July 15
SOUTH CAROLINA:
SC moves death row to new prison for 2nd time in 2 years
For the 2nd time in 2 years, South Carolina has moved its death row inmates to
a new prison.
State Corrections Department Director Bryan Stirling said the 37 inmates
awaiting execution were taken Thursday morning from Kirkland Correctional
Intuition to Broad River Correctional Intuition about 1/2 mile (0.8 kilometers)
away.
Stirling says prison officials studied death rows in Virginia and North
Carolina to address concerns about treatment from a 2017 federal lawsuit by 16
inmates. The new death row will allow inmates to eat meals with each other,
worship together and have jobs.
Previously, death row inmates were in solitary confinement even during the hour
they got outside their cells.
Death row was moved from Lieber Correctional Intuition near Charleston to
Kirkland Correctional Intuition in 2017.
(source: Associated Press)
ALABAMA:
Why does God need public records? In Alabama, that’s a real question.----When
Tabitha Isner requested the Department of Corrections execution protocols, a
state lawyer interrogated her on her faith, her family, her work history and
her social media habits. And, yes, why an all-knowing God would need access to
public records.
Why in the name of God would anyone need a public record?
After all, doesn’t the Almighty already know what those documents show?
Those aren’t rhetorical questions. For Tabitha Isner, they were real, asked of
her by a lawyer for the Alabama prison system. And she had to answer under
oath.
Swear to God.
Or, if you care about transparency and accountability in government, just
swear.
Like the Holy Bible, maybe we should start in the beginning.
When Isner asked for Alabama’s death row execution protocols, she had to give a
reason on the Department of Corrections’ public information request form.
Isner has strong opinions about the death penalty (like a lot of people do).
She’s an ordained minister, although she doesn’t lead a church (her husband
does, though). Later she would run for Congress against Rep. Martha Roby (Isner
lost).
When she filled out the form she said what a lot of politicians and preachers
say when confronted with a prickly question: She wanted to pray on it.
Next to “Proposed Use of Records” she wrote: “As a member of the clergy, I feel
a spiritual obligation to pray over executions. To do this most effectively, I
need to have a detailed understanding of how executions are carried out.”
Her complete answer would have been more complex, she says now, but the blank
on the form was about 6 inches long.
“When you fill out one of these forms, you don’t expect to be under
investigation,” she told me.
But that’s what happened.
Public records access is supposed to be free in Alabama. But it cost one
business $70,000.
This whole story should never have happened.
Her 2-year fight to get those records has taken her to court. As part of that,
she had to sit for a 2-hour deposition, under oath, where a lawyer for the
state asked her, among many other things, why God would need the information
she sought.
Really. That happened.
Alabama’s Open Records Act says all citizens are entitled to inspect public
records and take copies upon request. It used to be simple as that.
However, in 1991 the Alabama Supreme Court rejected the simple meaning of the
law for a more capricious interpretation. Custodians of public records, the
court said, may ask requestors why they want records “so long as the question
is not intended to dissuade people from seeking the records and is not used in
the ordinary course as a means to prevent people from having access to such
record.”
But the Department of Corrections used that as license to interrogate and
intimidate.
When the DOC deposed her, Isner had to answer deeply personal questions about
her faith, her social media habits, her adopted children, her political
beliefs, her charitable donations, her work history and just about everything
you might imagine apart from the only question that mattered — whether the DOC
documents are public records.
“It was very uncomfortable, and I think that was the point,” she said.
It was during that deposition the state’s lawyer questioned why God would need
a public records request since He already knows everything there is to know.
Q: But certainly the God described in those scriptures is an omniscient God?
Isner: God is often described in scripture as omniscient.
Q: Which means knows all things, if I got my Latin right?
Isner: Yes.
Q: And so if God hears our prayers, all prayers, and God knows all things, God
would -- God would know the details of these protocols that you want to find
out about under that theory. You agree with that?
Isner: Yes, I think God knows how people are killed.
When Isner revealed she had donated to Planned Parenthood, the DOC’s lawyer
asked whether she thought sex selection or Down syndrome were legitimate
reasons to have an abortion.
Q: And so are you saying you would not support their — their abortion work? It
would be the non-abortion work or — do you think an abortion is consistent with
sacredness of life?
Isner: You’ve got some time today, huh?
Q: Yeah, I’m very curious. Yes.
He asked about Isner’s adopted child, and he questioned whether she prayed for
the victims of violent crimes as she did for the prisoners on death row. For a
stretch, the 2 debated public prayer and whether Isner could pray through her
Twitter account.
It’s a testament to Isner’s Christian faith that she didn’t turn that lawyer’s
cheek with the hard side of her hand.
The Department of Corrections is desperate to keep its death penalty process
secret, and it’s no wonder why. It has struggled to kill people legally, and
maybe even illegally. In 2015, the federal government seized drugs the state
bought illegally off the black market. The shoddy, shady sources for the deadly
cocktails have become a weak spot death penalty opponents have leveraged.
Media organizations, including Alabama Media Group, have sued for the same
information, too. So far the courts have ruled favorably for openness, but all
these cases are still on appeal.
Isner says she’s personally against the death penalty but she doesn’t hold out
hope for changing many minds in Alabama. Yet she wonders why the state is so
determined to keep its execution process secret. It seems the state is afraid
that if people knew the details they might feel differently about capital
punishment, she says.
“Even if you support the death penalty, surely you don’t support someone having
to defend their religious beliefs under oath to make a request like this,” she
said.
The thing that put a chill on her was the deposition, she says. Would she do it
all again? She says she doesn’t know.
“What it taught me was the Open Records Act is not functioning,” she said. “You
cannot get this information. And the state actors will intimidate and use all
sorts of inappropriate tactics to discourage requests and transparency.”
Amen to that.
Why in heaven would God ever need public records?
Open records reveal our politicians’ secret sins and expose when our public
officials bear false witness. They are the best tools — often the only tools —
the public has to hold our government accountable. They are the light our
crooks try to hide under a bushel, and without them, all we’re left with is
prayer.
So if it helps, pray — first, to the higher courts to let our records go.
And if that doesn’t work, then help us, God.
(source: Opinion, Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the
Alabama Media Group----al.com)
LOUISIANA:
Jury sentences man to death for 2015 slaying of Louisiana State Policeman
A man who fatally shot a Louisiana State Tropper in 2015 was sentenced to death
by a Lafayette Parish jury.
The 12-person jury on Saturday unanimously decided Kevin Daigle should be
sentenced to the death penalty. In 2018, Louisiana voters amended the state
constitution to prohibit non-unanimous verdicts in criminal cases.
Daigle, now 57, shot and killed Trooper Steven Vincent during a traffic stop
near Bell City. The trial was moved to Lafayette Parish from Calcasieu Parish.
“The judgment is justice," said Calcasieu Parish District Attorney John
DeRosier in a post-trial conference. "This gentleman is evil. He’s evil and he
did an evil thing. And he deserves to pay the penalty that justice requires.
And in that respect, he is the worst of the worst."
A judge will formally sentence Daigle in October. He was found guilty of
1st-degree murder Tuesday after jurors debated for about 15 minutes.
During the trial, which lasted less than a week, jurors saw a dash-cam video
from Vincent's patrol car. It showed Vincent try to help an intoxicated Daigle,
who was in a truck on the side of the road, according to KPLC. The video showed
Daigle shoot Vincent in the head, then stand above him and say, "oh, you're
still alive? You're still going to die."
Several passers-by stopped and subdued Daigle while trying to help Vincent.
The video ended nearly an hour later when Vincent was airlifted to the
hospital. State prosecutors argued Daigle understood the consequence of
actions, despite his intoxication level.
The defense argued the opposite. Because of Daigle's intoxication level, he
could not have made the decision to intentionally shoot Vincent. It showed
jurors an hour-long video of Daigle in the backseat of a trooper's patrol car
after he was arrested.
(source: Lafayette Daily Advertiser)
USA:
Man ruled ineligible for execution after mental disability diagnosis
Bruce Webster has been on death row for 23 years. Last month he got a stunning
reprieve.
A federal judge ruled that new evidence had come to light suggesting Webster
has a mental disability, making him ineligible for execution. It’s the first
time someone has been saved from the death penalty by a post-conviction
diagnosis of mental infirmity from newly discovered evidence, his lawyers say.
“It is so unusual and in many ways unprecedented,” said Steven Wells, an
attorney at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney which represented Webster.
Judge William T. Lawrence from the Southern District of Indiana ruled that the
records weren’t available to the defense at the time of Webster’s original
sentencing, so introducing them now was valid grounds for reconsideration.
Webster was 1 of 5 men convicted of kidnapping 16-year-old Lisa Rene from an
apartment near Dallas in 1994. They were looking to get revenge on her brother
after a $5,000 drug deal went bad. They took Rene to Arkansas where the honor
roll high school student was beaten, raped and buried alive, according to The
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Webster and 1 of the other men were convicted and sentenced to death. The 3
others reached plea deals sparing them execution.
At the original trial in 1996, Webster’s attorneys argued their client was
mentally challenged, but the government had its own expert witnesses who
claimed the defendant was faking his disabilities to escape liability.
Despite 4 of the 12 jurors thinking the defendant “is or may be mentally
retarded,” Webster was sentenced to death.
His lawyers at the time had tried to find government records to back up their
disability claim, but failed. More than a decade later, his appellate lawyers
were able to get Social Security records showing Webster had applied for
disability benefits a year before the murder, and had been deemed disabled
because of a low IQ and psychological deficiencies.
The prior records would have countered the government’s claim Webster had faked
his mental evaluations while on trial.
After looking back over Webster’s evaluations from the Social Security records,
Judge Lawrence ruled executing him would run afoul of the Constitution under a
2002 ruling from the Supreme Court, which held the 8th Amendment’s prohibition
on cruel and unusual punishment prevents putting persons with mental
disabilities to death.
In that dispute, Atkins v. Virginia, the defendant had IQ scores around 59.
Webster’s scores ranged from 48 to 77.
“The scores themselves were obtained over a period of 25 years and consistently
demonstrate that Webster has an IQ that falls within the range of someone with
intellectual deficits,” Judge Lawrence ruled.
The government argued Webster had reason to exaggerate his disability, but the
judge rejected that, pointing to testimony from a psychologist who said faking
low scores over such a long period of time would be “extremely difficult.”
John Donohue III, a law professor at Stanford University, said generally the
threshold for intellectual disability is around 70.
“The court has said even a little bit higher might still constitute sufficient
mental disability. Clearly this is a very, very low level intelligence and the
court has said that for a host of reasons if you are that mentally disabled
you’re not going to be able to be executed,” he said.
Mr. Donohue noted a small amount of the population — only about 2.5% — are
considered intellectually deficient. But he said within that small group, there
tends to be a higher proportion of crime committed, so the Atkins ruling “does
have some real significance.”
But Sheri Lynn Johnson, a law professor at Cornell University, doubted the
ruling will open floodgates for other death row inmates.
She said most times an intellectual disability finding comes up after trial,
it’s a matter of ineffective lawyering. In this case, the lawyers weren’t at
fault, but new evidence arose, she said.
The government has until October to appeal Judge Lawrence’s ruling.
Webster is on death row in Indiana, which is why he heard the appeal. But a new
sentencing would happen in the federal court in the Northern District of Texas,
where the kidnapping occurred.
Erin Dooley, the public affairs officer for U.S. attorney there, said they are
evaluating their options.
(source: The Washington Times)
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