May 2
TEXAS:
Remorseless Statement Released After Texas Death Row Inmate Executed for Hate
Crime
The Texas prison system recently read out a remorseless statement by John
William King, the man who was executed on April 24 for orchestrating one of the
most gruesome hate crimes in U.S. history.
King, 44, was sentenced to death for the dragging murder of James Byrd Jr., a
black man. He was 1 of the 3 men convicted for the 1998 murder.
The atrocity made global headlines and inspired Congress to pass federal hate
crime legislation that increased penalties for crimes motivated by race, color,
religion or ethnicity.
King said “No,” when asked by a warden inside the nation’s busiest death
chamber whether he had any last words before receiving a lethal injection.
The prison system released a statement that King had prepared earlier,
following his death. It was read by prison system spokesman Jeremy Desel.
The statement said, “Capital punishment: them without the capital get the
punishment.”
Desel described King as “stoic” just hours before he was executed.
“King did not open his eyes at any point during the process when witnesses were
in the room,” Desel told the Associated Press according to The Caller Times.
“When the witnesses entered the witness room, Mr. King was already on the
gurney. He had his eyes closed and made very little if any movements.”
Byrd’s sister Clara Taylor, who watched the execution, said King “showed no
remorse then and showed no remorse tonight.”
She told CNN that it was a “just punishment” and said, “There was no sense of
relief.”
Just before his death on June 6, 1998, Byrd was at a party. He was last seen
getting into a truck with King, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and Shawn Allen Berry.
The 3 white men drove him to a secluded area, beat him up, spray-painted his
face, tied his ankles with logging chains, and then dragged him for 3 miles on
the road behind their truck.
Brewer died by lethal injection in 2011 and Berry is serving a life sentence.
The Practice of Reading Last Statement
The practice of reading the last statement of condemned prisoners didn’t go
well with a Texas lawmaker who said on Monday that the practice should be
stopped.
“If a death row inmate has something to say to the public or victims, let him
or her say it when they are strapped to the gurney,” state Sen. John Whitmire
wrote in a letter to prison officials. Whitmire has been in the Senate for
nearly 40 years.
The Houston Democrat is one of Texas’ most powerful lawmakers in the criminal
justice system and previously spurred the system to change its execution-day
procedures.
Before his execution, Brewer ordered an extensive meal, which did not go well
with Whitmire, who expressed outrage over the dining request. Brewer didn’t eat
anything he ordered, according to the prison officials.
(source: ntd.com)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Death penalty repeal heads to governor's desk
A repeal of the state's death penalty has been sent to Gov. Chris Sununu.
Sununu said he will veto the bill, but it passed both the state Senate and
House with a veto-proof majority.
Supporters of the ban say capital punishment is costly and runs the risk of
killing an innocent person. Opponents say it's reserved for the most heinous of
crimes.
New Hampshire has one man on death row – Michael Addison, who was convicted in
the 2006 murder of Manchester police Officer Michael Briggs – and hasn't
executed someone since 1939.
(source: WMUR news)
GEORGIA----impending execution
Clemency denied Gainesville man
After a few hours of deliberations, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles
denied clemency early Wednesday evening to convicted double murderer Scotty
Morrow.
The decision followed more than 5 hours of testimony, most of it from Morrow’s
supporters who said the condemned man was genuinely remorseful. It required
just a simple majority of votes from the 4 men and 1 woman who make up the
pardons board. They deliberated separately and gave no reasons for why and how
they reached their conclusion.
The odds were against Morrow the 52-year-old Gainesville man from the start.
Only 11 death sentences have been commuted by the board since the death penalty
was reinstated in 1976.
And Morrow’s crimes, however out of character, were particularly heinous. On
December 29, 1994, he fatally shot his ex-girlfriend Barbara Ann Young and her
friend, Tonya Woods, in the head after Young informed him she would not take
him back. The murders occurred inside Young’s home, witnessed by her 5-year-old
son — 1 of 5 children she left behind.
Hall County District Attorney Lee Darragh urged the the board to go through
with the execution. Clemency hearings are held behind closed doors and Darragh
did not return a phone call seeking comment.
While Darragh spoke of the murders and their impact, Morrow’s attorneys asked
the board to consider their client’s life before and after his bloody rampage.
A wide array of Morrow’s supporters spoke on the 52-year-old Gainesville man’s
behalf. Testimony began 34 hours before Morrow’s scheduled execution: 7 p.m.
Thursday, inside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson,
where he has spent nearly 1/3 of his life.
Speakers included Morrow’s son and namesake, counselors who treated him,
pastors who ministered to him and even a prison guard who monitored him on
death row.
“It is very rare that I would speak out for a death sentenced inmate but if
anyone deserves clemency, it is Scotty Morrow,” former corrections officer
William Wallace said in a clemency petition released on Tuesday.
On Twitter, Sister Helen Prejean, a leading opponent of the death penalty whose
work inspired the acclaimed 1995 film “Dead Man Walking,” urged the pardons
board to spare Morrow’s life.
“This is yet another case where the jury did not have the whole story before
recommending a death sentence,” Prejean tweeted. “After hearing the truth, a
majority of the trial jurors are now comfortable with a life sentence.”
Morrow, according to his lawyers, witnessed and experienced abuse throughout
his childhood. At 3 years old, he watched his father stomp on his pregnant
mother’s abdomen, causing her to miscarry. They eventually fled to a relative’s
home. That family member began raping Morrow when he was 7, say his lawyers. A
year later, he was raped again by another relative.
The family relocated to New York, but Morrow could not escape the abuse. His
clemency petition states that he was beaten repeatedly by his mother’s new
boyfriend.
Much of that evidence was not presented to the Hall County jury that sentenced
Morrow to death in 1999. In 2011, a state court judge overturned Morrow’s
sentence, ruling that his counsel “failed to deliver on their promise to the
jury” to explain their client’s crime.
That decision was later reversed by the Georgia Supreme Court, which reinstated
the death sentence.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
****************
Georgia Parole Board Denies Clemency To Man Sentenced to Death
The Georgia Parole Board has denied clemency to a man scheduled to be executed
Thursday.
His clemency hearing wrapped up late Wednesday.
Scotty Garnell Morrow was convicted of murder in the deaths of 2 women nearly
25 years ago.
His lawyers argued that spontaneous, emotional murders are typically not
punished by death.
The parole board is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death
sentence.
His execution is scheduled for Thursday at 7 PM at the Georgia Diagnostic and
Classification Prison in Jackson.
Morrow will be the first prisoner executed in Georgia this year. (source:
Georgia Public Broadcasting)
FLORIDA:
State Attorney to Pursue Death Penalty in Haines City Triple Murder
State Attorney Brian Haas announced Wednesday he’s pursuing the death penalty
against Haines City triple murder suspect Ernst Cherizard.
Cherizard is accused of killing his girlfriend, Eli “Jenny” Normil, her
six-year-old daughter, Elizabelle “Bella” Frenel and his girlfriend’s mother,
Nicole Guillaume. Normil and Guillaume were found dead at the scene on April
12, 2019. Frenel died at the hospital 2 days later.
Court documents reveal there was trouble in the couple’s relationship dating
back to at least 2017, when Normil petitioned for a restraining order against
Cherizard.
She accused him of punching her in the eye and wrote that she feared Cherizard
would “do something stupid.” In the petition dated April 23, 2017, she said
they were arguing about her pregnancy with his child, and she told him to get
out of the car and get his stuff from her house.
She went on to say he constantly called her phone and popped up at her house
uninvited and she didn’t want any contact with him.
The courts granted the temporary restraining order. She requested it be
dismissed on May 4, 2017.
The following September, Winter Haven Police responded to couple’s apartment
when Normil told officers Cherizard came home drunk and they got into an
argument.
Normil accused Cherizard of grabbing her shirt and attempting to hold her in
the apartment. Cherizard denied he got physical with her and said they were
arguing over some money missing.
Normil told officers she was 7 months pregnant with Cherizard’s twin children.
Cherizard was arrested and charged with domestic battery, but Normil later told
prosecutors to drop the case.
Father of Bella Frenel speaks out
Bella’s father, Henry Frenel, said he had no idea.
“Jenny used to always try to keep everything behind closed doors,” said Frenel.
Frenel said he knew Cherizard didn’t like his daughter, but he never thought
he’d kill her.
“He used to say that, 'I don’t like your daughter. Your daughter look too much
like you,'” Frenel explained. “He used to have another problem, too, because my
daughter didn’t want to call him 'daddy.'”
Frenel said his daughter was everything to him, and he planned to pick her up
that Saturday, the day after she was killed.
“I feel like I ain’t got nothing left, to be honest," he told us. "I didn’t
even get a chance to say bye to her. That week I was supposed to take her to
Chuck E. Cheese."
Frenel is glad the state attorney is pursuing the death penalty.
“I don’t have no type of respect. I don’t have nothing to [say] to
[Cherizard]," he said. "I don’t have nothing for him but death."
Haas said there’d likely be one trial for all three victims. He anticipated
several years would pass before the case goes to trial.
(source: baynews9.com)
LOUISIANA:
Should Louisiana keep the source of death penalty drugs secret? House to debate
bill
Louisiana lawmakers moved forward a bill Wednesday (May 1) that would keep the
state’s source of death penalty drugs secret. The House Criminal Justice
Committee without any objections.
The measure is aimed at trying to make it easier for Louisiana to execute
convicted criminals on death row. The full House of Representatives will now
take it up for consideration.
Louisiana has 70 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.
The state Department of Public Safety and Corrections is struggling to get
lethal injection drugs, 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 previously.
John Bel Edwards may be willing to keep source of Louisiana’s death penalty
drugs a secret
The governor said he might be willing to keep the source of lethal injection
drugs out of the public record -- which might get executions moving in
Louisiana again.
Sources for the lethal injection drugs are unwilling to do business with the
prison system over fear of negative publicity 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.
House Bill 258, by Rep. Nicholas Muscarello, R-Hammond, seeks to solve that
problem. It would exclude from the public record any identifying information
about the pharmacies, manufacturers and others responsible for providing
Louisiana with lethal injection drugs or “medical equipment” used to carry out
executions.
Courts, boards, tribunals, commissions and agencies as well as individuals
wouldn’t have access to the information, under Muscarello’s legislation. The
proposed law would be retroactive, applying to drugs the prison system had
already purchased.
The bill is based on similar laws enacted in 13 other states, according to
Muscarello. The Arkansas Legislature recently approved an updated version of
their death penalty drug secrecy law earlier this month.
The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, which wants to end capital
punishment in the state, opposes Muscarello’s proposal, saying the state needs
to be open about its processes to ensure executions are performed in a just
manner.
“An increase in transparency and accountability in how Louisiana administers
this particular punishment, considering it is the most severe punishment, is
critically important,” said Rob Tasman, executive director for the bishops
conference. “This is dealing with nothing less than life itself.”
Muscarello said he worked with Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office to craft
the legislation. Landry has been pushing Gov. John Bel Edwards to get
executions going again in the state.
Edwards, a Democrat, has refused to say how he personally feels about the death
penalty. The governor’s reticence over the death penalty has led Landry and
other conservatives to speculate that the governor is dragging his feet over
executions, possibly because he might have moral objections to capital
punishment.
Louisiana AG Jeff Landry pushes new execution options: gas, electrocution,
firing squad, hanging
Landry said he will back legislation to make the death penalty easier to carry
out.
At Wednesday’s hearing, no one from the prison system, which Edwards oversees,
testified in support of the legislation.
The governor has said he probably wouldn’t have a problem with signing
Muscarello’s legislation into law. That could reflect a change in his stance on
this issue. As a legislator in 2014, Edwards was one of just two House members
to vote against legislation to keep the source of death penalty drugs secret.
The stall in Louisiana’s executions has upset families of victims. Many wait
decades to see the offender who killed their family member put to death because
appeals in death penalty cases often last 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 state lawmakers want to resume executions, others hope to abolish
the death penalty. Rep. Terry Landry, D-New Iberia, and Sen. Dan Claitor,
R-Baton Rouge, have introduced bills to end capital punishment. Claitor’s
legislation got out of a Senate committee this week. Under his proposal, the 70
people on death row would still be subject to executions, but no one else would
join them.
(source: nola.com)
*******************************
Louisiana lawmakers seek to mask sources for execution drugs in secrecy in bid
to jump start death penalty
Death penalty supporters in the Louisiana Legislature are trying to shroud the
source of the state's execution drugs in secrecy, a move intended to make it
easier to put condemned inmates to death.
Louisiana prison officials have struggled for years to obtain the lethal drugs
necessary to execute death row inmates after the pharmaceutical companies that
manufacture the drugs began refusing to sell them to prisons carrying out
lethal injections.
More than a dozen other states have enacted laws designed to shield details
about executions and the supply chain for the execution drugs, said state Rep.
Nicholas Muscarello, a Hammond Republican who authored of the proposal, House
Bill 258.
Cloaking the source of drugs in strict government secrecy might allow Louisiana
prison officials to buy execution drugs from pharmaceutical suppliers unwilling
to be publicly tied to lethal injections, Muscarello said.
"The families of the victims wait patiently for decades for us to follow
through with this task" of executing death-row inmates, Muscarello said. "It
consumes them and we need to give them the closure they expect."
Muscarello argued his proposal "is not about whether the death penalty is right
or wrong," though support and opposition to his secrecy proposal fell along
similar lines to the battle over the death penalty.
The state hasn't carried out an execution since 2010 and has only put three
inmates to death in the past two decades, a figure that's frustrated the death
penalty's supporters and many relatives of the victims of those on death row.
Some other states, including neighboring Texas, have apparently turned to
compounding pharmacies — specialty shops that mix their own medications from
raw materials — to obtain the cocktail of drugs necessary for executions.
But efforts by Louisiana prison officials to acquire enough drugs to carry out
an execution have repeatedly failed in recent years.
Lethal injection is the only form of execution permitted under state law.
Effort to abolish Louisiana's death penalty begins again in State Capitol
Critics decried Muscarello's proposal as an assault on open government that'd
hide critical aspects of what's perhaps the state's gravest and most
controversial action — an execution — from public scrutiny.
"Transparency is a prerequisite to ensure that the death penalty is being
carried out in a just and legal way," said Robert Tasman, the executive
director of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, which strongly
opposed the death penalty. "A lack of transparency shows a lack of respect for
life itself and secrecy around executions obstructs efforts to safeguard the
right to life.”
"Isn’t it the taxpayers that’s paying for that medicine?" asked state Rep.
Barbara Norton, D-Shreveport. "Well, why would we say to them, ‘You can’t know
what it’s being purchased at?'"
Muscarello said he's generally an advocate of open government but contended
that acquiring execution drugs and carrying out death sentences required
shielding those particular records from public view.
"The problem is we made a commitment to the taxpayer when we told them that
we’d put the persons to death and we’re not doing that," said Muscarello.
"Sometimes there are sacrifices that are made."
Michelle Ghetti, an ardent death-penalty supporter who works for Attorney
General Jeff Landry as the state's deputy solicitor general, said other states
with similar secrecy laws have succeeded in acquiring drugs and carrying out
executions.
Landry, a Republican and a full-throated advocate of capital punishment, has
accused Gov. John Bel Edwards of not doing enough to carry out executions in
Louisiana.
Edwards, a Democrat, has been reticent about his personal views on execution
but has repeatedly stated he'd carry out state law.
But the state's struggle to carry out death sentences long predate Edwards'
tenure in the Governor's Mansion. Corrections officials under Gov. Bobby
Jindal, a Republican, failed repeatedly to obtain execution drugs after major
drugmakers began blocking sales and the state's existing supply expired. State
officials struggle with no way to execute death row inmates; one lawmaker: 'We
need to start executing folks'
Muscarello's proposal largely mirrors a 2014 bill by then-Rep. Joe Lopinto, a
Metairie Republican who's now the sheriff of Jefferson Parish. That bill,
endorsed by Jindal, appeared set for passage but was pulled by Lopinto amid an
unrelated legislative spat with the governor and just after a pair of botched
executions in other states using drugs from compound pharmacies made national
headlines.
This year's proposal advanced out of the House Criminal Justice Committee
without objection on Wednesday and now moves toward the full House.
(source: The Advocate)
ARKANSAS:
Senators testify to effect of execution drugs
The state offered up 2 senators who’d served as execution witnesses, Trent
Garner and Kim Hammer, to defend the position that the drugs are effective and
don’t cause silent suffering by inmates being executed. A full report here from
KUAR’s Michael Hibblen.
Highlight from Garner, an ardent proponent of the death penalty:
“As an Arkansas state senator, I have a strong say in public policy behind the
death penalty and I wanted to witness that myself to see what the process was
like. To see if that would change my determination for the public policy of
it,” Garner said.
He testified that he wasn’t alarmed by what he saw Williams do as the lethal
injection was underway. As a former U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret in
Afghanistan, Garner said he has witnessed people being killed or injured and
can recognize pain.
“For approximately 10 to 15 seconds there were some brief involuntary muscle
spasms. His chest rose two to three inches a few times,” Garner said. “I call
it involuntary because I didn’t see any pain on his face, no grimacing. I
didn’t hear any noises that would indicate pain.”
There’s much more. I continue to have 3 dominating thoughts:
The only people who know for sure who’s right — on either side of the argument
about use of midazolam — aren’t able to provide testimony.
Does anybody not think this report on the testimony of Dr. Joseph Antognini
should merit a followup?
Antognini, who said he has worked with thousands of patients, described
midazolam as an effective sedative, albeit one that has fallen out of favor in
clinical settings in place of more recently developed drugs.
Why does the state insist on sticking with a protocol rife with problems?
(source: Max Brantley, arkansastimes.com)
OREGON:
Oregon death row inmate’s conviction overturned by Appeals Court
The Oregon Court of Appeals this week overturned the conviction and death
penalty sentence of a 54-year-old inmate accused in the 1998 fatal stabbing of
another inmate in a prison recreation yard.
The ruling found that David Lee Cox, who was sentenced to death in 2000,
received ineffective counsel.
In its ruling, the court said 1 trial witness testified that the killing was
part of a murder-for-hire conspiracy involving a prison group called the Lakota
Club. The court said Cox’s lawyer should have investigated that theory and
called witnesses who could have refuted it.
Cox was convicted of stabbing inmate Mark Dean Davis, 31, in the back. He
claimed he didn’t mean to kill Davis. At the time, Cox was serving time for
robbery, attempted murder, kidnapping, attempted assault and burglary
convictions.
Cox was convicted in 1994 of robbing a convenience store in Milwaukie and
stealing a Milwaukie police car, which he later crashed.
The Oregon Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday said it was still reviewing
the ruling and hasn’t yet decided whether to appeal.
(source: oregonlive.com)
USA:
Death penalty didn't stop evil of bigotry, bloodshed
The last time I saw John William King, he was leaving a courtroom in Jasper,
Texas, in handcuffs. It had taken a jury of 11 whites and 1 African-American
just 2 hours to convict him of one of the most heinous hate crimes America had
ever seen.
King was 24 at the time, clean-cut with an engaging smile. He did not look like
someone who could chain a man to the back of a pickup truck and drag him for
nearly 3 miles, ripping the body into pieces scattered along the road.
He looked like an all-American guy. But 49-year-old James Byrd Jr., the
unfortunate black man who crossed paths with King and his two accomplices that
awful day in 1998, proved how easily looks could be deceiving. One had to gaze
beyond King's boyish charm to see the monster that lived inside.
Last week, King was put to death by lethal injection at the state penitentiary
in Huntsville, Texas. But his execution did not change a thing. Before the week
had ended, evil was resurrected during a Passover service in California.
King orchestrated the lynching in Jasper and, for a while, he was one of the
most loathsome men in America. A self-proclaimed white supremacist, he
rekindled memories of a vile part of our nation's history that some thought had
been buried 40 years before. He reminded us that hatred and bigotry, when cast
into a shallow grave, could simply kick off the dirt and rise again with an
even greater vengeance.
Byrd, an unemployed ex-convict, became a martyr. His funeral drew a thousand
people from across the country, including politicians and activists. He had not
lived a perfect life, but he did not deserve such a horrendous death. On this
point, most Americans agreed.
The only way Jasper and the rest of the country could heal, most seemed to
think, was if King were put to death. 2 decades later, he was.
As a national reporter for the Tribune, I covered the 1999 trial, but I had
long forgotten the defendant's name. By the time he was executed, most
Americans likely had never heard about what King had done, or they could not
recall.
One of King's accomplices was executed in 2011, and the third is serving a life
sentence in prison. Byrd's murder reawakened America's spirit -- but it quickly
fell asleep again. People rarely mentioned it anymore.
In this country, outrage is fleeting. It mellows over time like emotional pain
vanishes after injecting a synthetic drug. When it comes to easing the burden
of injustice, America's drug of choice is apathy.
Byrd's slaying recalled an era when African-Americans were routinely lynched by
hooded nightriders. Jasper residents feared their town being portrayed as one
of the most racist communities in the nation. Some believed at the time,
however, that the case would be a catalyst for change across the country, as
the nation came together in solidarity.
But it changed nothing. Years later, there would be racial unrest in Ferguson,
Missouri, and Charlottesville, Virginia. There would be religious slaughters in
Charleston, South Carolina and Pittsburgh.
And there would be countless stories about attacks on Muslims, gays, lesbians,
Hispanics and African-Americans that would not even make the news. And the
nation would be even more divided.
When the trial was over, Booker T. Hunter, then the president of the Jasper
chapter of the NAACP, told me that King would have to die in order for people
to heal.
"If we get total justice, the death penalty, people will begin to heal," Hunter
said. "We will never forget it, but we can move on."
The truth is that we moved on long before King was put to death. But we still
have not healed. There have been too many evil people picking at the scab.
I am not an advocate of the death penalty. I have never believed that a life
for a life is the best way to right a wrong. Retaliating with more violence is
not the way to end violence. And certainly, it will not put an end to hatred.
But the timing of King's death seemed appropriate. As our country is under
siege by bigotry, contempt and anger, America was reminded that evil is nothing
fresh. It is something we have toiled with and cried over since our nation was
founded.
Though people eventually forget and move on, bigotry lingers and waits for the
perfect moment to strike again. Hardly a week goes by in today's America that
we don't see this hatred manifested. Each time we stop and wonder if evil is
winning, and whether we are helpless to stop it.
Last Wednesday, King lay on a gurney with a needle in his arm. Witnesses said
his eyes were closed the entire time, moving only once to take a deep breath
when the killing process began.
When the warden asked if he had any last words, King, 44, said, "No."
Byrd's sister watched from the gallery. "There was no sense of relief," she
said afterward. Some of the victim's relatives knew that from the start and had
advocated mercy for the killer.
It only took 3 days for evil to rear its head again. A gunman, yelling
anti-Semitic slurs, opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California. A
60-year-old woman was killed. A rabbi was shot in the hand and 2 others were
wounded.
King's execution did nothing to stop it.
(source: Commentary; Dahleen Glanton, Lincoln Journal Star)
**********************
Finding Common Ground on Repealing the Death Penalty
What do Michael Bloomberg and Oliver North have in common? How about Michelle
Malkin and Kim Kardashian West, or Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders? They may not
share much turf when it comes to their political or social views, but they do
all agree on one point that may surprise you.
They all oppose the death penalty.
Support for repealing the death penalty is diverse, it is growing, and it is
bipartisan in nature. The brokenness of the death penalty system, long
documented in local headlines and the cases they highlight, has hit a turning
point with the public. This year alone, Republicans sponsored death
penalty-repeal bills in ten states. That’s in keeping with trends that my
organization, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, has been
tracking since 2012.
I am a walking example of this trend.
Growing up as a conservative and as the daughter of a Southern Baptist
minister, my views on the death penalty were for many years exactly what one
might expect—absolutely pro. But I changed my stance after finally digging
deeper, and learning just how frequently innocent people are caught up in the
system. I learned about the outrageous costs of the death penalty’s operation.
I learned that the death penalty does not deter crime. I learned of the
extraordinary arbitrariness and racial bias in sentencing.
These are the reasons that many on the political right, like myself, are
joining the opposition to capital punishment and fighting for repeal.
At the end of the day, the death penalty is another failed big government
program marked by the same inefficiency and misallocation of resources found
throughout almost all bureaucracies. The tenets of conservatism are
straightforward: a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the
protection of the sanctity of human life. The death penalty does not meet any
of those metrics, so it makes sense that conservatives are abandoning it in
droves.
It’s been a rough few years politically in our country. The divisiveness and
the disagreements have left many Americans feeling as though we’ll never come
together again. I would argue that our ability to band together despite
differences in ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and culture is what
has made American civil society so strong for so many years. On this point, the
encouraging thing that I see in my work and in the movement against the death
penalty at large is it is providing those of us eager to find new common ground
with an opportunity to work across the aisle, on an issue we can all agree is
unjust.
As state legislatures across this country debated repeal bills, I’ve sat
shoulder to shoulder in hearings with people from all walks of life: Democrats,
Republicans, Libertarians; murder victims’ family members and death row
exonerees; Baptist, Jewish, Catholic, and Unitarian religious leaders; retired
law enforcement, state attorneys general, judges, and lawyers. The list goes on
and on. We have come together despite perceived and actual differences in
stations, beliefs, and backgrounds to eliminate this broken system. There is
power in that.
In addition to the growing number of repeal bills across the nation, there are
some other signs of success that point to Americans’ growing disapproval. New
death sentences are actually down 60 percent since 2000, and last year was the
4th year in a row that the country carried out fewer than 30 executions. All 25
of those executions stemmed from just 8 states, and Texas alone was responsible
for over 1/2 of them.
In short, not only is usage of the death penalty down, it is concentrated and
isolated.
I often say that support for the death penalty runs a mile wide and an inch
deep. The minute someone takes time to examine the facts around the death
penalty support quickly wanes. My elevator pitch response to “what do you do?”
is almost always real-time evidence of this fact. There are simply too many
problems with the system for us to allow it to continue.
Given all the progress we have made in repealing the death penalty in recent
years, and the diversity of support that made it happen, I think it makes
perfect sense for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and the ACLU
to work together as the U.S. marches closer to ridding the nation of this
broken system forever.
When those opportunities arise and we find issues that unite us, I believe we
must choose to come together. And when we come together as Americans, we know
big things happen and we can fulfill the promise of justice in our justice
system, one defined by equity, conscience, and our shared values as a society.
(source: EIN Presswire)
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Cruel or Not, the Death Penalty Is Definitely Unusual----What the sentencing of
Tiffany Moss, who starved her stepdaughter to death, tells us about capital
punishment in 2019
It came as no surprise when a Georgia jury sentenced Tiffany Moss to death on
Tuesday. After three hours of deliberation, Gwinnett County jurors previously
found the 36-year-old woman guilty of starving her 10-year-old stepdaughter to
death in 2013. But the sentence was still unusual in one respect: It was the
1st time since 2014 that a Georgia jury had handed down a death sentence at
all.
Moss’s case highlights the paradox surrounding American capital punishment
today. In some ways, the practice’s future looks more secure now than it did
just 5 years ago. With Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, the Supreme Court
is more openly hostile to death-row prisoners than at any other time in the
last 20 years. Last year, 54 % of Americans told opinion pollsters that they
support capital punishment, marking a rare uptick after years of decline.
But the death penalty is unambiguously falling out of favor where it matters
most: in jury deliberation rooms across the country. Death sentences have
dropped precipitously nationwide since peaking in the 1990s. American juries
sent 315 people to death row in 1996, when public enthusiasm was at its
strongest. In 2018, juries handed down only 42 sentences. It amounted to the
3rd-lowest annual total since the Supreme Court revived capital punishment in
1976. (The 1st- and 2nd-lowest years were 2016 and 2017.)
Sentencing numbers offer a more telling snapshot than any other statistic. The
most commonly cited figure is how many people are executed each year, which has
also fallen sharply since the 1990s. But this is a flawed indicator because
death sentences are often carried out years or even decades after they’re
handed down. When Americans tell a Pew researcher or Gallup pollster over the
phone whether or not they support the death penalty, the question is cold,
abstract, and weightless. A juror assigned to a capital case faces a far
different calculus. Their decision means the difference between life and death
for a human being sitting across the room.
While jurors are intimately familiar with the gruesome details of the case at
hand, they’re also increasingly aware of the system’s overall flaws. A Pew
survey conducted in 2015 found that 56 % of Americans supported capital
punishment in general, but also that many of them had doubts about it. 71 % of
respondents said that there was some risk an innocent person would be executed,
while 61 % of them said the death penalty doesn’t deter serious crimes. Only 41
% thought that white and non-white defendants are equally likely to receive a
death sentence.
Other factors may be at play here. As I noted in 2015, prosecutors are pursuing
the death penalty less frequently. Each death sentence comes with an arduous,
time-consuming appeals process that can last decades. That imposes a financial
burden that many counties might not be able to afford, especially in an era of
tight budgets and dwindling tax bases. The Great American Crime Decline means
there are fewer murders to prosecute at all. Some states have even abolished
the death penalty in recent years, though none of them were the dozen-or-so
Southern and Western states where new death sentences are most common.
In 2015, I also noted that the decline in new death sentences had created a
widening geographic disparity in the system. That trend seems to have
accelerated. 26 states that allow capital punishment saw no new death sentences
in 2018, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Only 14 states had
at least one death sentence that year. (The federal government also obtained 2
death sentences in Texas.) There are more than 3,000 counties or their
equivalents in the U.S., but last year the nation’s death sentences came from
just 36 of them.
For some of the death penalty’s proponents, this decline may not be a problem.
Just because one thinks capital punishment is acceptable—as a constitutional
question, as a matter of public policy, and as a moral and ethical
issue—doesn’t mean it has to be used in abundance. But even those who might not
think capital punishment is “cruel” would have a hard time arguing that it’s
not “unusual” now. Justice Stephen Breyer cited its scarcity as a potential
constitutional problem in his dissent in 2015’s Glossip v. Gross, a landmark
case in which the conservative majority ruled that the use of midazolam, a
lethal injection drug, did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition
against cruel and unusual punishment.
“If we look to population, about 66 % of the nation lives in a state that has
not carried out an execution in the last three years,” Breyer wrote. “And if we
look to counties, in 86 % there is effectively no death penalty. It seems fair
to say that it is now unusual to find capital punishment in the United States,
at least when we consider the nation as a whole.”
One might be forgiven for thinking that the decline of the death penalty also
means that those sentenced to death are the worst of the worst, those who truly
deserve it. But all too often, those sentenced to death turn out to be those
least able to defend themselves. Moss, for example, turned down the assistance
of court-appointed defense attorneys and said she would represent herself.
During the trial, she declined to give an opening statement to the jury or to
question the prosecution’s first 10 witnesses. Moss’s court-appointed attorneys
tried to intervene, filing a motion that said she previously suffered damage to
the part of her brain associated with reasoning and judgment. They were denied.
When the judge asked Moss at one point if she needed anything to assist her
with the case, she only replied, “Pencils.”
The Supreme Court and other defenders of capital punishment might consider it
an elementary feature of the American criminal justice system. A majority of
Americans are also willing to support it, or at least tolerate it in principle.
When push comes to shove, however, jurors and prosecutors are treating the
system like something else: an antiquated relic of a bygone age, largely
reserved for the least capable members of society, and handed down with the
arbitrariness of lightning.
(source: Matt Ford is a staff writer at The New Republic)
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