April 27
KENTUCKY:
Death penalty not always best result for murder victims' families
I am writing in response to the Daily News’ editorial published April 14 about
the death penalty. Let the legal minds argue the nuances of Eighth Amendment
ramifications of a state performing executions, but it would be unsettling to
me if we threw it out the window because someone is a “cold-blooded killer”
whose life is worth less.
In expressing its support for the Supreme Court’s opinion, the newspaper
pointed out the murderer’s victim certainly experienced cruel and unusual
punishment in her rape and death, as well as the victim’s family, who had been
waiting 23 years for justice to be served.
I know something about being a family member of a murder victim. My brother
Chris, an innocent witness to three murders, was shot in the back twice while
running away from the crime scene before the murderer put a bullet through his
brain.
Years passed. Appeals came and went. In a somewhat swift timeline for a death
sentence, Donald Reese was put to death by the state of Missouri one month
short of 11 years after he murdered four people. If finding closure means that
you don’t have to keep thinking about appeals, then the families of all of
Reese’s victims found closure.
What I have learned over time is how destructive the death penalty system is to
victims’ families. Some of us are torn apart in our disagreement on its use.
Some of us spend our time in anger and confusion at the endless appeals. We
relive our loved one’s loss with each appeal. As the decades roll by, studies
have shown that we are less healthy, less happy, have less money and die
earlier than those victims’ families who live in states without the death
penalty. In those states, a family’s wait is less than two years before the
final appeal is over.
I often hear angry arguments about all the appeals. “They should take these
‘cold blooded killers’ to the public square and hang ‘em.” Unfortunately, we
have too much evidence that this approach is much more prone to misuse. It is
why our nation has evolved toward a more civil and careful approach. Even so,
the number of former death row inmates who were exonerated now numbers 165
since 1976, while states have executed a smidge under 1,500 people. I don’t
think that reflects a good enough track record on our system of justice to
speed up the process.
As I write this, New Hampshire may join 19 other states in abolishing the death
penalty. By abolishing the death penalty, Kentucky could save money. Give the
crowded court dockets more space. Be less prone to make a mistake that can’t be
reversed. Help all surviving family members of murder by not dragging them
through appeals for decades. And we won’t have to argue about how to put
someone to death that will satisfy the Eighth Amendment provision against cruel
and unusual punishment.
[Ben Griffith is the secretary on the Board of the Kentucky Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty (kcadp.org). His brother was murdered in 1986]
(source: Letter to the Editor, Bowling Green Daily News)
NEBRASKA:
Nebraska rejects new attempt to abolish death penalty
Three years after Nebraska voters reinstated the death penalty, lawmakers have
rejected a new attempt to abolish the punishment.
Senators who want to outlaw capital punishment fell eight votes short Thursday
of the support needed to advance the measure through a 1st-round vote. The
measure stalled with 17 lawmakers voting in favor of it and 25 against. Seven
senators didn't vote.
Sen. Ernie Chambers, of Omaha, introduced the bill as he has done for more than
4 decades.
Lawmakers passed a repeal measure in 1979 but failed to override a
gubernatorial veto. They passed one again in 2015 and overrode Gov. Pete
Ricketts' veto, but the issue was placed on the 2016 ballot and voters restored
it.
Nebraska executed inmate Carrie Dean Moore by lethal injection last year.
(source: Associated Prwess)
WYOMING:
Another effort to repeal Wyoming's death penalty takes root
A Cheyenne legislator says another effort will be made in next year's
Legislature to repeal Wyoming's death penalty.
This past session a death penalty repeal bill sponsored by Republican Rep.
Jared Olsen passed the state House but was defeated in the Senate.
Olsen tells the Casper Star-Tribune that he will be doing all he can to ensure
that 2020 will be the year Wyoming finally repeals the death penalty.
Olsen says that effort will begin next week when he and ACLU of Wyoming
Director Sabrina King will kick off a statewide education campaign to gain
support for ending the death penalty.
King says the effort would focus on educating local leaders and Wyoming
residents from the town and county level all the way up the ladder.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
DA to seek death penalty for man in deputy’s killing at Rancho Cordova auto
parts store |
Sacramento County prosecutors will seek the death penalty for accused cop
killer Anton Lemon Paris in the September shooting death of a Sacramento County
sheriff’s deputy and the wounding of a second deputy at a Rancho Cordova auto
parts store.
Sacramento County district attorney’s prosecutors announced their intent in a
two-paragraph motion Friday morning before Sacramento Superior Court Judge
Michael Bowman. Paris faces four counts in the Sept. 17 shooting that killed
Deputy Mark Stasyuk, 27, and wounded his partner, Deputy Julie Robertson, 28,
along with a store employee: felony murder, attempted murder and felon in
possession of a firearm – a .40-caiiber handgun. Paris also faces a special
allegation of killing a peace officer in the line of duty.
The Friday announcement, little more than two weeks after prosecutors committed
to seeking death for East Area Rapist/Golden State Killer suspect Joseph
DeAngelo, 73, ignores Gov. Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on capital punishment. But
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert and other prosecutors
have previously argued that Newsom’s moratorium has no impact on their ability
to seek death penalty sentences.
Paris is accused of killing Stasyuk at close range after the young deputy and
partner Robertson responded to a Rancho Cordova Pep Boys where storekeepers
said Paris was threatening employees and knocking items off shelves.
The deputies took gunfire almost as soon as they entered the building. The
shots came from behind a service counter, the first rounds hitting store
employee Arturo Nolasco in the back. Nolasco and a second employee were able to
crawl to safety.
As Stasyuk entered the store, Robertson closed in on the gunman, later
identified as Paris, a 38-year-old convicted felon with a lengthy criminal
history on both sides of the Sacramento River, a man who lived a chaotic life
filled with guns.
Stasyuk was shot twice during the rapid-fire gunbattle as he tried to seek
cover and return fire – once in the back, then in the back of the head.
Robertson was shot in the arm but continued to return fire, render aid to her
wounded partner and place herself between the gunman and the customers who
couldn’t escape the store, sheriff’s officials would later say.
“This was a firefight and it was an extensive one,” Sacramento County Sheriff
Scott Jones would say in the days after the shooting.
Paris was shot multiple times and seriously wounded in the firefight. He was
hospitalized for a time before he was deemed well enough to be jailed and face
a judge in a courtroom. His September arraignment, 10 days after the shooting,
was conducted in his hospital room.
Paris is scheduled to return to Sacramento Superior Court on May 17 – exactly 8
months after the shooting that felled Stasyuk.
(source: sacbee.com)
USA:
Caring About Mental Health Made Me Care About the Death Penalty
A mere 5 years ago, you would have found me arguing on the opposite side of the
debate when it comes to the death penalty (decidedly pro). This was back when I
admittedly toed the Republican Party line and did not yet approach each policy
with a set of principles and skepticism.
Upon further reflection, I believe it was my encounter with the death penalty
that caused me to change my approach in determining my stances. And I wouldn’t
have challenged my stance on the death penalty were it not for my concern over
mental health issues.
Everyone feels the repercussions of mental illness, whether they realize it or
not. Even as these illnesses have been misunderstood, misdiagnosed, maligned,
and stereotyped for decades, by virtually everyone, the consequences are
glaring when you look at homelessness, healthcare costs, or violence. When I
began working as a policy advocate for the National Alliance on Mental Illness,
I quickly realized that the realities of trying to solve the problem were much
harder and messier than I had assumed, especially when it came to the justice
system.
Our system is rampant with mental health issues. Countless studies and articles
have been devoted to the overwhelming number of people incarcerated with mental
illnesses, the multiple problems that come from asking that law enforcement act
as first responders for those in crisis, and the ways that we have shifted what
should be a public health matter to the justice system.
The death penalty magnifies these problems. It is estimated that 20 percent of
those on death row have a severe mental illness. Due to HIPAA laws, and other
illness-related factors, it is unlikely we will ever know the true number. The
problem is that those with mental illness are at a disadvantage from the moment
they encounter the justice system. They are more likely to be wrongfully
convicted, and they are more likely to receive harsher sentences.
Unfortunately, universal awareness of these problems does not mean a unilateral
agreement to fix them, much less an agreement on how to fix them.
There is still a vast lack of knowledge amongst the general public on the
intricacies of mental health. This affects the attitudes of voters towards
those with mental illness, the ability for lawmakers to set good policy, and
the judgement of jurors asked to determine guilt and sentencing.
Common misperceptions on mental illness become even more detrimental, and at
times deadly, when they run up against the justice system. There are some who
refuse to recognize that mental illness is even an illness at all, instead
clinging to debunked notions that these medical diagnoses are signs of a
spiritual problem, bad character, or even a choice. Some also believe them to
be made-up, fakeable, or an excuse. Even those who carry a more educated view
on the actualities of these illnesses are still susceptible to believing that
they are indicators of a threat of ongoing violence, rather than a mitigating
factor that should be weighed as part of the legal process.
This a subject that I could pour hundreds of pages into, but for the sake of
space, there are a few factors I wish people knew when it comes to considering
criminal justice reforms as they pertain to those with mental illness.
First and foremost, individuals with mental illness are ten times more likely
to be a victim than they are to be violent.
Secondly, the presence of anosognosia (a component of severe mental illness
that prevents the victim from being self-aware of their own illness)
drastically increases the likelihood that a person will fire their attorney on
a whim, seek to represent themselves, or attempt to prevent their illness from
being brought up in trial because they deny its existence. Additionally, they
are much more likely to have difficulty understanding their Miranda rights, far
more susceptible to police pressure, and substantially more likely to confess
to crimes they did not commit.
Lastly, the term “severe mental illness” (SMI) is a precise medical diagnosis
classified in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder" that
pertains to a very specific set of conditions and symptoms. These illnesses are
far more extreme than depression or anxiety, and include disorders such as
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with psychosis. These disorders by
definition cause a “functional impairment which substantially interferes with
or limits one or more major life activities.”
Given how serious all of these disorders are, and how much research exists
proving their existence and consequences, it is ludicrous to suggest that these
impairments could be faked in order to excuse a person’s culpability.
Typically, when proponents of reform discuss mental illness, they are referring
to this classification of illnesses.
As I came to understand these systematic problems that linked mental health
with criminal justice, I began to realize my position on the death penalty
might require more nuance that I initially thought. If a system cannot even
safeguard the most vulnerable among us, it certainly should not be determining
matters of life and death.
(source: Hannah Cox is the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About
the Death Penalty. Hannah was previously Director of Outreach for the Beacon
Center of Tennessee, a free-market think tank. Prior to that, she was Director
of Development for the Tennessee Firearms Association and a policy advocate for
the National Alliance on Mental Illness----newsmax.com)
**********************
Death Can be a Slow Traveler: Peltier, Mumia and Rap Brown
When the history of our times is recorded, any volume on domestic political
prisoners must, per force, begin with the legendary ones of conscience. To
these icons of principle, determination and courage we owe much. It is, after
all, not by mere default that they risked, and often paid, all to demand the
gale of change sweep away generations of ignorance, hatred and greed that have
long fed on communities of color and poverty, from coast to coast, in the
United States. For them, it was never about personal risk for they knew all too
well the price that can be exacted for such integrity. For them, the
alternative of silence was simply an option without a choice.
Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier, a founder of the American Indian Movement, is now well into
his fourth decade of imprisonment. Wrongfully charged and convicted for the
defense of Wounded Knee against an FBI onslaught, his, more than any other
continuing political persecution, lays bare the myth that the Department of
Justice is committed to the pursuit of truth or equal application of law.
Having failed to secure a conviction in the first trial against his
codefendants, at Peltier’s subsequent trial, the government recast, in its
entirety, its storyline of what happened that fateful day during the firefight
at the Pine Ridge Reservation between some 150 FBI agents, local law
enforcement and vigilantes… and forty members of AIM.
At the first trial, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, federal prosecutors argued that two
FBI agents were essentially “murdered” during an exchange of gunshots with
Native activists barricaded at an AIM compound located some distance away.
Rejecting the assertion the agents were targeted, the jury acquitted the
defendants on the basis of self defense.
After succeeding in moving the second trial to a more favorable government
venue in Fargo North Dakota (long a hotbed of anti-Native animus and violence),
federal prosecutor’s concocted a new strategy. Using a patchwork of evidence
built of altered or suppressed testimony to remake a case already soundly
rejected, prosecutors rewrote the script to now one where the agents were
executed by close range gun shots to their heads. Because of this dramatic
shift, Peltier was precluded from submitting any self-defense testimony.
Inexplicably, the new judge also prevented the defense from establishing, at
trial, that the FBI had a proven history… in Native prosecutions… of tampering
with evidence and witnesses.
Unlike the 1st trial, where prosecutors introduced evidence that agents had
been pursuing a red pickup truck before the shootout, this time they testified
they were looking for an orange and white van… such as the one that Peltier had
been seen using on occasion. Likewise, while an FBI ballistic expert testified
that a shell casing recovered near the agents’ bodies matched a weapon tied to
Peltier, prosecutors suppressed a different ballistic test which proved the
casing could not have come from his gun. These changes were part of a conscious
effort by government prosecutors to convert the trial… of this high profile
political and human rights activist… from a search for truth to a staged
performance in which it withheld more than 140,000 pages of discovery from the
defense in its desperate drive to convict Peltier no matter what the truth or
the cost.
Nowhere is the nature and extent of the government’s misconduct in the
persecution of Leonard Peltier better summed up than it was by one of his
appellate attorneys, former United States Attorney GeneralRamsey Clark, who
branded the evidence used against him as “fabricated, circumstantial … misused,
concealed, and perverted.” Different in tenor and tone, yet, essentially the
same in conclusion, during one of Peltier’s appeals before the Eight Circuit
his former prosecutor conceded “… we do not know who killed those agents.
Further, we don’t know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it.”
Ultimately, this candid admission of a government frame proved worthless when
Barack Obama denied Peltier’s request for a sentence commutation via cryptic
email, on January 18, 2017, as he raced out the oval office no doubt to ready
for his first book signing tour.
Next eligible for parole in 2024, when he is 79 years of age, Leonard Peltier,
a Nobel Peace Prize nominee who is essentially wheel chair bound and suffers
from a potential life threatening internal bleeding condition, is likely to die
in prison.
Mumia Abu-Jamal
The thirst for vengeance is no less voracious in state court prosecutions that
target political dissidents. Though state substantive offenses may vary and the
rules of evidence change, prosecutors and judges still adhere to an age-old
obedient oath that those who forcefully confront and expose institutional power
and authority must be called to task… and damn the truth. While examples
abound, no clearer one exists then the decades long political feed on Mumia
Abu-Jamal.
Much has been written by and about Abu-Jamal and his journey, over the course
of almost 40 years of imprisonment, largely spent on Pennsylvania’s death row,
as an ever-present thorn in the veil of institutional isolation and secrecy
that consumes its every prison bunk. And while, for some, debate continues over
whether he pulled the trigger in the shooting death of a Philadelphia police
officer, no such disagreement concerns his life as a community activist and
full-time challenge to its notoriously corrupt police department and office of
the District Attorney.
After his beating by white supremacists, as a mere teen, Mumia found his voice
through the Black Panther Party, a chapter of which he helped to found in
Philadelphia eventually becoming its “Lieutenant of Information” responsible
for writing its policy positions and news releases.
Like many others, Mumia was targeted by the FBI COINTELPRO program which in
Philadelphia drew upon the cooperation of local police as they targeted
community activists and dissidents. Across the country, black “radical” groups
were infiltrated and disrupted with hundreds of their members physically
attacked, falsely charged and imprisoned; more than a few the subject of
outright government assassination.
Over the years, Mumia became a widely recognized and respected voice in
alternative news while working at various local, and then national, outlets
ranging from university radio stations to NPR… from which he was eventually
fired because of his opinions. Ultimately, becoming the President of the
Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, whenever controversy arose,
Mumia was sure to be found providing a platform for dissenting views otherwise
silenced by the long seated powerful of Philadelphia.
Mumia was a relentless criticof the Philadelphia police department… often
citing its documented history of excessive force and corruption including
fabricating evidence. He was no less critical of Mayor Frank Rizzo, a former
police commissioner, accusing him of fostering an environment rife with
systemic racial bias and police brutality.
Nowhere is that more evident than in his damning criticism of the police
department’s repeated confrontations with MOVE, the communal Black liberation
movement that lived in West Philadelphia promoting a revolutionary ideology
like that of the Black Panther Party.
2 major confrontations with the police, one an armed standoff which resulted in
the death of an officer and another where a police helicopter dropped a bomb on
the MOVE compound causing a fire that killed eleven of its members, including 5
children, and destroyed 65 neighborhood houses, best define the tension between
a movement which Mumia at first supported, and then later joined, and the
Philadelphia police.
Can it be mere happenstance that Abu-Jamal’s favorable reporting on behalf of
the accused, during the trial of the “MOVE Nine” for the death of that officer,
presaged his own arrest and prosecution for a like accusation not all that long
thereafter?
While legal scholars continue to argue over the weight of evidence at Mumia’s
trial, there can be no reasoned disagreement over the fact that it was a
racially charged prosecution of a dynamic political dissident from the African
American community of Philadelphia in 1982.
Indeed, in exercising 11 out of 14 peremptory challenges to eliminate
prospective black jurors, prosecutors ended up with a jury panel comprised of
two blacks and ten whites, all but guaranteeing the trier of fact was tainted
with racial bias even before it heard the 1st witness. Years later, any
question about Abu-Jamal’s trial being fueled by racial hate was further
evidenced by an affidavit of a courtstenographer who swore that she overheard
the trial Judge, Albert Sabo, comment outside the courtroom, “…Yeah, and I’m
going to help them fry the nigger.”
Against this light, the trial, itself, was replete with prosecutorial
misconduct ranging from suppression of the confession of a man who said he was
the actual shootertothe failure to call an eyewitness who told police Mumia was
not the gunman. Later, he testified police tore up his original statement and
coerced him into signing another one implicating Abu-Jamal. Other witnesses
subsequently claimed they had seen another person fleeing from the scene of the
shooting. Though this other person’s presence at the crime was known to
prosecutors at the time of the trial, it was concealed from the jury. Forensic
evidence connecting Mumia to the crime was no more reliable. For example, the
coroner testified at trial that the bullet extracted from the deceased was a
.38-caliber round which matched the weapon recovered from Mumia. At the time of
the autopsy he noted in his official medical examiner records that it was a.44
caliber.
Just this past week, Abu-Jamal prevailed in his decades old battle to obtain
justice when the current Philadelphia District Attorney withdrew his opposition
to his de novo appeal based upon a conflict of interest by the former
Pennsylvania Chief Justice, Ronald Castille, who oversaw Mumia’s state court
appeals between 1998 and 2012. Castille, an avid supporter of the death penalty
with close ties to police unions, had been Philadelphia’s District Attorney
during the early years of Abu-Jamal’s attempt to overturn his conviction.
Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal are but 2 of the most prominent long-term
political prisoners in the United States today. Meanwhile dozens of others now
well into their 60s, 70s and older have also spent decades entombed in maximum
security state and federal penitentiaries that crisscross the country.
H. Rap Brown
To many, Rap Brown is a legendary figure synonymous with revolutionary
movements that drove generations of activists in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s to
confront Jim Crow, the war in Vietnam and systemic class, race and gender based
discrimination through militant action. Now 76 years of age, and known as Jamil
Abdullah al-Amin, he sits in the United States Penitentiary in Tucson fighting
cancer while doing a life sentence for a state court conviction for a murder
that occurred some 18 years ago. Like so many other prosecutions of high
profile black leaders of his day, his is one beset by nagging questions.
Thus, the prosecutor’s theory that Abdullah al-Amin opened fire on police
officers who came to arrest him for his mere failure to appear in court for a
speeding ticket beggars the imagination. Given his long history as an iconic
leader in the national African American community, his then success in local
business and prominence as a Muslim preacher and community activist speaking
out against drugs and gambling, this inexplicable act of gratuitous violence
reeks of intent…looking for motive.
At trial, prosecutors argued al-Amin had failed to provide an alibi for his
whereabouts at the time of the crime. Nor did he offer any explanation for
fleeing the state after the shooting or account for why the weapons used in it
were found near him at the time of his arrest.
Against this entirely circumstantial evidence, the defense established that
al-Amin was not wounded during the shootout… as the surviving deputy had
reported. That same officer described the killer’s eyes as grey… al-Amin’s are
brown. Most important, another man, Otis Jackson, while incarcerated on another
charge, confessed to the shooting well before the trial but the court did not
allow his confession into evidence. That admission matched essential, and not
publicly known, details from 911 calls following the shooting… including a
report that a bleeding man was seen limping from the scene. Jackson said he
knocked on doors attempting to obtain a ride while suffering from wounds that
he had sustained during his firefight with deputies.
So Many More
Who among us today remembers the names let alone the history of RuchellMagee or
Álvaro Luna Hernández or Kamau Sadiki or Kojo Bomani Sababu or Bill Dunne or
Joy Powell or Jalil Muntaqimor Russell Maroon Shoatsor Edward Poindexter or
Romaine Chip Fitzgerald or Joseph Bowen or Fred Burton or Janet Holloway or the
other MOVE Nine who remain imprisoned years after evidence showed that the
officer they were convicted of killing likely died of friendly fire. Each of
these men and women has been imprisoned for decades; victims of a rush to
judgment… of politics and prosecutions and passion all but blinded by the hate
and fear of the day.
While movements such as the Black Panther Party, the BLA, AIM and MOVE still
resonate among some in a new generation of activists, many of their former
members, nowriddled with poor health and buried in prison, have been all but
lost to the passage of time as death can be a slow traveler.
(source: Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York
City----counterpunch.org)
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