 57, has been seeking a new sentencing in the fatal shooting of David
“Rocky” Eales on the grounds that he received ineffective counsel during the
sentencing phase of his trial.
Eales and other members of the OHP tactical team were carrying out a no-knock
search warrant just after midnight Sept. 24, 1999, in search of methamphetamine
at Barrett’s Sequoyah County cabin when they came under fire.
A Muskogee federal court jury convicted Barrett in 2005 of two gun-related
counts and of intentionally killing a state law enforcement officer during the
commission of a drug trafficking crime.
The jury returned sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole
on the gun charges and a death sentence for the fatal shooting of Eales.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015 ordered that an evidentiary
hearing be held in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma
regarding whether Barrett’s federal trial attorneys were deficient in not
investigating Barrett’s background and mental health during the penalty phase
of the 2005 trial.
After listening to seven days of testimony in 2017, U.S. Magistrate Steven P.
Shreder issued a report recommending that Barrett be granted a new sentencing
hearing.
Federal prosecutors objected to the recommendation for a new sentencing
hearing, arguing in court filings that evidence presented on Barrett’s behalf
would not have affected the outcome of the trial.
The government did not object to the magistrate’s finding that Barrett’s trial
counsel was constitutionally deficient in developing a mitigation strategy
during the sentencing portion of the trial.
Evidence presented on behalf of Barrett during the 2017 evidentiary hearing
indicated that he is bipolar, has had auditory hallucinations, has a history of
brain trauma and has a family history of mental health issues going back
several generations.
In his ruling Friday, White noted that while the magistrate found that Barrett
had a family history of mental health problems, violence and alcohol abuse,
that didn’t “offer any compelling mitigation evidence when weighed against the
evidence that the jury heard regarding the petitioner’s cold-blooded and
premeditated killing of a state law enforcement officer engaged in the
performance of his official duties.”
“Simply because (Barrett) was able to obtain experts who described (him) as
having mental health disorders so severe that he could not have rationally
assisted his attorneys in the preparation of his defense, does not mean the
jury would have given much weight to that testimony in light of the evidence it
heard over the course of the entire trial,” White wrote.
Attorneys for Barrett and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Muskogee could not be
reached for comment Friday.
Barrett was initially tried in state court on charges related to the fatal
shooting of Eales.
Barrett’s 1st state court trial resulted in a hung jury.
In the 2nd state trial, Barrett again faced murder and
shooting-with-intent-to-kill charges in Sequoyah County District Court, but
jurors returned guilty verdicts in February 2004 on lesser offenses of
1st-degree manslaughter and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
(source: The Purcell Register)
COLORADO:
The plan to repeal the death penalty in Colorado is coming
undone----On-the-fence Democrats threaten to derail a bill that once seemed a
good bet to pass
The bill to abolish the death penalty in Colorado is on life support.
The abolition measure has been delayed repeatedly since Democrats introduced it
in the state Senate earlier this month, and the abolitionists now stand at
least three votes shy of the majority they’d need to pass it.
Democrats hold a 19-16 edge in the Senate, but Majority Leader Steve Fenberg
and multiple other sources said Friday that there are only 15 firm “yes” votes
at the moment — 14 Democrats plus Henderson Republican Kevin Priola.
“Right now, I can’t count to 18,” said Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, a
Boulder Democrat.
Similar efforts have failed four times in recent years, but things seemed
different this year: Democrats control both chambers of the legislature and the
new governor, Jared Polis, has broken from predecessor John Hickenlooper by
signaling clearly his intention to sign a repeal bill if it reaches his desk.
“Full steam ahead,” Sen. Lois Court told The Independent in February.
“If you’d asked me three months ago,” Fenberg said, “I’d have told you, ‘Yeah,
we’re going to pass it this year.’”
That’s not looking likely.
Abolitionists will need to win over 3 out of 4 Democrats who say they’re
undecided. The toss-up votes, according to those familiar with the
negotiations, are Tammy Story of Conifer, Joann Ginal of Fort Collins, Jessie
Danielson of Wheat Ridge and Nancy Todd of Aurora.
The Independent reached out to all 4 lawmakers on Friday. Danielson and Story
responded, but neither was keen to discuss their positions; Danielson said she
was busy with other work and didn’t want to talk about it, while Story said, “I
have not invested the time (to decide) on this issue because I’ve been wholly
focused on budget meetings.”
It’s well known, however, that Story opposes the death penalty on moral
grounds. Sources said her present concern revolves around the timing of this
bill — that this might not be the right year for it.
Danielson, several sources said, seems much more likely a “no” than a genuine
undecided, at this point.
If Danielson is indeed a “no” and no other Senate Republicans join Priola on
the repeal side, Story, Ginal and Todd all must back the bill in order for it
to advance.
Priola told Westword that he supports the repeal for religious reasons. “I’m a
practicing Catholic, and I believe being pro-life is important in all you do,”
he said. Abolitionists had hoped Republican Sen. Jack Tate of Centennial, who
has said he is conflicted on the issue, might break with his party as Priola
has, but Tate told The Independent Friday, “I told (Fenberg) to count me as a
‘no’.”
“If and when we get to 18 votes, it’ll come up,” Fenberg said. The bill is on
the Senate calendar for Monday, but he acknowledged it’s almost certainly going
to get pushed back.
“I don’t want to bring this up without knowing where the votes are, and
potentially set (the effort) back,” he said.
Each delay diminishes the bill’s chance of passage The legislative session ends
in early May and the Senate has been mired in partisan dysfunction for weeks,
sparring over issues including oil and gas regulations, gun laws and Colorado’s
potential role in upending the Electoral College.
A bill as consequential as the death penalty repeal also would bring with it an
above-average amount of debate and process. Fields and Republican opponents of
the bill have said that the question — literally a life-and-death one — should
be up to voters, not the legislature, to decide.
Fenberg was blunt, too, about the fact that some in his caucus simply don’t
feel there’s “urgency” to abolish the death penalty now.
Since a national moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in 1976, Colorado
has executed just one man — Gary Lee Davis, a murderer and rapist, in 1997.
There are 3 men on death in Colorado right now.
Abolitionists maintain there is a moral urgency in repealing the death penalty.
“How can we build a better society if we continue to kill people who kill
people?” said former state Sen. Lucia Guzman, who previously led the
unsuccessful legislative repeal effort, and whose successor, Sen. Julie
Gonzales, is a co-sponsor of the current repeal bill.
“We are not moving forward at all. We are wallowing in violence. Our decisions
should be about the future,” added Guzman, whose father, Tomas, was murdered in
a robbery in 1975.
Beyond the question of urgency, many Democrats — supporters, undecided voters
and opponents of the repeal alike — have concerns about how this bill was
introduced. They lament that Sen. Rhonda Fields of Aurora wasn’t given an
adequate heads-up before the bill dropped.
Fields, the only Senate Democrat confirmed as a “no” vote on the repeal bill,
lost her son and his fiancée to murder in 2005. Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray
were convicted and sentenced to death for their killings, and they now make up
2/3 of the state’s death row.
Fields complained in a speech on the Senate floor that the bill’s filing, press
conference and floor introduction happened on 3 consecutive days.
“I consider that a 1, 2, 3 punch,” she said in that speech.
Fields said Friday that she and Sen. Angela Williams, who’s driving this bill
along with Gonzales, haven’t spoken much since the press conference March 5.
“It’s a very sensitive issue,” Fields said.
She also said that she has not been lobbying any of her colleagues to join her
in opposing the repeal effort. But her presence looms large, whether or not her
thumb is directly on the scale.
“One of our own was hurt,” Fenberg said. “I think that just changed the
calculus.”
[Alex Burness]
*******************************
Whatever the state legislature decides, there is no death penalty in Colorado
The big news from the state Capitol has been not only that it’s a new day, with
Democrats in charge everywhere, but with the pace of change at which Democrats
are moving — and the desperate attempts by Republicans to slow them down.
One very large exception, though, has been in the state Senate, where, not long
ago, it looked as if the end of the death penalty in Colorado was assured. It
has already passed the House. Jared Polis said he would sign the bill. And now?
Well, if there is another such failure — and, remember, we’ve seen this movie
before — it would, of course, be disappointing to those who oppose the death
penalty. But it would not be a disaster. Because the truth is that, whatever
the legislature decides, capital punishment no longer exists in any meaningful
way in Colorado.
Whether or not the bill passes, the death penalty is done here. Someday, a law
will make it official. Maybe this year. Maybe the next. But when a state has
executed only 1 person since 1997, that means the single execution was
basically a random event — the kind that Supreme Court Justice Steve Breyer
once rightly described as “the antithesis of justice.”
And if you need proof of that — or the fact that we’ve basically moved on from
what most of our peer countries now accept as barbaric — all you need do is
look back to a few weeks in 2015 when the whole concept of the death penalty
fell apart in Colorado.
In the course of that time, 2 particularly heinous crimes were adjudicated. In
neither case was there any doubt about the guilt of the murderers. In neither
case was there any question about the brutality and ugliness of the crimes and
the shock to the community. In fact, if you were asked to research arguments to
justify the death penalty in Colorado, these two cases would probably be found
near the top of anyone’s list.
And in both cases, a death-qualified jury — meaning jurors who swear under oath
they don’t object to the death penalty in either principle or practice —
refused to sentence to death the men they had just found guilty.
You know the stories, especially the one of James Holmes, the Aurora theater
killer, who was clearly mentally ill, even if not legally insane. He gunned
down 12 people in a massacre that somehow bookends Columbine and leaves
Colorado as a state forever marked by this era of mass murder.
Our history of mass murders contributed to making Colorado an outlier among
Western states in passing modest — if highly controversial — forms of gun
control and now, it seems, a red-flag bill that would temporarily remove guns
from those found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others. But that
history did not convince two juries to respond by unanimously imposing the
death penalty.
According to one person on the Aurora jury, one of the jurors was firmly
opposed to the state killing of Holmes and two were wavering. And when Holmes
was taken to prison, the question would be asked and never satisfactorily
answered: If you can’t impose the death penalty on a mass murderer, who does
qualify?
Three weeks later, we actually did get an answer of a kind when Dexter Lewis
was convicted of stabbing to death five people in a robbery — netting all of
$170 — that had gone terribly wrong at what was then Fero’s Bar and Grill in
Denver. This was a case of murdering potential witnesses, in which Lewis
apparently went down a line, stabbing the owner and four customers who were
being held at gunpoint by Lewis’s accomplices. Then they burned down the place
to cover up the deaths.
The jury didn’t go for death, though, after hearing testimony of the years of
physical abuse that Lewis had suffered during his childhood. And so, as I wrote
back then, the jury was charged with measuring the crimes Lewis had committed
against those committed against him as a child. What a strange system of
justice at which we’ve arrived. The jury settled for life without parole.
Given that the 40-some % of people who oppose capital punishment are not
eligible to serve on these juries, it must seem strange that the 12 serving
couldn’t condemn the killers to death — unless you were being asked to make
that decision yourself.
Lawmakers are taking that issue upon themselves again. Two who support the
death penalty are Sen. Rhonda Fields and Rep. Tom Sullivan, both of whom lost
children to murder and whose careers in politics can be traced to that awful
moment in their lives. Both strongly support the death penalty, and no one
should or could blame them.
But ask John Hickenlooper how difficult the issue is. Once a death penalty
supporter, Hickenlooper controversially granted a “temporary reprieve” rather
than executing Nathan Dunlap, the notorious Chuck E. Cheese killer. When
Hickenlooper was faced with the actual fact of the death penalty, he couldn’t
bring himself to do it. He would say it was not a matter of mercy but a matter
of the many problems with the death penalty itself. And now, as he runs for
president, Hickenlooper says he opposes the ultimate punishment.
There are a wide range of reasons to oppose capital punishment. Go to the web
site of the Death Penalty Information Center for the numbers that help explain
the opposition. Start with the issue of race (blacks who kill whites are many
times more likely to get the death penalty than whites who kill blacks),
gender, class, geography (since 1976, 1,220 people have been executed in the
South as opposed to only four in the Northeast), the oft-proven lack of
deterrence value, the fact that more than 150 prisoners have been released from
death row since 1973 upon new evidence, the spate of botched executions, the
reluctance nationally to impose the penalty (295 sentenced to death in 1998, 42
last year).
For me, the most compelling argument has always been that state-approved
killing of murderers argues that killing is a reasonable solution — that
ultimate violence is the proper response to ultimate violence. The polls show
that a majority of Coloradans support the death penalty. But the record shows
that when it comes to applying the death penalty, Colorado passes.
In the end, we have to ask ourselves what point there is to a law that we have
decided to basically reject. In the end, there can be only one answer.
[Mike Littwin, The Colorado Independent]
(source for both: The Colorado Independent)
********************
Family Members of Murder Victims Urge Lawmakers to Repeal Death Penalty
Colorado could become the 21st state to repeal the death penalty. To help make
that a reality, family members of murder victims are lobbying legislators to
abolish capital punishment.
"The death penalty is the crime...we have the opportunity to do something right
in the world for a change," said Bob Autobee at a rally on the State Capitol
steps on Thursday, March 28. Autobee's son, Sergeant Eric Jason Autobee, was
beaten to death by inmate Edward Montour at the Limon Correctional Facility in
2002.
Following the rally, death-penalty repeal proponents delivered a letter signed
by Autobee and 26 other family members of murder victims, detailing why they
oppose capital punishment and urging legislators to support the death penalty
repeal bill currently working its way through the Capitol.
The bill has already made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but
movement has been slow since then.
At the March 6 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, there was powerful testimony
on both sides of the debate. Coloradans who've been directly affected by the
actions of convicted murderers spoke, as did 6 district attorneys.
Four of the DAs testified against repeal, and one of their main arguments was
that repealing the death penalty would be an insult to the loved ones of murder
victims. "All you will have done is to cheapen the extraordinary evil crimes
that take place here," said George Brauchler, district attorney for the 18th
judicial district, who unsuccessfully sought the death penalty for Aurora
shooter James Holmes.
But the family members of murder victims who spoke at the Capitol on March 28
said the exact opposite is true. "The idea that executions help murder victims
is an absolute lie," said Gail VanderJagt Rice, the sister of Denver police
officer Bruce VanderJagt, who was murdered while responding to a burglary call
in 1997.
Others spoke about the toll that a death-penalty sentence takes on the families
of victims. "When someone is sentenced to death, the family is sentenced right
along with them," said Alice Randolph, a Denver resident whose son, Loren
Anthony Collins, was murdered in Aurora in 2010.
Speakers at the rally also mentioned the disproportionate representation of
African-American men on death row. Approximately 12 % of Colorado's population
is black, but all 3 men on death row in this state are African-American.
Coloradans voted to reinstate the death penalty in 1974, after the U.S. Supreme
Court had effectively abolished capital punishment 2 years before. But despite
having the death penalty as a punitive option, the state has executed only one
person since then.
Governor Jared Polis has indicated that if the death penalty repeal bill is
approved and eventually gets to his desk, he would commute the death sentences
of the 3 men currently sitting on death row.
(source: westword.com)
USA:
High court examines potential racial bias in juries on death penalty cases
In mid-March, the U.S. Supreme Court considered possible racially biased juries
in 2 death penalty cases. They rejected 1 case and listened to oral arguments
in another, but in both cases, justices expressed unease.
On March 18, the court declined to hear the case of Keith Tharpe, a black man
from Georgia who claimed his death penalty sentence was tainted by racial
prejudice from a white juror who asked if black people have souls, among other
disparaging comments, revealed in sworn statements.
And although the court didn’t take the Tharpe case, it did not go without
commenting on it. Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred with the court, saying she
saw “little likelihood” that it would reverse prior court rulings about it, but
in a separate opinion, she said she was “profoundly troubled” by the facts in
this case that showed “racism can and does seep into the jury system.”
Tharpe was convicted in 1991 for the murder of his sister-in-law. His
execution, scheduled for September 2017, was given a stay by the Supreme Court
hours after he was to have been put to death by lethal injection and after he
had eaten his expected last meal. Georgia can now set a new execution date for
him.
On March 20, the court heard arguments in the case of another black death-row
inmate, Curtis Flowers, a Mississippi man tried 6 times for the shooting deaths
of four people in a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, in 1996.
He was convicted on his last trail by a jury with only one black juror. Flowers
claims the jury selection violated his Constitution right to an impartial jury
especially since the lead prosecutor had a long history of eliminating
potential black jurors from the jury pool.
“The history of this case, prior to this trial, is very troubling,” said
Justice Samuel Alito.
The justices seemed convinced that District Attorney Doug Evans, who tried
Flowers 6 times, used racial bias in selecting jurors and if that’s their final
decision, the court will overturn Flowers’ murder conviction and send it back
to the state to decide whether to prosecute Flowers a s7th time.
The justices zeroed-in on the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Batson v.
Kentucky, which said the peremptory challenges used by prosecutors and defense
attorneys to strike potential jurors could not be used because of race.
In 2016, the Death Penalty Information Center said 2 recent studies examining
the effects of the Batson case found that despite the Supreme Court’s ban on
racial discrimination in jury selection, black jurors continue to be
disproportionately removed from jury pools in North and South Carolina.
The authors in the North Carolina study wrote: “Defendants challenging racially
discriminatory peremptory strikes still face a crippling burden of proof and
prosecutors’ peremptory challenges are still effectively immune from
constitutional scrutiny.” The South Carolina study found that prosecutors
exercised peremptory strikes against 35 % of otherwise eligible black
prospective jurors, nearly three times the rate of 12 % that they struck
otherwise eligible white prospective jurors.
For Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing
Network, a group that champions restorative justice and an end to the death
penalty, the cases of Flowers and Tharpe highlight, as she puts it, conclusions
that “seem compellingly obvious.”
“First, the legacy of racial discrimination in America continues to rear its
head in the practice of capital punishment; 2nd, the judicial system is
unreliable in addressing this problem. It is for these reasons that many
states, including Washington and California most recently, have declared a halt
to the capital punishment process.”
Vaillancourt Murphy said these cases not only “shed light on how racism has
permeated our judicial process” but they also show how the nation’s highest
court can’t keep intervening for each failing within the criminal justice
system.
“As a society, we cannot expect the Supreme Court to be the backstop for every
case affected by bias or injustice. The inherent arbitrariness of the death
penalty ensures that racial bias frequently influences the decision of who
lives and who dies. The only way to avoid this gravest of injustices is to do
away with the death penalty completely,” she said in a March 27 email to
Catholic News Service.
She also said Catholics should take particular interest in these cases not only
because they “demonstrate that the death penalty is incompatible with the
sacred value of every human life” but because Catholics “have a responsibility
to confront and combat racial injustice wherever it is found.”
She said this urgency was made clear in the U.S. bishops’ 2018 pastoral letter
against racism which described racism as a “life issue” and urged Catholics to
be aware of the “connection between institutional racism and the continued
erosion of the sanctity of life.”
(source: catholicphilly.com)
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