April 17
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Keep the death penalty
To the Editor:
It would be a 2nd mistake for the State of New Hampshire to go with other
states in repealing the death penalty. The 1st mistake was not making use of
the penalty which is leading to its own demise.
Think about it. The opioid crises is getting out of control, and nobody thinks
the death penalty is a deterrent. I ask you how many times will a dead drug
dealer continue to make money on drugs. I would use the death penalty, reduce
death row time and wipe the dealers off the face of this country. If we don’t,
our county will die from within. Something to think about as New Hampshire
votes to repeal the death penalty.
I am with our governor who wants to keep the death penalty.
Keep the death penalty governor, but you have to use it!
Louis J. Santucci, Rochester
(source: Letter to the Editor, forsters.com)
NEW YORK:
Former Death Row Inmate Speaks About Her Life After Being Exonerated
On Tuesday, former death row inmate and anti-death penalty advocate Debra Milke
shared her story with the Cornell community. Milke was invited by Prof. John
Blume to speak to his LAW 4051: Death Penalty in America class, and the event
was open to the public.
In 1990, Milke was wrongfully convicted of 1st-degree murder of her 4-year-old
son, Christopher, as well as conspiracy to commit 1st-degree murder, kidnapping
and child abuse. After 22 years in prison, she won her appeal in the Ninth
Circuit in March 2013 and was released from prison in September of the same
year. She was exonerated in March 2015.
Her story is an “emotional” one, she said. In 1989, Milke was a 25-year-old
single mother living near Phoenix, Arizona, struggling to get by after leaving
a “bad marriage,” when she took up her friend James “Jim” Styers’s offer to
move into his apartment.
On December 2, 1989, Milke’s son, Christopher, asked to go to the mall with
Styers to see Santa Claus, and that was “the last time I saw my son alive,”
said Milke.
Many hours later, she was escorted into an interrogation room at the Pinal
County police department, where Detective Armando Saldate Jr. entered the room
and delivered the truth that Milke was awaiting with “despair.”
“He just looked at me and he said, ‘We found your son. He was murdered and
you’re under arrest.’ Just like that, in one breath,” Milke said.
After that, Milke was charged with “a whole slew of crimes” based on a
confession that Saldate claimed he obtained from Milke in that interrogation
room. “That cop lied,” Milke said. “The prosecutors were making up things.” She
was ultimately convicted of all charges.
After being put into solitary confinement in prison and losing her first
post-conviction appeal, Milke knew that she had to “figure out a way to help
[herself].” She familiarized herself with legal language, learned how to read a
brief, and got a new lawyer.
In the next three decades, she continually lost appeals. However, despite the
occasional “scary moments,” Milke refused to give up.
“An innocent person doesn’t give up. You just don’t,” she said.
Eventually, her case reached the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and on
March 14, 2013, the Ninth Circuit judges overruled her convictions on the basis
of an unfair trial.
Throughout the entire 3-decade-long ordeal, Milke maintained her “cautious
optimism” and sense of humor as a coping mechanism for her situation.
She remembered that during a practice run of her execution, a doctor was taking
her blood to make sure she was healthy. “Well, check my cholesterol too,” she
joked, adding that she probably made the doctor uncomfortable, but that she
didn’t care.
Milke describes her experience as having to deal with two tragedies at the same
time — first, the loss of her son and second, her unfair trial and the
subsequent years in the capital appeals system.
“The win was bittersweet. The legal tragedy, I overcame, but then right at my
doorstep was the reality that my son was gone,” she said, her voice catching.
She had to put her pain “on a shelf because [she] couldn’t deal with both
things at the same time.”
“My son’s been gone for 30 years but it doesn’t matter how many years he’s been
gone,” she continued. “Pain is — it’s very raw and it lasts, and it seems like
it just happened sometimes, even though it’s been three decades.”
Now, Milke is a member of Witness to Innocence, an advocacy organization
composed of exonerated death row survivors, and travels the country to speak
about her experiences.
“I like to speak to students because you guys are the future,” she said. “I
don’t know if any of you want to be lawyers, but the message I want to get
across is that there is a human being behind a case number.”
She also spoke out against the death penalty, stating that executing her son’s
killer “won’t change anything. It’s not going to bring my son back.”
“There are so many wrongful convictions that there shouldn’t be a death
penalty, because it just takes one time to execute an innocent person, and it’s
irreversible,” Milke continued.
Following her talk, there was a Q&A session with the audience. Students
generally asked about her life after 22 years of solitary confinement and her
reintegration back into society.
Milke said that she had changed all the doorknobs in her house to remove the
ability to lock the rooms. She also does not close any doors and has a clock in
every room, as she was never told the time when she was in prison.
“In public, I need to know how to get out of a room,” she added. Milke
recounted a story of a time she and her nephew, who served in Iraq and also has
PTSD, went out to dinner. They both headed towards the same seat at the table,
because “he needed to know who was coming in the door. I needed to know how to
get out of it.”
When asked about whether people still perceive her to be a murderer, Milke
said, “If you want to be judgmental, fine. But you didn’t have to walk in my
shoes.”
She currently works as a legal assistant at the law firm of the attorney who
helped her win the appeal. When asked about how her interest in law stemmed
from the years she spent experiencing the justice system firsthand, Milke
quipped that at the beginning of her appeals process, she naively left
everything to her attorneys.
“I thought that if you went to law school, then you’re smart and you know what
you’re doing,” she said, as the audience’s responded in laughter.
Cassandra Gologorsky ’21, a student in the course, said it was “eye-opening” to
hear her story.
“We’ve read a lot of cases in this class, but it’s different to hear it from
someone who’s actually experienced it,” Gologorsky said. “I knew it was going
to be a very emotional story, but I was surprised — in a good way. She’s a
powerful speaker.”
(source: The Cornell (University) Daily Sun)
PENNSYLVANIA----new death sentence
Philadelphia man gets death for teen’s rape, murder, dismemberment
A man who as part of a rape-murder fantasy he shared with the teenager’s mother
was sentenced Thursday to death.
Jacob Sullivan, 46, had pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder and related charges
for killing Grace Packer in 2016.
After deliberating over parts of 3 days, a suburban Philadelphia jury imposed
the death penalty. Sullivan had no reaction as the verdict was read.
Pennsylvania has a moratorium on the death penalty, but juries can still impose
the sentence.
“The butchery in this case was beyond my ability to describe,” Bucks County
Judge Diane Gibbons told jurors, thanking them for their service. Imposing the
jury’s sentence on Sullivan, she declared: “You have no soul.”
District Attorney Matthew Weintraub had asked the jury to send Sullivan to
death row, reminding them that Grace’s life “ended in a house of horrors that
became a hell on Earth.”
The defense asked for a life sentence, insisting that Grace’s mother, Sara
Packer, masterminded the gruesome plot and controlled Sullivan. Sara Packer,
who testified last week and admitted to jurors she wanted her daughter dead and
took part in the plot, is expected to plead guilty Friday to first-degree
murder in exchange for a life sentence.
Sullivan and Sara Packer took Grace to a sweltering attic and gave her what
they intended to be a lethal overdose of medicine, authorities say. The couple
bound her hands and feet with zip ties and stuffed a ball gag in her mouth, and
Sullivan sexually assaulted her as Sara Packer watched.
The couple left Grace in the attic to die, but she managed to escape some of
her bindings and spit the gag out, prosecutors say. Sullivan and Sara Packer
returned to the vacant house 12 hours later, and Sullivan strangled her.
Sara Packer and Sullivan stored Grace’s body in cat litter for months, then
hacked it up and dumped it in a remote area where hunters found it in October
2016, authorities said.
“He met my expectation of a monster,” jury foreman Kevin McDermott said after
the sentencing , according to The (Allentown) Morning Call.
Sara Packer and her husband at the time, David Packer, adopted Grace and
Grace’s younger brother in 2007. The couple cared for dozens of foster children
before David Packer was sent to prison for sexually assaulting Grace and a
15-year-old foster daughter.
Sara Packer lost her job as a Northampton County adoptions supervisor in 2010
and was barred from taking in any more foster children. But child welfare
authorities did not remove Grace from the home, despite evidence of abuse.
The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services launched an investigation after
Grace’s murder, but its findings have not been made public.
Sullivan joins 142 other inmates on the state’s death row. Pennsylvania last
carried out an execution in 1999, and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf declared a
moratorium on capital punishment in 2015.
(source: Glenwood Guardian)
VIRGINIA:
Prosecutors seek death penalty for suspect charged in fatal stabbing of elderly
Danville couple
Danville prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Onis Donnell Moon, who is
accused of stabbing an elderly married couple to death and wounding their adult
daughter in November, court documents show.
The commonwealth filed a notice in Moon’s court file Tuesday, signaling
intentions to seek the death penalty because of the severity of the charges.
“The conduct of the defendant in committing this offense was outrageously or
wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman,” the document states, “and said conduct
involved torture, aggravated battery or depravity of the mind.”
Moon, 52, was originally charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder — since
amended to one count of capital murder, covering both deaths — in connection to
the stabbing deaths of Royal Douglas Barley, 83, and his wife, Valean Ferrell
Barley, 87. He is also charged with maliciously wounding Sandra Faye Callands,
the couple’s adult daughter. Both the Barleys were in wheelchairs, neighbors
told the Danville Register & Bee.
In Virginia, murder charges must have aggravating factors associated with them
to be elevated to capital status. Moon’s case was heightened because he is
accused of killing multiple people in the same instance.
Police arrested Moon just a few houses down from the Barleys’ home at 122
Lexington Ave., where they found three people suffering from “severe” stab
wounds. The Barleys were pronounced dead there, and Callands was taken to a
hospital.
An officer at the scene noticed Moon in the area and saw blood on his hands,
according to a search warrant filed in Danville Circuit Court. There, Moon
“made statements about the crime” to the officer and was promptly arrested,
according to the warrant.
When police interviewed him later, court documents state, Moon admitted to
drinking and “being around” drugs that day. His speech was slurred and
investigators noted a strong smell of alcohol on him. A blood test was also
taken, but its results are unknown.
A search of Moon’s truck turned up blunt wrappers and 2 metal grinders full of
“plant material,” according to the warrants. On the Barleys’ property, police
found red stains and a knife.
Callands told police that she saw Moon stab her parents. She also said she was
in a relationship with the alleged attacker.
“While the caller was on the phone with the dispatchers, she began to scream
‘he is stabbing her,’” court records state. “She screamed to dispatch that her
mother and father had been stabbed.”
Moon will next appear in court for a scheduling hearing on April 23. He is
being held without bail in the Danville City Jail.
(source: godanriver.com)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Carteret County death penalty trial halted as courthouse loses power
A Carteret County man’s life sits in limbo after being convicted of 1st degree
murder in a Morehead City woman’s death.
David Godwin, of Newport, was tried and convicted of killing 37-year-old Wendy
Tamagne.
Tamagne’s body was found in her apartment, cut into pieces and stuffed into
trash bags in July 2016. The jury delivered Godwin’s guilty verdict on April
12, 2019.
While there is no question at this point that Godwin killed Tamagne, what
remains unknown is whether he will live out his sentence in prison or be given
the death penalty.
Tuesday’s court proceedings were forced to an early end after the Carteret
County courthouse lost power shortly before 11 a.m. As of 2 p.m. that day,
power had still not been restored.
According to authorities, someone backed their car into a transformer, shutting
off power to the entire building.
Tuesday's proceedings are expected to resume Wednesday.
Before the outage, it was revealed Godwin would not be testifying on his own
behalf. Rather, his defense team would be bringing forth 8 witnesses on Tuesday
and 7 on Wednesday.
Prosecutors presented no additional evidence.
The defense’s 1st witness, James Aiken, an expert in prison management,
reviewed Godwin’s records while he’s been incarcerated leading up to the trial.
Aiken cited no unusual social behavior in prison, but did recall an incident
where Godwin got into an altercation with another inmate. Aiken’s
interpretation is the incident was no more than a gesture with no actual intent
to kill.
“Godwin does not present an unusual risk to staff at corrections facility,”
Aiken said while on the stand.
But while Aiken doesn’t think staff are at risk, Godwin is a different story.
The potential for bullying in prison is high for Godwin, according to Aiken’s
expert opinion.
Prosecutors cross examined Aiken and it was revealed Godwin was serving a
4-year enlistment when he left the military after only one and a half years of
service.
They also noted an attempted escape in Godwin’s incarceration report. The
documents said Godwin tried to escape his cell by wedging a piece of paper in
the lock so it would not close all the way, to which Aiken said that is the
“absolute minimum to be defined as an escape attempt.”
Prosecutors also noted an altered ink pen and razors were found in Godwin’s
cell. Aiken couldn’t recall how the pen was modified though.
(source: WCTI news)
GEORGIA:
Gwinnett woman representing herself in capital case wins jury motion
Jury selection continued Tuesday in the death-penalty trial against Tiffany
Moss, a Gwinnett County woman accused of starving her 10-year-old stepdaughter
to death in 2013.
Moss, 35, has refused representation by 2 experienced attorneys from the state
capital defender office and is serving as her own lawyer. On Tuesday, seven
prospective jurors appeared in court to individually answer questions about
their views to see if they can be qualified as fair and impartial.
As she most often does, Moss, with a smile, told Superior Court Judge George
Hutchinson she had no questions for any of the prospective jurors. She did so
after either District Attorney Danny Porter or Assistant District Attorney Lisa
Jones had asked numerous questions to each of the jurors, exploring their views
on capital punishment and their backgrounds.
Even though she asked no questions, Moss did win a motion to keep one woman in
the pool of potential jurors when the jury is ultimately selected.
This woman, Juror No. 30, had acknowledged to Porter that she had signed
petitions opposing capital punishment.
“I’m personally not a fan of it,” said the woman, a veterinary nurse. “… It’s
hard to sleep at night making that decision.”
Porter then asked her if she believed she could consider all three sentencing
options — life in prison with the possibility of parole, life without parole or
the death penalty — if she was selected as a juror in the case.
“I would like to think I could,” she said.
Under the law, potential jurors are to be excused from service in a
death-penalty trial if they say they cannot impose a death sentence. So Porter
continued to question her.
As he did, the woman admitted to having bad experiences with the criminal
justice system.
Once on her birthday when she was a teenager, she said, she shot a water pistol
out of a car window and the water hit a taxi driver in the face. The taxi
driver feared it was a terrorist assault, and the woman wound up handcuffed by
police and threatened with an aggravated assault charge, she said.
“It was not my favorite birthday,” the woman said. “I was a dumb teenager.”
Even though she was never charged, it left a bad taste in her mouth, she said.
Juror No. 30 also told Porter she believed a friend of hers was wrongly
convicted of a sexual assault, for which he received a 10-year prison sentence.
“I don’t have a lot of faith in it,” she said of the criminal justice system,
citing a “lack of consistency.”
Porter then asked Juror No. 30, given her views and life experiences, whether
she could truly vote for the death penalty.
“I’ve been against it for so long,” the woman said, equivocating.
After Juror No. 30 stepped out of the courtroom, Porter moved to have her
excused. He cited her opposition to capital punishment and her problems with
the criminal justice system.
When Hutchinson turned to Moss, she rose from the defense table and objected.
Juror No. 30 had said if she were selected and heard all the evidence she could
consider all 3 sentencing options, including the death penalty, Moss said.
Hutchinson agreed, granting Moss a small victory. “She will not be excused for
cause,” the judge said.
So far, about two dozen potential jurors have been individually questioned and
more than half of them have been qualified to be in the final pool. Opening
statements and testimony are expected to begin early next week.
(source: Atlanta Journal Constitution)
ALABAMA:
Alabama seeks new execution date for man who stabbed pastor
Alabama on Monday sought a new execution date for an inmate spared last week
when the clock struck midnight before a divided U.S. Supreme Court said his
lethal injection could proceed.
Justices on Friday lifted a stay that had blocked the execution of 46-year-old
Christopher Lee Price, but the order came about 90 minutes after the death
warrant setting the execution date automatically expired at midnight.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall's office asked the state Supreme Court
to quickly schedule a new lethal injection on April 25 or May 2 in the
"interests of justice." The state asked to set aside a rule normally requiring
30 days' notice.
"Price has already had his execution set and erroneously delayed, he has been
given more notice than other inmates in his position and more than enough
notice to satisfy concerns of fairness and due process," the state wrote in the
motion.
Price was convicted of murder in the 1991 stabbing death of pastor Bill Lynn.
A federal judge on Thursday stayed Price's execution scheduled for that evening
to consider his challenge to the humaneness of the state's lethal injection
procedure. Price had asked to be put to death by breathing nitrogen gas, a
method the state has authorized but not yet used.
With a stay in place, Alabama announced about 30 minutes before midnight that
it could not carry out the execution that night. The U.S. Supreme Court voted
5-4 early Friday morning to vacate the stay, but the execution warrant had
expired at midnight.
(source: Associated Press)
LOUISIANA:
Measure could make it easier for La. to carry out death penalty
Gov. John Bel Edwards said he might be willing to sign legislation that would
keep the source of Louisiana’s lethal injection drugs a secret and out of the
public record -- a move that could make executions easier to carry out in the
state.
“I would suspect that if it comes to my desk I won’t have a problem with it,
but I always reserve the right to look at it because [bills] typically get
amended, they get changed and that sort of thing. But we will take a look at it
when it gets there, if it gets there,” Edwards said in an interview Saturday,
referring to House Bill 258.
Louisiana has 72 death row inmates but hasn’t executed anyone since 2010. A
federal judge has ordered that all executions in Louisiana be delayed until
July 2019 because the state hasn’t been able to obtain lethal injection
ingredients.
Edwards, a Democrat, has also refused to say how he personally feels about the
death penalty. As a legislator in 2014, he voted against a previous piece of
legislation to keep the source of death penalty drugs secret.
Edwards was one of just seven lawmakers -- and two House members -- to vote
against that bill five years ago. It was supported overwhelmingly, but didn’t
end up getting enacted because its sponsor, former state representative and
current Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto, pulled the bill over an unrelated
dispute with then-Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Edwards’ reticence over the death penalty has led Republican Attorney General
Jeff Landry and other conservatives to speculate that the governor is dragging
his feet over executions, possibly because the governor might have moral
objections to capital punishment.
The Department of Public Safety and Corrections, which Edwards oversees, have
pushed back on that notion and says the governor’s personal views on the death
penalty have nothing to do with the delay in executions. The problems carrying
out the death penalty extend back to when Jindal was in office, officials say.
The agency is struggling to obtain lethal injection drugs for executions, in
part, because Louisiana’s public records laws allow for the disclosure of the
manufacturer and pharmacists that supply the substance, Corrections Secretary
Jimmy LeBlanc has said in previous interviews.
Sources for the lethal injection drugs are unwilling to do business with the
prison system over fear of the blowback from being involved in executions. Some
drug manufacturers also refuse to sell products to the state if they are going
to be used for executions, according to the prison system.
The new death penalty drug bill, sponsored by Rep. Nicholas Muscarello,
R-Hammond, would exclude from the public record the identity and any
identifying information of people, pharmacies, manufacturers and others who are
responsible for getting Louisiana lethal injection drugs or “medical equipment”
used to carry out an executions. Courts, boards, tribunals, commissions and
agencies as well as individuals wouldn’t have access to this information, under
this legislation.
It resembles draft state legislation that Landry started pushing last summer,
when the attorney general said that a public records exemption might help get
executions moving again. Several states, including Texas, have passed laws in
recent years to keep the source of their execution drugs a secret. The Arkansas
legislature just approved an updated version of their death penalty drug
secrecy law earlier this month.
The stall in Louisiana’s executions upsets the families of victims of people
sitting on death row. Many families have already been waiting decades to see
the offender who killed their family member put to death, since appeals in
death penalty cases can already take several years. A further delay because
death penalty drugs can’t be obtained can be frustrating, according to recent
testimony from families at a hearing on the death penalty.
While some lawmakers are seeking to resume executions, others are hoping to
abolish the death penalty. Two legislators -- State Rep. Terry Landry, D-New
Iberia, and state Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge -- have introduced bills to
end the death penalty for people facing criminal charges moving forward. The 72
people on death row would still be subject to executions, but people who face
criminal charges in the future couldn’t join them on death row.
(source: Daily Comet)
***********************
State executions should not be shrouded in secrecy
Arizona prison officials estimated it would take 10 to 20 minutes to execute
convicted double murderer Joseph Wood using an experimental two-drug cocktail
of the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone.
Instead, Wood coughed and wheezed for almost 2 hours — so long that his lawyer
had time to file an emergency appeal in federal court — before he finally died.
“I counted about 660 times he gasped,” an Arizona Republic reporter who
witnessed the execution said in July 2014.
Then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued a statement expressing concern for “the
length of time it took for the administered drug protocol” to work but little
sympathy for Wood, who had gunned down his girlfriend and her father.
“One thing is certain, however, inmate Wood died in a lawful manner and by
eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer," Brewer said. "This is in
stark comparison to the gruesome, vicious suffering that he inflicted on his 2
victims – and the lifetime of suffering he has caused their family.”
Cold-blooded killers do not evoke much compassion but we should avoid
jettisoning the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protection against a “cruel and
unusual punishment” in which execution becomes torture. Woods’ death was just
one in a series of botched executions across the United States in 2014.
The New Orleans mayor is going the extra mile to alert illegal bus operators.
Why didn't she do that for regular motorists?
In January, Ohio executed Dennis McGuire using the same unproven drug
combination that was given to Wood. A pastor who watched the execution wrote
that McGuire had died “gasping for air.” A Columbus Dispatch reporter said it
was a “kind of a rattling, guttural sound. ... A couple of times, he definitely
appeared to be choking.”
In Oklahoma, convicted killer Clayton Lockett, 38, died of a massive heart
attack almost 30 minutes after prison officials had called off the execution
because untrained technicians had made what the warden described as “a bloody
mess” trying to insert needles for an IV to carry the lethal drugs into
Lockett’s system.
The Oklahoma prison officials were using an experimental three-part drug
cocktail obtained from a source kept secret from the public. State witnesses
did not get to observe Lockett’s final minutes because a prison official pulled
the blinds as the supposedly unconscious inmate struggled against his
restraints.
Lethal injection became the primary means of execution in the United States
over the past four decades. The process was seen as more humane than hanging,
firing squad or electrocution as the combination of drugs used proved to be
effective.
That changed in the first decade of the 2000s, when pharmaceutical
manufacturers, under pressure from death penalty opponents, began to refuse to
sell the drugs for executions and to ban their distributors from doing so.
That sent the states scrambling to purchase new drugs from other markets or to
contract with pharmacies to compound the required chemicals.
This has raised questions from opponents about the science of the concoctions
and the purity of the drugs being used. They also have continued political
pressure against any entity involved in the process.
Death penalty proponents have responded to these legal and political challenges
by trying to make the state’s process — source, science and suppliers — a
secret.
This is where it stands in Louisiana, which hasn't executed anyone since 2010
and is barred from doing so until July when a court rules on its lethal
injection protocols.
Attorney General Jeff Landry and others believe that the lack of executions are
evidence of delayed justice and are supporting legislation, House Bill 258, to
exclude from the public record any identifying information of people,
pharmacies, manufacturers and others who are responsible for providing the
state with lethal injection drugs or the “medical equipment” used to carry out
executions.
That is the wrong approach. It is subverting the people’s right to know to gain
a political objective. It is secrecy designed to thwart legitimate protest and
to shroud in darkness one of the greatest powers wielded by government: the
power over life and death.
Gov. John Bel Edwards, an anti-abortion Catholic who won’t publicly state his
position on the death penalty, recently said that he would likely sign the bill
if it makes it to his desk. This is essentially the same measure he voted
against as a state representative 5 years ago. He was right then.
This is a law that says that the only way for the state to carry out the
people’s will is to keep the people in the dark.
(source: Tim Morris; columnist, The Times-Picayune)
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