August 4
TEXAS:
El Paso Shooting: 21-Year-Old Suspect Patrick Crusius Likely to Face Capital
Murder Charges
The El Paso, Texas Walmart shooting suspect could face capital charges
following an investigation, officials said during a press conference late
Saturday. Police have not confirmed the suspect's name, but multiple reports
have identified him as Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old white male from Allen,
Texas. The shooting left 20 people dead and at least 26 injured.
"Right now we have a manifesto from this individual that indicates to some
degree he has a nexus to potential hate crime," El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen
said during the press conference, reports KETK.
The FBI is also investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime.
If convicted on capital murder charges, the suspect could be sentenced to life
in prison or face the death penalty in Texas.
The manifesto police referred to was posted on social media before the shooting
and was shared on Twitter afterwards. The one seen on social media references
the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand on March 15, 2019. It also
shows an interest in white nationalism.
Allen said a document was left behind at the scene.
During the press conference, officials confirmed that the suspect surrendered
to police as they approached and no force was required when arresting him.
The identities of the victims were not released, but officials said the victims
ranged in age from 2 to 82. At least 2 children were reportedly among the
injured victims.
The shooting happened at a Walmart on a busy Saturday afternoon. Officials
estimated that 1,000 to 3,000 people were inside the store, located next to the
Cielo Vista Mall, at the time.
Allen said the scene will "be in play for a long period," adding,
"Unfortunately, the deceased will remain at the scene until the scene is
processed properly for evidentiary purposes to be gathered for later
prosecution," reports CNN.
13 victims were taken to University Medical Center of El Paso, where 1 of them
died. 11 victims were also taken to Del Sol Medical Center. At least two of the
patients there are in a "life-threatening predicament," Del Sol Medical Center
Dr. Stephen Flaherty told CNN.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote on Twitter that 3 of the
victims were Mexican citizens, reports CBS News. Mexican Consul General
Mauricio Ibarra said 6 of the injured are Mexican citizens.
Following the shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said local law enforcement was
working with federal authorities to investigate. "In El Paso, the Texas Dept.
of Public Safety is assisting local law enforcement & federal authorities to
bring this tragedy to the swiftest & safest possible conclusion," Abbot wrote.
"We thank all First Responders for their courageous response & urge all area
residents to remain safe."
(source: popculture.com)
NORTH CAROLINA:
NC should end race-based juror selection
From unconscious bias to outright racism, race has played a significant role in
creating a justice system that too often results in unfair and unjust outcomes.
The negative impact of race is nowhere more evident than in jury selection,
with North Carolina providing a particularly illustrative - and troubling -
case study.
Across North Carolina, prosecutors remove twice as many potential black jurors
as white jurors during jury selection. And black people are four times more
likely to be imprisoned than white people. The same trends exist in death
penalty juries, resulting in black defendants being twice as likely as their
white counterparts to be sentenced to death for identical crimes.
Whether these disparities are the product of implicit or explicit bias — it is
a profound injustice and the cost is black lives. That’s why Fair and Just
Prosecution and over a dozen other groups joined together to ask North
Carolina’s Supreme Court to stand up against the entrenched practice of
excluding people of color from juries.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that it was illegal to exclude citizens
from juries because of their race and set up a process for assessing these
challenges, but the North Carolina appellate courts have yet to find race
discrimination against a juror of color, and have routinely disregarded U.S.
Supreme Court rules for addressing jury discrimination concerns. North Carolina
is one of only a handful of states that has never enforced the ban on
race-based jury selection.
Now, the N.C. Supreme Court has the chance to turn the corner and send a strong
message that the era of excluding jurors of color with impunity is over. The
court recently agreed to hear two cases where black jurors were excluded at
disproportionate rates. In one case, the prosecution used eight of their twelve
strikes to remove black jurors. In the other, the prosecutor said he removed a
black juror because he’d been the victim of breaking and entering, while
accepting six white jurors who were victims of the same crime. The court will
also hear arguments in six separate cases next month presenting evidence that
black citizens have been systematically excluded from death penalty juries.
We hope the fact that the court has agreed to hear these cases means they are
finally ready to tackle this vitally important issue.
As current and former prosecutors, we understand prosecutors’ duty to seek
justice and know that justice will never be administered fairly as long as it
is driven by a “win at all costs mentality.” Elected prosecutors must commit to
ending race discrimination in jury selection, while also using their voices to
advocate for broader systemic changes to address practices dating back to
segregation.
This is not just a matter of justice. It is a matter of public safety.
As studies have shown, when given the same set of facts, white jurors are more
likely to find a black defendant guilty than a white defendant, suggesting that
all-white juries may be an impediment to justice. On the other hand, diverse
juries consider a wider range of information and deliberate more thoroughly and
accurately.
If North Carolina’s highest court finds race discrimination, it will hardly be
breaking news. Even the conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court have
spoken up against the racist exclusion of jurors. Most recently, the Supreme
Court issued a decision(authored by Justice Kavanaugh) overturning the
Mississippi death sentence of Curtis Flowers because of the prosecutor’s
blatant pattern of removing black people from the jury.
In the Flowers decision, Justice Kavanaugh recognized that such discrimination
is an American problem that began with slavery and continued through Jim Crow.
It remains rampant today, Kavanaugh observed, and has serious consequences for
the criminal justice system. “Other than voting,” he said, “serving on a jury
is the most substantial opportunity that most citizens have to participate in
the democratic process.” We couldn’t agree more.
It’s a new day in North Carolina, as people begin to wake up to the epidemic of
mass incarceration and the impact of racially-disparate policing and
prosecution. A new generation of prosecutors have been elected precisely
because people want these trends to change. Across the political spectrum,
including in North Carolina, there is now broad agreement that the criminal
justice system must be reformed, and racial disparities must be rooted out.
We hope the North Carolina Supreme Court will play its part by acknowledging
that race unfortunately still determines who sits in our jury boxes, that
discriminatory jury selection is incompatible with justice - and that the lives
of all defendants deserve equal protection under the law.
(source: Opinion; Satana DeBerry is the District Attorney for Durham County,
North Carolina. Miriam Aroni Krinsky is a former federal prosecutor and the
executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a national network of elected
prosecutors working towards common-sense, compassionate criminal justice
reforms----Greensboro News & Record)
******************
Charles Davenport: Time to dust off the death chamber
"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims
and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice
system." -- Attorney General William Barr
In late July, the Trump administration announced its intention to resume
executions of convicted murderers on federal death row. As expected, editorial
boards, academics, and other liberal activists risked bodily injury stampeding
to the nearest microphone or keyboard to condemn the policy.
James Coleman, a law professor at Duke, declared that the administration was
merely picking "low-hanging fruit that gives its political base a sense that
something is happening." Professor Brandon Garrett, Coleman’s colleague at
Duke, also pooh-poohed the initiative.
"However dramatic it may sound," Garrett opined, the announcement "does not
mean that we should expect to see executions ... anytime soon." Both professors
are staunch opponents of the death penalty.
Likewise, The (Raleigh) News & Observer’s editorial board. "The death penalty,"
the editors wrote two weeks ago, "is unnecessary, unjust and irreversible."
Capital punishment, in their view, is merely "an act of vengeance."
Despite the trend away from capital punishment in recent years, these 'elite'
voices do not represent the majority. 54 % of respondents to a Pew Research
poll in June 2018 said they support the death penalty; 39% said they are
opposed. Alas, the elite routinely demean and alienate 1/2 — if not the
majority - of the population.
Here on American soil, the case for capital punishment has been convincing for
about 250 years, and it still is. Changing the minds of opponents is not
likely, but achieving some level of understanding is plausible.
A bit of background, to render concrete what would otherwise be purely
philosophical: Attorney General William Barr has ordered expedited executions
for 5 specific 'gentlemen' on the federal death row. (The infamous Dylann Roof
waits in the wings.) Most of their offenses - shockingly cruel and
breathtakingly brutal - were committed against women, children and the elderly.
We need not dwell on the stomach-churning specifics of their crimes.
Support for capital punishment is derived, in part, from a conviction most of
us share: lex talionis, the law of retaliation, in which the severity of
punishment corresponds to the severity of the offense. It’s commonly called "an
eye for an eye," but scholars call it "retributive justice."
When the schoolyard bully finally picks on the wrong boy, and receives a
well-deserved bloody nose or busted lip in front of his peers, that’s
retributive justice on a smaller scale. The spectacle satisfies most of us, but
the editors of The News & Observer would sneer at such retribution as lowly,
anachronistic 'vengeance.' That term has a negative connotation, but
retribution is perfectly legitimate.
But isn’t support for the death penalty synonymous with contempt for human
rights? No, contrary to the case made by Margaret Huang, the executive director
of Amnesty International USA. She says restarting federal executions is
"outrageous. It is the latest indication of this administration’s disdain for
human rights."
Bovine excrement.
Here’s British philosopher John Stuart Mill: "Does fining a criminal show want
of respect for property, or imprisoning him, for personal freedom? Just as
unreasonable it is to think that to take the life of a man who has taken that
of another is to show want of regard for human life. We show, on the contrary
... our regard for it, by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that
right in another forfeits it for himself, and that, while no other
crime...deprives him of his right to live, this shall."
North Carolina should follow the lead of the Trump administration and revive
its dusty death chamber.
(source: Charles Davenport, Greensborto News & Record)
*********************
Allen Johnson: A system that executes innocent people is not about justice
Keith Harward spent 33 years in a Virginia prison for beating to death a man
with a crowbar and then raping his wife until DNA evidence finally exonerated
the Greensboro native.
Darryl Hunt, who was wrongly convicted for murder in 1984, was exonerated in
2004. Hunt died in March 2016.
As the Trump administration cranks up the wretched machinery of capital
punishment - either for real or as a campaign ploy, or both - 2 names of Triad
men come to mind: Darryl Hunt and Keith Harward.
Hunt was a 19-year-old Winston-Salem man who was wrongly convicted of rape and
murder in 1985.
Deborah Sykes, 26, a copy editor for The (Winston-Salem) Sentinel, had been
raped, sodomized and stabbed 19 times in the chest on Aug. 10, 1984.
Harward is a Guilford County native who was convicted in 1982 of beating to
death a man with a crowbar while his wife watched ... and then raping the wife
before the man’s eyes as he lay dying.
Hunt spent 19 years in prison, Harward, 33, before both were exonerated by DNA
evidence, and in Hunt’s case, the confession of the actual murderer. Neither
received a death sentence, but each could have.
I have been fortunate enough to know both men, and I was stunned by their utter
lack of bitterness. It has to be the worst feeling imaginable to know you’re
innocent and still facing a life behind bars. Who wouldn’t be angry beyond
words? Who wouldn’t be driven mad by the hopelessness?
But for the grace of God, Harward and Hunt may well have been dead by the time
the truth emerged, suffocated by poisonous gas or injected with lethal
chemicals.
The 5 federal prisoners who will be put to death by December, if the Trump
administration has its way, were convicted and sentenced for especially
horrific crimes. But the problem with the justice system is that it is
fundamentally imperfect. It makes mistakes. Lots of them.
Since 1973, 166 people on death rows in the U.S. have been exonerated.
But a mistake that culminates in a wrongful execution cannot be undone. And
when that happens nobody wins. Not the victim’s family. Not the state. Not the
public, which still may in danger from the person who actually committed the
crime. And certainly not the poor soul who lost his life for no good reason.
Too often the U.S. justice system is anything but just. And it
disproportionately penalizes people of color and the impoverished. (Harward is
white; Hunt was black).
Donald Trump, of all people, show know that. In 1989, he famously paid $85,000
for full-page ads in four newspapers calling for the execution of the Central
Park 5 -- 5 youth of color who had been coerced into confessing that they had
beaten and raped a 28-year-old white jogger.
"BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE," the ads declared in
blaring type.
In the end, the actual rapist admitted to the crime. But Trump has not
apologized. He never does.
Nor, apparently, did he learn from the tragic mistakes - and outright
corruption - that changed those young men’s lives. But at least they lived.
More than a few people haven’t been so fortunate.
Consider Jesse Tafero, who was convicted and executed for murdering 2 Florida
Highway Patrol officers in 1990. A jury had recommended a life sentence but a
judge imposed that death penalty.
Tafero was put to death in an electric chair that malfunctioned not once, not
twice, but 3 times, taking a torturous 7 minutes to wrest his life away.
Tafero’s skin fried and his head was set afire before he died.
2 years later, another man confessed to the murders.
As for Darryl Hunt and Keith Harward, both displayed amazing grace after being
freed that I will never understand.
Sadly, Hunt died in 2016 - the year Harward was freed - from self-inflicted
gunshot wounds. He was estranged from his wife at the time and terminally ill.
(Even someone with such a gentle and peaceful spirit, it turns out, still had
his demons.) Meanwhile, Harward was still counting his blessings when we spoke
in 2017.
He could be bitter, he told me. "But for me to be bitter is for me to allow
them to control me some more. That’s time wasted. I don’t have time to waste."
There was too much of his life still left to live. He planned to savor every
second. He had spent more than half his life behind bars. And he’s one of the
lucky ones.
Still, some of you may these miscarriages of law and order as acceptable losses
- the price of wreaking righteous revenge on bad people. Until the person who
is wrongly convicted is your loved one.
Or until that person is you.
(source: Allen Johnson, Greensboro News & Record)
LOUISIANA:
Louisiana's AG jumps back into federal suit over executions
Louisiana's attorney general is rejoining a long-running legal battle over
lethal injections of death row prisoners.
Federal judges overseeing the lawsuit, which challenges the state's execution
laws and procedures, have since 2014 put all executions in Louisiana on hold.
State Attorney General Jeff Landry abruptly quit the case last summer, claiming
that Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards hadn't fought hard enough to restart
executions, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. That came
after a state attorney agreed to another delay in the case, saying that
litigating it while Louisiana still lacked execution drugs would be "a waste of
resources and time."
But with the latest court-ordered halt to executions set to expire in the
coming weeks, Landry filed Thursday to rejoin the litigation.
Louisiana's Department of Corrections asked Landry's office to rejoin its legal
team last week, despite Landry's repeated attacks accusing prison officials of
dragging their feet on executions. Landry's court filing, however, included
some criticism of the Edwards administration and the DOC. Solicitor General
Elizabeth Murrill, a top Landry deputy, wrote that those agencies "have not
adequately defended the state against the allegations" in the federal lawsuit.
It's unclear whether Landry's return signals that he has patched up his
disagreements with the Edwards administration over how to push forward with
executions or whether Landry will clash with the administration in court over
the issue.
"We look forward to working with the DOC in both ending this frivolous
litigation and commencing executions of the most heinous criminals," Landry
said.
The move is the latest chapter in Landry's enthusiastic and unreserved embrace
of the death penalty. He has repeatedly challenged the governor to clarify his
own views on capital punishment. Edwards has elaborated little, saying only
that he will carry out Louisiana's laws, and accused Landry of grandstanding.
Edwards and top prison officials say the state's inability to acquire execution
drugs, not a lack of will, has stymied attempts to carry out the death penalty.
An Edwards spokeswoman also noted that Landry's court filings acknowledged that
the state likely still lacked the drugs to carry out an execution even if U.S.
District Judge Shelly K. Dick, who's presiding over the case, were to lifted
the stay on executions.
"Even the Attorney General acknowledges that the state, with or without the
stay, cannot carry out any executions because it does not have access to the
drugs that would be necessary to complete the state's execution protocol," she
said.
The attorney general however argued in his filing that the current lack of
lethal-injection drugs is "not a reason to continue to concede to delays in
this case."
Dick allowed Landry to add Murrill as an attorney for state prison officials.
But Dick asked attorneys for the death row inmates challenging the execution
protocols to write additional briefs about whether to allow Landry's office to
intervene as a separate party.
Those briefs are due Sept. 4.
Dick extended the order blocking executions at least until after she's ruled on
that question.
The state hasn't carried out a death sentence since 2010 and has executed just
3 inmates over the past 2 decades.
Prison officials have found the drugs used in lethal injection have become
increasingly difficult to acquire, with large drugmakers refusing to sell them
for use in executions. Several other states have successfully acquired the
drugs from compounding pharmacies, small boutique operations that custom-mix
drugs. But compounding pharmacists in Louisiana have refused to mix the drugs
for executions, according to affidavits filed by prison officials.
That's at least in part out of fear of protests and negative publicity if their
role in making execution drugs is exposed, according to Landry and his
deputies. The attorney general pushed a bill in this year's legislative session
to blanket the acquisition of execution drugs in thick secrecy. But the
proposal, which Edwards indicated he'd likely sign, was ultimately rejected.
(source: Associated Press)
INDIANA:
Executions waning; 9 men on death row----Lack of needed drugs contributing to
trend
On death row
Indiana's death row currently consists of 7 white men and 2 black men.
Fredrick Baer: Killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter in 2004 near Lapel.
His death sentence has been set aside and he is awaiting a new sentencing.
Joseph Corcoran: Killed 4 men in 1997 in Fort Wayne. He has exhausted all
appeals.
William Gibson: Southern Indiana serial killer that murdered three women
between 2002 and 2012. He was sentenced to death in 2 cases.
Michael Dean Overstreet: Killed a Franklin College student in 1997.
Benjamin Ritchie: Killed a Beech Grove police officer in 2000. He has exhausted
all appeals.
Roy Ward: Raped and killed a teenager in rural Indiana in 2001. He has
exhausted all appeals.
Kevin Isom: Killed his wife and her 2 children in Gary in 2007.
Jeffrey Weisheit: Killed 2 children during an arson fire at his Vanderburgh
County home in 2010.
Eric Holmes: Stabbed 2 supervisors to death at his Indianapolis workplace in
1989.
--
On paper, Indiana is 1 of 29 states that has the death penalty.
But no one has been added to death row since 2013 and it has been a decade
since an execution.
Fewer death penalty cases are being filed and many result in plea agreements -
such as Marcus Dansby being sentenced in July to 300 years for killing four in
Fort Wayne and Anthony Baumgardt receiving life in prison without parole in May
for killing a deputy in Boone County.
But 9 men sit in cells at the state prison in Michigan City, wondering when
they will face the lethal cocktail of drugs. Collectively they killed 13 adults
and 6 children - through gun, blade or fire. 3 have exhausted their appeals and
still wait - year after year.
"I think it's cruel and unusual punishment to have someone waiting that long
for their execution," said veteran Indianapolis defense attorney Eric Koselke.
"I can't imagine living under the threat of death for so long."
He has been involved with about 30 death penalty cases at various levels - from
trial to state and federal appeals. None of his clients have been executed.
Attorney General Curtis Hill hasn't asked for execution dates for those three
convicted murderers - Joseph Corcoran, Benjamin Ritchie and Roy Ward - because
he said the Indiana Department of Correction doesn't have the drugs needed to
carry out an execution.
Until 2016, appeals were still in process and the lack of medication wasn't a
problem.
"We are waiting for the green light from DOC," Hill said. "Inadequate supply
chain has been a problem for 2 years."
The correction department changed the specific cocktail for lethal injection in
2014 when its supply of lethal injection drugs expired. Indiana uses a
three-drug protocol to carry out execution orders: Brevital to induce
unconsciousness; Pancuronium or Vecuronium Bromide to stop breathing; and
Potassium Chloride to stop the heart, according to the department's website.
A lawsuit challenged the change - alleging the state didn't follow proper
procedure - but ultimately the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in favor of the
state.
Indiana and other states - along with the federal government - have struggled
to obtain the drugs needed because many pharmaceutical manufacturers don't want
to be associated with executions.
A few states, including Georgia, Missouri and Texas, have switched to just 1
drug - Pentobarbital. That's what the U.S. attorney general said the federal
government would do when he announced 2 weeks ago federal executions would
resume.
The correction department confirmed to The Journal Gazette the state doesn't
have the necessary drugs to conduct an execution. But even before the drug
supply became a problem, the death penalty was waning.
Indiana authorized capital punishment in 1897 and hanged 13 people up until
1913. At that point electrocution became the method of execution by which 62
prisoners were put to death. In 1995 the method switched to lethal injection
and 19 people have been executed.
The longest period between executions was 20 years -- 1961 to 1981. But there
was a national moratorium on the death penalty in the 1970s with more than a
dozen Indiana death sentences set aside. Indiana's death penalty statute was
reinstated in 1977 and cases began working their way through the system again.
There was another gap between 1985 and 1994 without an execution. But starting
in 1996 there was generally 1 a year with 5 in 2005. Former Gov. Mitch Daniels
oversaw 9 executions - the last being Matthew Wrinkles in December 2009.
Huntington County Prosecutor Amy Richison said some of the shift away from the
death penalty started in 1993 when lawmakers allowed life in prison without
parole as a sentence in capital cases. She chairs the capital litigation
committee for the Indiana
Prosecuting Attorneys Council.
The Indiana Public Defender Council receives notice of every death penalty
filing but no entity gets notice of life without parole filings.
There are currently only 2 active death penalty cases in the state.
Richison also said the duration of a death penalty case is much longer than a
typical murder case - prosecutors are lucky to get to trial within 3 years. And
the cost of the prosecution and defense falls on counties, meaning economics
plays a role in deciding whether to seek the death penalty.
Also, once a county prosecutor gets a conviction, the case is out of their
hands.
"Absolutely there is frustration," Richison said. "To whom we direct our
frustration is the question. I perceive the attorney general is taking the
necessary steps to move them forward. But the lack of resolution for victims is
incredibly frustrating."
Nationally, those under a death sentence average 151/2 years between sentencing
and execution. Corcoran - who killed 4 men in Fort Wayne during the summer of
1997 - has been on death row since 1999. The longest-serving death row inmate
in Indiana is Eric Holmes, who was sentenced in 1993 for killing 2 people
during a robbery.
“The victims' families are a big factor in why death penalty filings have
dropped,” Koselke said. "People are aware of how long this process takes and
they want closure and don't want to go through it."
Hill said he still believes the death penalty is a deterrent, but would like to
see the appeals process condensed while still protecting due process. He said
punishment in general is more effective when it comes closely after the crime.
“The lengthy time of the appeals process has created a scenario where a lot of
people are more likely to die in prison of natural causes than be executed,”
Hill said.
Koselke said prosecutors are using more discretion when seeking death, but
noted that many murders fall under the statute due to an extensive list of
aggravating circumstances. One reason he believes the death penalty needs to be
abolished is that the status of the victim has more to do with seeking the
death penalty than anything. He noted death penalty applications are common
when children or police officers are victims.
A lawsuit is pending challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty in
Indiana but is in its early stages and there is no injunction blocking
executions.
(source: The Journal Gazette)
ARIZONA:
Arizona to consider reviving the death penalty
Joseph Wood was the last person executed in Arizona. It was July 23, 2014, and
it took the state nearly 2 hours to put him to death.
Dale Baich was one of Wood’s attorneys. He witnessed the execution.
"After about 9 minutes, his mouth opened wide, his head moved up against the
restraints, he bucked up against the straps and he started gulping and
gasping," Wood tells News 4 Tucson.
5 years and a lawsuit later, a settlement in court made a lethal injection
cocktail of 2 different drugs a thing of the Now, the state has agreed to use 1
drug: Pentobarbital.
Recently, the U.S. justice department said it would resume capital punishment.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich thinks it’s time Arizona revive the
death penalty as well. He wrote a letter in support of reinstating capital
punishment to Gov. Doug Ducey:
But death penalty opponents are concerned.
Emily Skinner is the Assistant Director of the Arizona Capital Representation
Project, a non-profit that works with death row inmates to improve their
defense.
"I’m worried about the lack of transparency that Arizona has shown in the past
with regards to where it was getting the drugs, what drugs it was using and the
qualifications of the people who would be administering the drugs," Skinner
said. "In Arizona, we do have natural life sentences and those tend to resolve
more quickly."
More than 100 people are on death row right now in Arizona.
Brnonvich said 14 of the inmates have exhausted their appeals.
(source: KVOA news)
USA:
Trucker faces federal execution----Gruesome Texas case among those affected by
reinstated death penalty
A chile killer who has spent 15 years on federal death row faces execution in
January after the U.S. government reinstated the death penalty last month --
ending a hiatus that began a year after truck driver Alfred Bourgeois tortured
and killed his 2-year-old daughter in Texas.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced July 25 that the government would
resume federal executions, beginning with 5 convicts who have exhausted their
apeals processes.
Bourgeois' case shares some traits with the other 4 federal prisoners sset for
execution in December and January: Their crimes were gruesome and involved
child victims.That's why they were chosen to end the federal hiatus that began
in 2003, critics of the death penalty say.
"When people read about the disgusting nature of the torture and abuse here,
many people who support the death penalty harden in their attitudes," said Rick
Halperin, the director of Southern Methodist University's Embrey Human Rights
Program. "But we have to get beyond ourselvels for a better America."
Death penalty proponents, however, lauded Barr for the decision, which will
provide hundreds of victims closure, said Michael Rushford, president of the
nonprofit Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
"The politics around capital punishment at the federal level has denied
hundreds of victims the justice that juries lawfully found for the murders of
their loved ones," Rushford said. "Finally, we have an attorney general after a
generation who is moving forward with it."
Even so, opponents of capital punishment said they're confident the reversal
won't affect the overall trend toward ending the death penalty.
Research from the Pew Research Center shows the number of people who are being
sentenced to death has declined, as has support for capital punishment.
Texas remains the leader in state executions with 561 since the practice
resumed in 1982, 448 more than runner-up Virginia. Since 1963, only 3 federal
prisoners have been executed, 2 of them for Texas murders. The 3rd was Oklahoma
City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
A survey by the think tank found overall support for the death penalty has
dropped from 78 % in 1996 to 554 % in 2018. The most recent figure crept a bit
higher,however, from the 49 % of Americans who supported the death penalty in
2016.
More recently, the topic has emerged as an issue in the 2020 presidential
campaign, with Democratic candidates including Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris announcing their intention to abolish the practice.
Bourgeois, 55, is set to be executed by lethal injection Jan. 13, 2020, at the
U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Ind. A Texas jury found the long-haul trucker from
Louisiana guilty in 2004 of beating his daughter to death at a Corpus Christi
naval base June 28, 2002.
The day she died, the girl had tipped over her potty training chair in the cab
of Bourgeois' 18-wheeler. He became enraged an slammed her head into the truck
window.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that Bourgeois had continually and
regularly abused the child, physically and sexually, often concealing her
injuries with socks and sunglasses.
Halperin and other experts say the decision to reinstate federal executions was
to be expected, considering President Donald Trup's long-held support for
capital punishment.
"The announcemnt isn't shocking in any way," said John Blume, the director of
the Cornell Death Penalty Project and a professor at Cornell Univeristy. "What
this does is shine a spotlight on the many problems with the federal death
penalty that are similar to ones on the state side."
Racism also complicates capital punishment cases, Blume said. People of color
who commit crimes against white people face uneven odds in the justice system,
he said.
White people make up 55 % of death row inmates, compared with about 72 % of the
U.S. population as a whole. And 75 % of victims in capital punishment cases are
white, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit
organization focused on capital punishment in the U.S.
Bourgeois, who is black, maintained he was innocent throughout the trial,
refusing to take a plea deal, and blamed his wife for the murder.
But while in jail, he joked to another inmate that "that [expletive] baby's
head got a sbig as a a watermelon" after he beat the child with a plastic
baseball bat, court documents show.
The jury took less than 2 hours to find Bourgeois guilty and later recommended
the death sentence.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
****************************
A giant step backwards
Last week, Attorney General William Barr took the nation backwards yet again,
announcing that the federal government would resume executions of federal
prisoners who have been convicted of capital crimes. The problem with Barr’s
pronouncement - and the problem with the death penalty in general - is that it
essentially guarantees that innocent people will at some point die for crimes
they did not commit.
Barr’s decision to end the undeclared moratorium on execution for federal
crimes came in the form of an instruction to the Bureau of Prisons to resume
executions starting in December. The order specifically targets 5 men who have
sat on death row for years for a variety of reprehensible crimes. The one thing
they share in common is that all 5 have been convicted of murdering children, a
crime most people feel to be among the worst infractions that anyone can
commit.
In fact, it is likely because of such unforgivable crimes that the death
penalty continues to enjoy relative popularity in the United States, although
the number of supporters has declined precipitously since the 1990s, when
nearly 3 out of every 4 Americans supported the ultimate form of punishment.
Today, 60 % still believe that capital punishment should be allowed.
But just because something is popular does not necessarily make it moral or
just. In fact, study after study has shown that the death penalty is not now
nor has it ever been meted out equally and fairly to defendants; that a black
man who kills a white victim is far more likely to face execution than a white
man who kills a black victim, the crowning injustice from a justice system that
continues to be plagued by institutional racism.
In fact, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, although African Americans
make up just under 13 % of the nation’s population, approximately 42 % of the
more than 2,700 people on death row today are African Americans. More than one
out of every three people executed since capital punishment was reinstated in
1976 have been African Americans. While white people account for only about 50
% of the murder victims in the United States, more than 75 % of cases where the
perpetrator was executed for murder involved a white victim. Combine this with
the fact that nearly 99 % of prosecutors involved in death penalty cases are
white, and you begin to see a pattern of systemic racial bias.
Further complicating the death penalty debate is the fact that although 1,500
or so individuals have been executed in the last several decades, more than 160
people sitting on death row have been exonerated during the same time period.
To put it another way, for every 10 people who have faced lethal injection, the
electric chair, hanging, firing squad, or the gas chamber, one was found
innocent before the sentence could be carried out.
Any system that doles out the ultimate punishment should be able to
substantiate a 100 % accuracy rate. Anything less than that means that innocent
people have likely not only sat on death row, but come off it and ended up in
an execution chamber. If you think that sounds like a high bar to meet,
consider this: If you or someone you cared about was that 1 in 10, would you
feel justice had been done?
Barr, of course, is merely acting out the bidding of a White House. President
Trump has for years been consistent in terms of his belief that the death
penalty is an underused and effective crime deterrent. In 1989, he famously
paid for several full-page ads calling for New York to reinstate the death
penalty after prosecutors alleged that 5 young African-American men had
brutally beaten and raped a white woman jogging through Central Park. Despite
deep flaws with the investigation, all 5 were convicted, only to have their
judgments vacated years later when the actual perpetrator stepped forward and
confessed. Had New York had the death penalty at that time, there is the very
real possibility that exoneration would have come too late.
None of this is to say that the 5 men who stand to be executed beginning in
December are innocent of their crimes. But when the punishment is final, it is
incumbent upon the system administering that punishment that it always be
correct, and that quite simply has not been the case.
(source: Editorial, Cape Cod Times)
**************************
Poor company: U.S. joins capital punishment club
Now that the federal government has announced its plans to resume executions,
I’d like us to reflect on our membership in the worldwide capital punishment
club. These are the other countries, who, according to Amnesty International,
executed more than 10 prisoners last year: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam,
Iraq, Egypt, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, Somalia, and presumably, North Korea.
Michael Jones -- Manchester
(source: Letter to the Editor, St. Louis post-Dispatch)
****************************
Abolish the death penalty and reform America's criminal justice
system----People can commit the same capital crime and receive different
punishments depending on factors such as race and financial status.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is wrong to bring back the death penalty at
the federal level because it is my belief that if it is wrong for people to
kill people, it is wrong for the government to kill people. I am against the
death penalty because innocent people have died at the hands of the government.
That's not justice. Additionally, people can commit the same capital crime and
receive different punishments depending on factors such as race and financial
status. That's not justice.
If we look at the state level, some states permit the death penalty while
others have outlawed it. This creates another problem in that the punishment
for the same crime is not equally distributed out because of state law. That's
not justice.
The death penalty needs to be abolished across the board in this country
because it does not deter crime, it has killed too many innocent people who
have been exonerated after the execution, and it does not undo the damage to
families and communities. Murder is wrong and executions are murder. This
yields the question, how are we going to reform our criminal justice and prison
systems?
Robert Stevens
Hagerstown
(source: Letter to the Editor, Indianapolis Star)
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