July 18
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Mercy sisters honored for efforts to help New Hampshire end death penalty
A group of Mercy sisters has been honored by the New Hampshire Coalition
Against the Death Penalty for the key role they played in making New Hampshire
the 21st state in the country to abolish the death penalty.
Sisters Eileen Brady, Mary Ellen Foley and Madonna Moran received the
recognition on behalf of their community at a celebration in Concord June 22.
The New Hampshire Sisters of Mercy have long played an active role in opposing
the death penalty. In December 1997, they adopted a “Corporate Stand Against
the Death Penalty” and since then many sisters have served on committees,
petitioned legislators, written letters to newspaper editors, testified at
legislative hearings, participated in rallies and prayer vigils and prayed that
the death penalty would be replaced by restorative justice.
Their efforts bore fruit May 30 when the New Hampshire Legislature overrode the
governor’s veto of a bill to repeal capital punishment.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing
Network, a Washington-based organization that works to end the use of the death
penalty, called the repeal “a major step toward building a culture that
unconditionally protects the dignity of life and is yet more evidence that the
death penalty is falling out of favor with the American public.”
The organization thanked the state’s Catholics for their efforts to support the
measure that abolished the death penalty, which included Bishop Peter A.
Libasci of Manchester’s written testimony calling capital punishment “a faulty
response” to crime. The bishop had urged legislators to “repeal the death
penalty” and devote more resources to providing services to families of murder
victims as a way to “offer a true path of support and healing.”
(source: cruxnow.com)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Philadelphia DA wants state Supreme Court to declare the death penalty
unconstitutional
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court to declare the death penalty system unconstitutional, a move in line with
a national dwindling of support for the death penalty. “Because of the
arbitrary manner in which it has been applied, the death penalty violates our
state Constitution’s prohibition against cruel punishments,” Krasner states in
a brief filed in the case Jermont Cox v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Krasner’s challenge is part of a series of amicus briefs filed in support of
life sentences for Cox and another death row inmate, Kevin Marinelli. Both Cox
and Marinelli were sentenced to death for homicide; both are represented by the
same lawyers.
The briefs come from organizations including the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the
Juvenile Law Center, and from the murder victims’ family members. The four
family members’ brief filed in Cox’s case “know the pain, confusion, heartache,
and trauma left in the wake of a loved one’s murder,” the brief states. But
they oppose the death penalty, knowing “firsthand that its imposition only
complicates grieving and impedes healing.”
The court’s justices—5 Democrats and 2 Republicans—said in December they will
consider whether to take up the issue.
Out of the 45 people currently on death row in Philadelphia, 37 are black and 4
are from other “minority groups,” according to an analysis of death convictions
in Krasner’s brief. “It really is about poverty,” Krasner told The Appeal. “It
really is about race.”
At the state level, about half of death row prisoners were black over the past
30 years, even though the state’s black population is less than 12%. The
lawyers representing Cox and Marinelli asked the state Supreme Court to weigh
in on the use of the death penalty last August, when they called it “a system
of capital punishment that is replete with error, a national outlier in its
design, and a mirror for the inequities and prejudices that plague American
society.”
In 2013, Philadelphia County ranked 3rd in the country in people it had
prosecuted being on death row. When Krasner ran in 2017, he promised not to
seek the death penalty.
Death sentences have plummeted nationwide, with executions highly
geographically concentrated. The year 2018 marked the 4th year in a row with
fewer than 30 executions—and 1/2 were in Texas. Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the
Death Penalty Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Civil
Rights and Social Justice, attributes the decline partially to reformist
district attorneys in formerly high-use areas, including Krasner in
Philadelphia. Krasner and a handful of other reformist district attorneys
who’ve opposed the death penalty stand out, The Justice Collaborative legal
director Jessica Brand said. “They’re used to the tough on crime mantra in
people’s DNA,” she said. Still, opposition to capital punishment has recently
gained momentum among Democrats.
When recently elected California Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on the
death penalty, several Democratic presidential candidates expressed their
support. The New York Times questioned the candidates on whether they support
or oppose the death penalty, and every candidate except for Gov. Steve Bullock
of Montana said they oppose it. Former Vice President Joe Biden was not
interviewed, though he has consistently supported the death penalty in the
past.
It’s a sharp turn from the “tough on crime” Democratic Party of the ‘90s and
2000s, when then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was running for president and made
a point to return to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a mentally ill black
man, Ricky Ray Rector.
Still, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro has said he
supports the death penalty for “the most heinous of crimes.” Cox was sentenced
to death in 1 of 3 drug-related murders in Philadelphia. Marinelli was found
guilty of the torture killing of a Northumberland County man during a robbery.
On Monday, Shapiro filed a brief requesting the court decline jurisdiction over
the cases. “Our brief makes clear the Office of Attorney General’s position
that policy decisions should remain the responsibility of the Legislature, and
that these issues should be a priority,” the attorney general’s spokesperson
Jacklin Rhoads said in a statement.
Shapiro’s brief argues that the issue of racial discrimination in
Pennsylvania’s death penalty system should also be a legislative concern,
rather than for the courts to pursue. “In our constitutional system it is the
legislature which best discerns and represents the will of a sovereign people,”
the brief states. More than a dozen state senators filed an amicus brief in
agreement with Shapiro.
Shapiro’s filing comes on the heels of another act to halt Krasner’s reforms.
The state legislature recently passed a bill which grants Shapiro the authority
to prosecute certain gun offenses, which means he could overstep cases in which
Krasner chooses not to prosecute. The bill gives Shapiro this authority only in
Philadelphia, and only for the the next 2 years until Krasner is up for
re-election.
The dynamic in Philadelphia over the use of the death penalty is indicative of
a broader national question on criminal justice. In Washington, King County
District Attorney Dan Satterberg called the death penalty “broken” and called
for its repeal.
In Missouri’s St. Louis County, District Attorney Wesley Bell ran on a promise
not to pursue the death penalty, and sparked news when he stuck to the promise
in the case of Thomas Bruce, who is charged with killing one woman and sexually
assaulting others at a Catholic Supply store.
And though Texas still has a disproportionate concentration of death
convictions, the election of reform-minded district attorneys in Dallas County
and Bexar County, where San Antonio is located, have led to a decline in death
penalty cases.
So other district attorneys will have an eye on Philadelphia in September, when
the court will decide whether to make a decision on the question of the death
penalty’s constitutionality. “The death penalty is broken, racist, and it’s
putting the most vulnerable people on death row, not the worst of the worst.
Krasner is in line with enormous momentum on this issue,” Brand said. “It’s
another extension of the question, where are we on crime? Where are the
Democrats?”
(source: alternet.org)
*****************
It’s time for Pennsylvania to abolish the death penalty
This week, District Attorney Larry Krasner argued in a brief to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the death penalty in Pennsylvania is
unconstitutional. Krasner’s office reviewed every death sentence imposed on a
Philadelphian between 1978 and 2017 -- a total of 155 sentences -- and found
that 72 percent of the sentences were overturned, most due to inadequate
representation. The major point is that race, income, and intellectual
disability determines who ends up on death row.
Krasner’s brief was in support of a petition urging the state Supreme Court to
use its power to weigh in on the constitutionality of the death penalty. The
petition is the result of a consolidation of 2 cases brought by two people on
death row, Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli. Other organizations -- such as the
Juvenile Law Center and the ACLU of Pa. -- have also filed briefs in support of
the petition. Attorney General Josh Shapiro argued against the petition in a
brief stating that the future of the death penalty should be determined by the
legislature, not the judiciary.
Arguing that the death penalty in Pa. is broken is not a stance exclusive to
progressives. Last summer, the Pennsylvania’s General Assembly Joint State
Government Commission, a bipartisan effort, released a condemning report on the
death penalty. Over 280 pages, the Commission found that the death penalty is
applied unevenly across the commonwealth, affected by factors like race and
county. The Commission further noted the large proportion of people with mental
illness and intellectual disabilities on death row -- a population that is
supposed to be constitutionally protected from the death penalty.
The report concluded with multiple recommendations on how to fix capital
punishment in Pennsylvania. There is a simpler solution: abolish the death
penalty.
The strongest argument against the death penalty in Pennsylvania: More people
have been exonerated than executed. Since the death penalty was reinstated in
Pennsylvania in 1976, hundreds of people were condemned to death, while only 3
people were executed. All 3 of them were mentally ill and had waived their
appeal. In the same time period, 6 people on death row were exonerated.
The 140 people now on death row are languishing in indefinite, de facto
solitary confinement, sometimes for decades. If that is not cruel punishment,
what is?
Abolishing the death penalty is possible. New Hampshire did it just a few weeks
ago -- leaving Pa. as the last state in the northeast to have the death penalty
on the books. But Pennsylvania could be next. Rep. Chris Rabb (D, Philadelphia)
and Rep. Frank Ryan (R, Lebanon) plan to introduce in the fall bipartisan
legislation to abolish the death penalty. In 2015, Gov. Tom Wolf put a
moratorium on executions.
The death penalty is expensive, unevenly applied, and, according to a consensus
among criminologists, does not deter crime. Whether it is through the state’s
Supreme Court or bipartisan legislation, this upcoming fall could finally offer
the best chance for Pennsylvania to abolish the death penalty.
(source: Editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer)
ALABAMA:
Death penalty sought for 2 charged in Birmingham double murder
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against 2 people charged with the
murder of a Birmingham couple.
24-year-old Zachary Phillips and 30-year-old Kristen Gullion are charged for
the murders of Mary and Joe Holt. Officers say the suspects stabbed the couple
to death during a robbery last year.
They’re also accused of kidnapping the couple’s 3-year-old granddaughter ,
tying her up with a phone cord and leaving her in a bathtub. The child was not
injured. Officers say both were on probation for separate theft-related crimes
at the time of the murders.
(source: rocketcitynow.com)
TENNESSEE:
Man State Is Seeking Death Penalty Against Says He Is Being Mistreated At The
County Jail
A man the state is seeking the death penalty against says he is being
mistreated at the County Jail.
Courtney High, who is charged along with Andre Grier and Charles Shelton in the
death of state witness Bianca Horton, is asking Criminal Court Judge Tom
Greenholtz for a hearing.
A motion filed by attorney Steven Moore says High is being held in solitary
confinement for 23 hours per day and, when he is allowed out of that cell, he
is accompanied by 2 guards.
The attorney said he is often not able to meet with High because jail personnel
say they do not have two guards available at the time.
He also claimed that items he has sent to High do not reach him and that he has
not gotten material High has sent to him. He said court documents that High had
with him in the cell have become missing.
The motion said High is not allowed to shower every day, is not able to
communicate with other prisoners and is not given exercise time.
It was claimed that High is not getting adequate medical and mental health
treatment.
The attorney said drugs were found on High, but he said the only way that could
have happened would be getting it from jail personnel since he is kept away
from others.
He said on one occasion that Greer, Floyd Davis and others were placed in an
elevator without a guard and went to the sixth floor where High is housed for a
religious service purportedly. He said each of the men was armed with a
"shank." At the same time, he said High was escorted ouit of his cell. He said
Greer, Davis and the others confronted High and a fight broke out.
Attorney Moore also claimed that within the past 10 days that High was removed
from his cell around 2 a.m. by 4 or more guards, who took him to an area on the
6th floor that is not covered by cameras. It was claimed that the guards then
physically assaulted High "by using a taser gun and punching and kicking him
while he laid on the floor of the jail."
High claimed that "Officer Roberts used the taser and Officers Jones, Lewis and
Thorn physically beat him."
He said he was returned to his cell "and refused medical treatment."
High claimed that the next morning the first shift supervisor saw blood on his
clothing and took a picture of it, then sent him for medical treatment.
(source: chattanoogan.com)
NEVADA:
Death penalty to be sought in deadly North Las Vegas shooting
A Las Vegas judge set a July 2020 trial date for a man accused of killing an
11-year-old girl in a gang-related shooting that targeted the wrong house.
Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty.
Jarquan Tiffith, 20, is alleged to be 1 of 3 men who opened fire on a North Las
Vegas home in November. Angelina Erives, 11, was struck by gunfire as she sat
at the home’s kitchen table, helping her 14-year-old sister with a science
project.
The Clark County district attorney’s office filed a notice of intent to seek
the death penalty June 14. Tiffith faces 1 count each of murder and conspiracy
to commit murder, as well as multiple counts of attempted murder and 43 counts
of firing a gun at or into an occupied structure.
In the notice, the district attorney’s office stated several aggravating
circumstances contributed to the decision, including the high number of shots
that were fired in a heavily-populated area.
“The area is clearly a residential neighborhood with multiple occupied homes,”
the notice states.
3 other suspects, 18-year-old Erin Deshawn Lynn Hines, 19-year-old Isaac George
and 16-year-old Damion Dill, face the same charges. Hines told police he chose
to drive the car because he didn’t want to shoot anyone, his arrest report
states.
A 5th suspect, 19-year-old Guy Lee Banks III, died from a gunshot wound to the
head after a neighbor fired at their vehicle as they fled the scene.
Tiffith’s next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 16. His trial is set to
begin July 28, 2020.
(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)
CALIFORNIA:
Law Professors, Legal Scholars Call for End to Death Penalty in LA
A group of law professors and legal scholars released an open letter today
calling on District Attorney Jackie Lacey to stop seeking the death penalty in
murder cases, citing a report that the convicted killers who have been
sentenced in Los Angeles County to death while she has been in office are all
"people of color.''
"Not only does Lacey seek and obtain the death penalty more often (than) almost
any other prosecutor, those sentenced to death under her watch have been
exclusively people of color,'' according to the letter, which is signed by
professors from universities including USC, UCLA, UC Irvine, Loyola Law School
and Pepperdine. ``She pursues the death penalty in the face of terrible defense
lawyering and not withstanding a moratorium on executions in California.''
The letter, signed by 75 law professors and legal scholars, notes that "a
majority of Los Angeles County voters favored the abolition of capital
punishment in both 2012 and 2016.''
A report released last month by the American Civil Liberties Union -- which
called for the district attorney to "step up and step away from the death
penalty'' -- noted that 13 of the inmates who were sentenced to death since
Lacey was sworn in as the county's top prosecutor in December 2012 were Latino,
while 8 were black and one was Asian. The report noted that no county in the
United States has produced more death sentences than Los Angeles County, with
nearly 1/3 of California's death row inmates coming from the region.
In a letter released earlier this month, Lacey countered that she has "asked
for and received death sentences for 8 defendants in some of Los Angeles
County's most horrendous killings,'' including the torture-murder of an
8-year-old boy in Palmdale and the killings of five people at a homeless
encampment in Long Beach.
The district attorney noted that the victims were diverse -- 6
African-Americans, 6 whites, 5 Latinos and 4 Asian Pacific Islanders.
"I mention race because my office recently was criticized for its record on the
death penalty,'' Lacey wrote. "My prosecutors make decisions based on the facts
of the crime -- not the race of the defendant or the victim. In Los Angeles
County, a committee of experienced and diverse prosecutors examine the facts of
these cases, including mitigating circumstances presented by the defendant and
his attorneys, in one of the nation's most extensive review processes.''
In a statement shortly after the open letter was released, Shiara
Davila-Morales of the District Attorney's Office said, "The law has not changed
and, until it does, Los Angeles County prosecutors will continue to fairly
evaluate all special circumstance cases and seek death against the worst of the
worst offenders, including child murderers and serial killers. In Los Angeles
County, our office has sought a death sentence for less than 3 percent of the
approximately 1,200 defendants who, under the law, may be punished for their
crimes by death.''
(source: KFI AM radio news)
********************
California’s execution pause hasn’t stopped new capital cases. The Supreme
Court could change that
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s death penalty moratorium hasn’t stopped district attorneys
from pursuing capital punishment in California, but the state Supreme Court is
considering a case that could change that.
Newsom suspended the state’s death penalty in March, granting temporary
reprieves for California’s 737 death row inmates, shuttering the execution
chamber in San Quentin State Prison and withdrawing the state’s lethal
injection protocol.
His executive order only halts the death penalty while he is governor. In the
meantime, district attorneys across the state have continued to pursue capital
charges against defendants.
Lawyers for a man facing five capital murder charges say that should stop. They
are appealing to the state Supreme Court to block capital murder trials while
Newsom’s moratorium is in effect.
In a petition filed with the court earlier this month, lawyers for Cleamon
Johnson argue jurors cannot fairly decide whether to put someone to death while
the moratorium is in place. To return a fair decision, the lawyers argue,
jurors have to believe their choice could result in the defendant being put to
death.
Under Newsom’s order, the jurors will “be unable to assume a death sentence
will result in an execution and be unable to comprehend fully the gravity of
their decision,” they argue.
“In light of this paradigm shift, a California jury in a capital case cannot be
expected to provide a fair and reasoned penalty-phase determination,” the
lawyers wrote.
Johnson’s lawyers filed the petition with the Supreme Court on July 1 after an
appeals court judge dismissed the argument. The next day, the Supreme Court
asked prosecutors to respond. The Supreme Court also halted a separate death
penalty case after lawyers in that case made a similar argument.
Those actions indicate the court is taking the argument seriously, said Robert
Sanger, one of Johnson’s lawyers.
David Ettinger, who closely watches the court as an appellate lawyer at Horvitz
& Levy law firm, said although it could be significant that the court didn’t
dismiss the argument off the bat, it’s too soon to say if the justices will
rule on the merits of the argument. There’s also no way to know whether the
court will side with Johnson if it does engage the issue.
San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said he anticipates the Supreme
Court will ultimately weigh in on the case, which he welcomes because it will
give him and his colleagues clarity on how to handle death penalty-eligible
cases.
Wagstaffe, former president of the California District Attorneys Association,
said he and other California DAs believe the court will rule against the
argument. It’s already standard to tell juries they must assume the sentence
they return will be carried out, even though they know a governor can reverse
their decision through his clemency powers, he said.
“Its a smart point for them to bring up,” Wagstaffe said of Johnson’s lawyers.
“But we think that answer is one that has been dealt with before.”
In their response filed Tuesday, prosecutors argued that concerns about the
moratorium can be handled during jury selection and that it shouldn’t spare
Johnson from facing the death penalty.
“Jurors are routinely asked to set aside these types of things in order to
reach a just verdict based on the evidence and the law,” prosecutors wrote.
“The real goal of this petition is to turn Governor Newsom’s moratorium, which
is nominally a ‘reprieve,’ into a judicial abolition of the death penalty in
California.”
If the Supreme Court rules in Johnson’s favor, it could effectively ban death
penalty trials in the state, said Sanger, whose client is accused of killing
five people in Los Angeles in the 90s.
That would be a significant impact of Newsom’s executive order, which didn’t
alter the status quo when he signed it in March. By then, California had not
executed anyone for more than a decade, although Newsom argued executions could
soon resume.
Newsom said he could not ethically sign off on any executions while in office,
despite commitments he made in 2016 that he would uphold the will of the
voters, who reaffirmed their support for the policy that year.
Newsom also stressed the possibility that the state could kill innocent people
if it resumes executions.
“I can’t sign my name to that,” Newsom said. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at
night.”
(source: Sacramento Bee)
USA:
Convicted Killer Brendt Christensen Could Be Illinois’ 1st Death Sentence in
Decades
The death penalty was abolished in Illinois years ago, but the man convicted of
killing a Chinese student at the University of Illinois could still be the 1st
person from Illinois sentenced to death in nearly 15 years.
12 jurors are now all that stand between Brendt Christensen and death row, as
deliberations begin in the death-penalty phase of his federal trial.
Christensen was convicted last month of kidnapping and killing 28-year-old
Yingying Zhang in 2017. It took jurors less than 2 hours to deliberate before
reaching a verdict in late June, convicting Christensen on a charge of
kidnapping resulting in a death, along with 2 counts of lying to investigators.
At trial, federal prosecutors described in grisly detail how Christensen, a
former doctoral student at the university, allegedly kidnapped Zhang by posing
as an undercover officer, and then raped, stabbed, choked, beat, and ultimately
decapitated her.
The same jury that convicted Christensen is now deciding whether he should face
the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of release.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, 8 years after former Governor
George Ryan commuted the sentences of all Illinois death row inmates in 2013.
The last person executed in Illinois was the serial killer Andrew Kokoraleis in
1999.
But the death penalty remains legal at the federal level, where Christensen’s
case was prosecuted.
And while death sentences are rare in federal cases — and executions even rarer
— it’s still possible Christensen could be sentenced to die.
If sentenced to death, Christensen would join an exclusive club of just 62 such
prisoners nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC),
a nonprofit that studies capital punishment. Only 2 people have been executed
by the feds since Timothy McVeigh was put to death in 2001, according to DPIC.
Prosecutors argued Christensen has expressed no remorse for killing Zhang — a
fact jurors will likely consider during their deliberations. He would face a
unique situation as someone sentenced to death in a state without the death
penalty — an outcome his family begged jurors to avoid during the trial.
“I am just so sorry that my son was the cause of the pain,” Christensen’s
father, Michael Christensen, said in court during the penalty phase of the
trial last week.
According to his father, Brendt Christensen’s mother was an extreme alcoholic
throughout his childhood; he attempted suicide twice, his father said.
A day before Christen’s father took the stand, Zhang’s parents testified,
bringing jurors, and even Christensen, to tears. They also told the court
they’d approve of a death sentence if one was handed down.
Christensen’s attorneys have admitted he had abducted and killed Zhang since
his trial began, although Zhang’s body was never found and Christensen never
told investigators what he did with the body.
(source: CBS News)
************************
Why Justice Stevens Turned Against the Death Penalty----He ended up seeing it
as a failure.
Justice John Paul Stevens struck an important blow against the modern death
penalty 17 years ago in a Supreme Court decision barring capital punishment for
intellectually disabled people.
In his majority opinion in Atkins v. Virginia, Justice Stevens said the
“cognitive and behavioral impairments” of the intellectually disabled made them
“less morally culpable” and put them at “special risk of wrongful conviction.”
Those defendants, he warned, would be more prone to give false confessions and
less capable of helping their lawyers mount a strong defense.
It was a step toward greater humanity in the law from a justice who joined the
court as a supporter of capital punishment but who came to believe that it had
failed in practice and should be outlawed. His willingness to wrestle publicly
with this deep and divisive question, and to shift his views, was rare for any
judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice.
But Justice Stevens, who died Tuesday at age 99 from complications of a stroke,
believed in making what he called “careful, reasoned” judgments based on
evidence from the world around him. And for him, the death penalty, while
perhaps defensible in theory as the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime,
proved over his tenure to be haphazard and mistake-prone in its application
and, as plenty of evidence showed, racially discriminatory.
At the time of the 2002 Supreme Court decision, 18 states had recently ended
the death penalty for intellectually disabled defendants, joining a dozen that
had previously done so or had abolished the death penalty entirely. To Justice
Stevens, that meant the standards of decency that the court used to determine
when a punishment crossed the constitutional line had evolved into the “cruel
and unusual.”
“Over the years I became more and more unhappy with the failure of the court to
impose adequate procedures in capital litigation,” he told me when I
interviewed him 4 years ago. “I dissented in the ways we allowed for picking
juries and on the permissible scope of evidence allowed in a death penalty
hearing. I became increasingly disenchanted with the operation of the death
penalty. I did conclude in my own mind that it was unconstitutional. Because it
had some seriously harmful effects.”
His conclusion was a long time coming. When he joined the court in 1975,
Justice Stevens formed a middle-ground alliance with two moderates on the
court, Justices Potter Stewart and Lewis Powell, according to Evan Mandery,
author of “A Wild Justice.” The 3 justices decided to let states keep capital
punishment as long as it wasn’t mandatory; a state would have to give a jury
the power to spare a defendant’s life. In 1976, Justice Stevens joined Justice
Stewart’s opinion in Gregg v. Georgia cementing the status of capital
punishment as an “expression of the community’s belief that certain crimes are
themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response
may be the penalty of death.”
At the same time, the court had to decide whether to uphold or strike down the
law governing the death penalty in Texas. The state imposed the death penalty,
in many murder cases, if a jury had found merely that a defendant killed
deliberately and posed “a continuing threat to society.” But the law made no
mention of reasons a jury might decide to grant mercy. Did this, in effect,
make the death penalty mandatory? Professor Mandery, who teaches at the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, says that Justices Stevens and Stewart wanted
to strike down the law, but that Justice Powell disagreed. In the end, the
three justices joined together in an opinion, Jurek v. Texas, upholding the
Texas death penalty.
“I regret that vote because experience has shown that the Texas statute has
played an important role in authorizing so many death sentences in that state,”
Justice Stevens wrote in his memoir, “Five Chiefs,” published in 2011 after his
retirement. In Texas, the path to the death penalty did not narrow, as he had
hoped. It widened, with more than 560 executions from 1976 to now — more than
four times the number in any other state.
The distance Justice Stevens traveled over a quarter century was the path from
novice to veteran. Supreme Court justices hear many death penalty appeals.
Called upon time after time to stop or delay an execution, the justices come to
know this aspect of criminal law perhaps more closely than any other. They
oversee the country’s long-running “death penalty experiment,” as Justice Harry
Blackmun put it. They are effectively in charge of the lab. Over the years,
Justice Stevens became increasingly haunted by the probability of a wrongful
execution. That was what made the difference.
“Well, on the death penalty itself, if they” — meaning Texas and other states —
“had enforced the procedural safeguards I thought were going to be enforced,
I’m not sure it would be unconstitutional,” he told me. “Well, I guess it would
be. I guess I’d have to say it’s a relic of the past and it should be buried.”
In 2008, Justice Stevens renounced the death penalty as a “pointless and
needless extinction of life” while he also voted to impose it in the case then
before the justices, out of respect for the court’s previous decisions. It was
an imperfect kind of reckoning. But, as it had turned out, Justice Stevens’s
2002 opinion in Atkins helped further narrow the death penalty’s scope, as he’d
hoped. That decision laid the foundation for the court’s ruling three years
later ending the death penalty for those who commit capital crimes before the
age of 18.
Justice Stevens wrote separately in that 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, to affirm
his belief that constitutional interpretation is and must be an evolving
process. “That our understanding of the Constitution does change from time to
time has been settled since John Marshall breathed life into its text,” he
said, referencing the nation’s 1st chief justice.
That same year, Justice Stevens said in a speech that “learning on the job is
essential to the process of judging.” He didn’t see himself as in any way
infallible. To the contrary. And that was his strength as a judge.
(source: Opinion; Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the Magazine and the
Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School----New
York Times)
**************************
Justice Stevens changed death penalty views during 3 decades on court
Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who served on the court for
nearly 35 years, died July 16 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at age 99 after
suffering complications from a stroke the previous day.
The justice, who retired in 2010, remained active after retirement, even
writing his autobiography, "The Making of a Justice: My First 94 Years," which
was just released in April. Last year, he wrote an op-ed published in The New
York Times calling for action to end gun violence.
"He brought to our bench an inimitable blend of kindness, humility, wisdom and
independence. His unrelenting commitment to justice has left us a better
nation," Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement.
Stevens was often portrayed as the leader of the court's liberal side, but he
didn't stand by that description, telling The New York Times in 2007: "I don't
think of myself as a liberal at all. I think as part of my general politics,
I'm pretty darn conservative."
The justice, a Chicago-born Protestant who served as a naval intelligence
officer during World War II and was awarded a Bronze Star for his work with a
codebreaking team, stood firm on many issues and changed his opinion on others
during his time on the high court. Most notably, he changed his views on the
death penalty from initially supporting it to renouncing it completely.
He was known as a defender of strict separation of church and state and was
against official prayer in schools and vouchers for religious school tuition.
He also defended legal abortion, gay rights, and the rights of crime suspects
and immigrants in the country without legal documentation facing deportation.
Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, who is a longtime
opponent of capital punishment, posted a thread of tweets July 16 after the
announcement of Stevens' death outlining his opinion on the death penalty over
the years.
She said he voted with the court's majority in a 1976 case that reinstated the
death penalty nationwide after a four-year moratorium and after his retirement
he said this was the only vote he regretted.
In a 2008 death penalty case, he wrote that he had come to believe the death
penalty was unconstitutional. Prior to that, in 2002, he wrote the decision in
Atkins v. Virginia, which ended the death penalty for people with intellectual
disabilities, and in 2005, he voted to do away with the death penalty for
juvenile offenders.
He also spoke publicly against the death penalty in a number of interviews,
calling it a "wasteful enterprise" in 2016 and something the U.S. should do
away with under all circumstances in 2010.
In a 2014 interview on the "PBS NewsHour," he said he thought the court had
made a grave mistake in formulating rules that "slant the opportunity for
justice in favor of the prosecutor" in death penalty cases, especially when
"the cost is so high if you make a mistake."
"If you make a mistake in a capital case, there's no way to take care of it
later on. The risk of an incorrect execution in any case, to me, is really
intolerable. The system should not permit that possibility to exist," he said.
Similarly, in 2005, he also told the American Bar Association that recent
evidence that "a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed
erroneously" was "profoundly significant because it indicates that there must
be serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice."
In an abortion case in 1989, he was the only justice to say that a Missouri
statute declaring that life begins at conception violated previous court
decisions on abortion and was an "unequivocal endorsement of a religious tenet"
that "serves no identifiable secular purpose."
In 1992, he voted to uphold the right to an abortion in Planned Parenthood v.
Casey, which also established the "undue burden" standard for abortion
restrictions.
Justice Elena Kagan filled Stevens' seat on the court.
He is survived by 2 daughters, 9 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements are pending, the Supreme Court said in a statement
announcing his death. He is expected to be buried in Arlington National
Cemetery.
(source: Catholic News Service)
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