[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, FLA.
Nov. 2 USA: Opinion Is The Government Finally Scrutinizing The Death Penalty? The Supreme Court's focus on the administration of death by lethal injection could expose the plethora of problems that come with the death penalty. That's the hope of Russ Feingold who's using the Court's stay of execution for a Mississippi prisoner to re-introduce his Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act. The Wisconsin Democrat fired off a statement yesterday declaring that, This de facto moratorium on executions by lethal injection gives us a chance to recognize just how deeply flawed the implementation of capital punishment in this country is. Since the Supreme Court effectively legalized the federal death penalty in 1976, death penalty legislation or even legislative oversight has been nearly non-existent. Feingold's hearing this summer on death penalty implementation was the first of its kind since 2001-- the last time a Democratic majority enabled Feingold to chair a Senate committee. But there are indications that Feingold may no longer be the lone wolf in Washington howling about the death penalty's moral and practical problems. His hearing this summer actually made front-page headlines when fired U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton gave specific examples of the Alberto Gonzales-led Justice Department eagerly pursuing death sentences at the expense of due process. Nationally, executions this year are down to 42, their lowest level in a decade. Of those executions all but one were done via lethal injection. And the Supreme Court's stay of execution for Mississippi prisoner Earl Berry was, according to the New York Times, an indisputable indication that the Court will stop all deaths by lethal injection until next spring. That's when the nine justices argue Baze v. Rees, which will determine if death row inmates can challenge the so-called 3-drug cocktail used for executions as a violation of 8th amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Some doctors now argue that the drug combination may sometimes result in inmates being paralyzed but not anesthetized, meaning the final moments of their lives are spent in searing pain, unable to move. While the case will focus on the narrow legal issues of whether such a constitutional claim can ever be brought, it might represent the best chance in years to publicly debate whether the entire enterprise of state-sanctioned killing is cruel and unusual. Just this week, for example, the American Bar Association released a timely report showing the misuse and outright neglect of DNA evidence in capital cases, racial disparity in death sentences and instances of prosecutorial overzealousness. The findings aren't new but such reports might at last be heard in the courts and Congress. (source: Opinion, The Nation) *** States likely to delay executions until rulingThe US Supreme Court's stay of an execution Tuesday signals a moratorium on lethal injections until it decides a key case. When the US Supreme Court agreed in late September to take up a Kentucky case testing the constitutionality of the protocol used for executions by lethal injection, the action raised an immediate question. What about other death row inmates slated for execution; should their scheduled executions be postponed pending a final decision by the high court? It took more than a month of confusing signals, but the Supreme Court appears to have finally answered that question when it granted a last-minute stay of execution Tuesday evening for a Mississippi death row inmate. Legal analysts say the action makes it highly unlikely that there will be any executions by lethal injection in the US until after the high court hands down its decision in the Kentucky case. I wouldn't place any wagers on any [scheduled executions] being carried out, says Kent Scheidegger, who closely follows death penalty issues at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif. He says stays of execution will most likely be issued by state and federal judges and that those stays will not be disturbed by the high court. There may be a couple of skirmishes, but the main war is over, says Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. This is the clearest indication that there is pretty much a de facto moratorium on executions until the Supreme Court decides this [lethal injection] issue. The Kentucky case, Baze v. Rees, is expected to be heard by the justices in January or February. The Supreme Court will issue a decision by late June. Of more than 3 dozen death penalty states, all but 1 use lethal injection as the preferred method of execution. Most employ the same 3-drug protocol at issue in the Kentucky case. The justices have agreed to clarify when a lethal injection execution might amount to a form of cruel and unusual punishment because of a risk of pain associated with the procedure. The question is how much pain is too much pain under the Eighth
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
Oct. 28 USA: Death Penalty Systems Questioned Serious problems in state death penalty systems compromise fairness and accuracy in capital punishment cases and justify a nationwide freeze on executions, the American Bar Association says. Problems cited in a report released Sunday by the lawyers' organization include: -Spotty collection and preservation of DNA evidence, which has been used to exonerate more than 200 inmates; -Misidentification by eyewitnesses; -False confessions from defendants; and -Persistent racial disparities that make death sentences more likely when victims are white. The report is a compilation of separate reviews done over the past three years of how the death penalty operates in eight states: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Teams that studied the systems in Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania did not call for a halt to executions in those states. But the ABA said every state with the death penalty should review its execution procedures before putting anyone else to death. After carefully studying the way states across the spectrum handle executions, it has become crystal clear that the process is deeply flawed, said Stephen F. Hanlon, chairman of the ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. The death penalty system is rife with irregularity. The ABA, which takes no position on capital punishment, did not study lethal injection procedures that are under challenge across the nation. The procedures will be reviewed by the Supreme Court early next year in a case from Kentucky. State and federal courts have effectively stopped most executions pending a high court decision. Prosecutors and death penalty supporters have said the 8 state studies were flawed because the ABA teams were made up mainly of death penalty opponents. On the Net: ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project: http://www.abanet.org/moratorium/home.html Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org Criminal Justice Legal Foundation: http://www.cjlf.org (source: Associated Press)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
Oct. 25 USA: At http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/spring07/home.html, you will find links to the new issue of Human RIghts, the magazine of the ABA's Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities. The issue is devoted entirely to the subject of capital punishment, and includes the following articles: A Thirty-Year Retrospective of the Death Penalty, By Stephen F. Hanlon Monitoring Death Sentencing Decisions: The Challenges and Barriers to Equity, By Glenn L. Pierce and Michael L. Radelet Mental Disability and Capital Punishment: A More Rational Approach to a Disturbing Subject, By Ronald J. Tabak Will New Jersey Ban Capital Punishment? Understanding the Death Penalty Study Commission Report, By Eddie Hicks ABA State Death Penalty Assessments: Facts (Un)Discovered, Progress (to Be) Made, and Lessons Learned, By Deborah Fleischaker Raising the Bar in Capital Cases, By Talbot D'Alemberte The Global Debate on the Death Penalty, By Sandra Babcock Staying Executions: After Expanding the Death Penalty, the Pendulum Swings Back, By Andrew Cohen A Journey to Abolition, By Virginia Sloan Human Rights Hero: Anthony G. Amsterdam, By Ronald J. Tabak * Monitoring Death Sentencing Decisions: The Challenges and Barriers to Equity Much more needs to be done to effectively monitor homicide cases, ensuring only the worst offenders are being sentenced to death. Given the finality of this punishment, even infrequent mistakes in the application of the death penalty will receive widespread coverage and call into question the overall fairness of the system. Equitable application of death sentences requires careful monitoring of our abilities to rank homicides along various continua that would differentiate the homicides into ascending levels of severity and aggravation. Nonetheless, no state has instituted a program of data gathering and analysis that would allow neutral parties to do this. Even if states agreed that such monitoring should be done, there are barriers that constrain even the best efforts to rank-order homicides on their severity and deservedness of death. In recent years, America's death penalty debates have uncovered wide areas of agreement. For example, whether friend or foe of executions, virtually all responsible parties agree that a convicted felon should be punished severely and, in the most extreme kind of case, receive a sentence that ensures that the offender never will be released from prison. (In 37 of the 38 states that today authorize the death penalty, a person convicted of capital murder alternatively can be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.) Most knowledgeable parties agree that jurisdictions must seek to expand and improve various programs and policies that promise to reduce rates of criminal violence. There is an emerging consensus that the criminal justice system needs to do more to help families of homicide victims. Few would disagree with the assertion of Walter Berns, one of the nation's most articulate supporters of the death penalty, who argues that regardless of how strongly a person may support the death penalty in theory, the propriety of the penalty in practice depends on our ability to restrict its use to the worst of our criminals and to impose it in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Walter Berns, Defending the Death Penalty, 26 Crime Delinquency 503, 511 (1980). Acknowledging Fallibility and Unfairness Over the past three decades, researchers have assembled a massive body of evidence that challenges the assertion that modern capital punishment systems have succeeded in assuring that only the worst of the worst are sent to America's death rows. This evidence can be categorized into 2 general types: evidence showing the fallibility of death penalty decisions and evidence challenging the fundamental fairness of such decisions. By fallibility, we refer to evidence showing that as long as states use the death penalty, at least some innocent defendants will be sentenced and (arguably) put to death. While concern about this risk is not new, the apprehension regarding erroneous convictions was rekindled in the years after Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). First, in 1987, an article by Hugo Adam Bedau and Michael L. Radelet in the Stanford Law Review documented 2 dozen cases in which persons sentenced to death since Furman later had been released because of doubts about guilt. The number of known erroneous convictions had grown to 124 by mid-2007, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Second, in the 1990s, improvements in DNA technology provided the means of proving beyond any doubt that innocent people have been convicted of crimes and some sentenced to death: 206 prisoners by mid-2007, including 14 on death row, according to the Innocence Project. Researchers usually include in these tallies only defendants who were legally and factually found not to be involved in the murders for which they were sentenced to death. Innumerable
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, ILL., KAN., N. MEX., VA.
Oct. 26 USA: End capital punishment; life sentence is more just We are supposed to be a country that values life and justice. I know that proponents of the death penalty say that if one does not want to be executed, then one should not kill. On the surface, that looks good. However, we have heard all too often of the mistakes our criminal justice system makes and that innocent people have been killed in the name of justice. Recently in Texas, a judge refused to keep her courtroom open past 5 p.m. The defendant was scheduled to die that evening; his lawyers wanted to file an emergency appeal. The judge said they had had ample time to do it and should not have asked for the extension. She refused to grant it and the defendant was executed. In Canada, a convicted murderer was exonerated because of epidemiological evidence that proved the time of the victim's death, which in fact cleared the defendant. He had been sentenced to death in 1958 at the age of 14. 50 years later, he is proved innocent. These are just 2 examples of what goes wrong that can cost innocent people their lives. I believe that because these mistakes happen, we as a nation committed to justice need to be truly committed to that justice. We should all be outraged at the thought of an innocent person being put to death. We can never know just how many innocent people have been executed. Justice can be served when a person is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That sentence is an undetermined length of time. It could be more than 50 years! That is a tortuously long time to live behind bars, having lost one's freedom. However, serving that time also offers the possibility of redemption. Let us err on the side of caution and abolish the death penalty. (source: Opinion, Catherine Dean, Rochester (NY) Democrat Chronicle) ILLINOIS: Illinois death penalty trial delayed One of the first Metro East death penalty trials since former Gov. George Ryan's freeze will be delayed until next year. Jason D. Smith, accused of going on a murderous rampage in 2005 that left four dead in Belleville, will now face a jury in January. He was set for trial next month, but prosecutors asked for more time to do DNA testing. Circuit Judge Milton Wharton granted the delay Thursday morning. Smith's defense attorney's didn't object. Prosecutors say Smith went on a killing rampage in October 2005, gunning down Nicole Willyard; her infant son, also named Jason Smith; Mary Cawvey, 19, of Belleville; and Brandon Lovell, 23, of Dupo. The case garnered a swell of media attention. The infant, 9 weeks old, was shot in the head at close range with a shotgun. It is unclear whether the boy was actually the son of Jason D. Smith though that question will probably be answered in court. Robert Haida, St. Clair County state's attorney, is seeking the death penalty against the 30-year-old Smith. The case has been blanketed with tension. During a pretrial hearing last year, a fight broke out when 2 family members of the victims charged the defense table after they said Smith blew one of them a kiss. Bailiffs broke up the brawl. Earlier this week, one of the victim's parents under questioning from Smith's attorney, John O'Gara, during a deposition for the case complained of chest pains earlier. A stretcher was brought in and he was hospitalized. No family members attended Thursday's hearing, but Haida said the victims' families were aware of the situation. (source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch) KANSAS: Death penalty possible in quadruple murder 3 Wyandotte County men have been indicted in connection to a quadruple homicide that rocked Kansas City, Kan., 1 year ago. If the men are found guilty, the death penalty is a possible sentence. Chief Wyandotte County District Judge Philip L. Sieve on Thursday unsealed indictments handed up Oct. 10 by a grand jury empanelled in Wyandotte County. Those indicted: Ataven Ladwan Tatum, 28; Ernest Leslie King, Jr., 34; and Kenton Marcus Williams, 29. All three men are Kansas City, Kan., residents. The men have been indicted for the shooting deaths of Lawrence Dixon, Constina Jones, Tracy Montgomery and Marlene Chappel Johnson, which occurred inside a KCK house on Oct. 14, 2006. Tatum, King and Williams were each charged with capital murder, alternatively known as premeditated 1st degree murder, in connection with the shooting death of Lawrence Dixon. All 3 were also charged with 3 counts of premeditated 1st degree murder in conjunction with the shooting deaths of Constina Jones, Tracy Montgomery, and Marlene Chappel Johnson, as well as aggravated kidnapping, attempted aggravated robbery, kidnapping, aggravated burglary, conspiracy to sell, deliver or distribute narcotics, and criminal possession of a firearm. Williams was charged with an additional count of solicitation to commit capital murder. Williams was arraigned on the indictment on Oct. 16. King was arraigned Oct. 19, and
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
Oct. 19 USA: Supreme Court MemoTrying to Decipher the State of the Death Penalty Is there a death penalty moratorium now in place, and how would we know? The Supreme Court has granted 2 stays of execution and refused to vacate a 3rd in the 3 weeks since it agreed to hear a challenge to Kentucky's use of lethal injection. On Thursday, the Georgia Supreme Court became the latest state court to interpret the justices actions as a signal to suspend at least some executions. It granted a stay to Jack Alderman, who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Friday night for murdering his wife 33 years ago. The top criminal court in Texas, a state that accounts for 405 of the 1,099 executions carried out in this country since 1976, has indicated that it will permit no more executions until the Supreme Court rules, sometime next spring. The Nevada Supreme Court this week postponed all executions in that state. The governor of Alabama gave 1 inmate a 45-day reprieve. The country's most recent execution took place in Texas on the night of Sept. 25, hours after the Supreme Court announced its review of the Kentucky case. This sequence of events has led some death penalty opponents and other analysts to declare that a de facto moratorium is in place. The states are getting the message, Richard C. Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty research organization, said in an interview. And Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who has followed the issue closely, proclaimed moratorium mojo Thursday morning on his blog, Sentencing Law and Policy. But there is enough ambiguity to warrant caution. Both the Kentucky case and the national situation are complex, and the signals the Supreme Court has been sending are far from clear. For example, on Wednesday, in granting a stay 4 hours before the scheduled execution of a Virginia inmate, Christopher S. Emmett, the justices said the stay would last only until the federal appeals court in Richmond decided Mr. Emmett's challenge to the state's lethal injection protocol - not until their own ruling. The Supreme Court offered no commitment to extend the stay if the appeals court ruled against him. And the Georgia Supreme Court's 1-paragraph order in Mr. Alderman's case on Thursday noted pointedly that the inmate's challenge to lethal injection could not reasonably have been raised during the time applicant's last state habeas petition was pending. Georgia adopted lethal injection as its method of execution only in 2000, while Mr. Alderman, the country's longest-serving death row inmate, has been on death row more than 30 years and exhausted his appeals many years ago. The state court's clear implication was that an inmate who was in a position to challenge lethal injection in a timely manner and yet failed to do so might be deemed to have forfeited the claim. In another case, an Arkansas inmate, Jack H. Jones, raised the lethal injection issue nine years after his conviction and sentence became final. That tardiness apparently bothered only Justice Antonin Scalia on Tuesday, when by a vote of 8 to 1 the court denied an application by Arkansas to vacate a stay that the federal appeals court in St. Louis had granted to Mr. Jones. Justice Scalia objected that the Supreme Court's decision to hear the Kentucky case does not alter the application of normal rules of procedure, including those related to timeliness. He said the appeals court appeared to be operating on the mistaken premise that every lethal injection challenge now merited a stay. While it might be tempting to infer from the silence of the other justices that the rest of the court has no such qualms about tardy claims, that is not necessarily the case. A stay granted by a lower court arrives with a certain presumption of correctness, and refusing to vacate it is an easier call than deciding to grant a stay in the first instance. The justices, sticklers for procedure, have not yet been asked to grant a stay in a situation of clear procedural default - words that strike a chill in the heart of any Supreme Court advocate, even in a non-death-penalty case. What would the court do in such a case? I wouldn't put my money on anything, Elisabeth Semel, a leading death penalty expert, said in an interview. Professor Semel, who runs the Death Penalty Clinic of Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley, said that it would be inaccurate and very presumptuous to call this a moratorium. Rather, she said, what we're seeing is a combination of different courts, and different executives, deciding to be prudent while waiting to see what the Supreme Court will do. The answer could be considerably less than many people seem to expect from the Kentucky case, Baze v. Rees. The question is not the constitutionality of lethal injection as such, and probably not even the constitutionality of the 3-drug combination that inmates and their
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
Oct. 11 USA: U.S. Human Rights Network calls for renewed opposition to fatally flawed death penalty system More than 30 years after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, problems with the administration of the death penalty across the country continue to plague the system. Many of these problems have human rights components, including execution of the mentally ill and racial and economic discrimination. Despite piecemeal efforts by the courts and state governments to remedy these flaws, they persist unabated - accounts of exonerations and commutations based on unfair and unconstitutional proceedings appear weekly in the media. Given that imperfections in the criminal justice system can never be fully eradicated, any attempts to fix the system will inevitably fall short. We as a society must recognize that the death penalty invariably leads to violations of the most fundamental human right, the right to life, says Ajamu Baraka, Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network. Supporters of capital punishment cling to their belief that the practice serves as a deterrent to murder - though most studies discredit that notion - or some other useful purpose that cannot ultimately be proven. But the well-documented violations of human rights that have attended one capital case after another across the country are indisputable, and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. Human rights must trump whatever mythical objectives the death penalty allegedly achieves, Baraka says. Death penalty opponents have made progress in recent years. The death penalty has been eliminated for juveniles and those deemed mentally retarded, and public opinion has been steadily shifting away from the unqualified acceptance of executions. These gains, while insufficient, were the direct result of public education and public pressure on legislatures and the courts. Therefore, on October 10, World Day Against the Death Penalty, the US Human Rights Network urges activists to reject complacency and redouble their efforts toward the only solution that guarantees human rights across the board: abolition. From a human rights perspective, education means furthering the understanding that human rights are interlinked across issue boundaries and should be considered as an inviolable whole, not in isolation. Accepting human rights violations in one arena but not others leads to a fractured, incoherent vision. The concept that human rights are universal is a fundamental rationale for opposing the death penalty, says Baraka. (source: United States Human Rights Network)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
Oct. 8 USA: Going to Court, but Not in Time to Live Let us consider the arithmetic of death. There are 9 justices on the Supreme Court. It takes 4 votes for the court to agree to hear a case. But it takes 5 votes to stay an execution. It is possible, then, for a death row inmate to persuade the court that his case is so important that it deserves a place on the court's tiny docket of roughly 80 cases a year - but not so important that he should be allowed to stay alive in the meantime. Consider the case of Luther J. Williams, who was put to death on Aug. 23 in Alabama. 4 justices had voted to stay the execution. Mr. Williams's appeal included a challenge to the constitutionality of the chemicals used in lethal injections, which have the potential to cause excruciating torture if administered improperly. A month after his execution, the court agreed to hear that question in another case. They knew they were going to consider the issue and let a man die, Joel L. Sogol, who represented Mr. Williams, said of the justices. May he haunt their nights for the rest of their lives. Mr. Sogol acknowledged that smart lawyers could distinguish between the 2 cases, but he said the central issue was the same. In any event, he said, he got 4 votes for a stay, which suggested he would have had 4 votes to hear the case had his client lived. Since the Supreme Court accepted the new lethal-injection case last month, even the most pro-execution states seem to have begun an informal death-penalty moratorium. But Mr. Sogol said he was so angry he could not bear to read about those developments. It doesn't make any sense to me that an issue is important enough that there are 4 votes to take it up, he said, but let's execute him anyway. Last Monday, in terse legalese, the court denied Mr. Williams's now posthumous request that it consider his case. The petition, the docket entry said, is dismissed as moot. Moot, in other words, because the petitioner is dead. Supreme Court math used to yield different results. As Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote in a 1986 decision, the court has ordinarily stayed executions when four members have voted to hear an appeal. But Justice Powell, who was in those days often the swing vote, grew testy about the practice. It illustrates how easily the system is manipulated in capital cases, he wrote to the other justices after providing the 5th vote for a stay as a courtesy in a 1985 case. By 1990, things had changed. For the first time in recent memory, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote, a man will be executed after the court has decided to hear his claim. The man was James E. Smith, and he was put to death in Texas the day the stay was denied. At his Supreme Court confirmation hearing two years ago, Judge John G. Roberts Jr. was asked what he would do if you had 4 other justices now voting for a stay of execution? Do you feel, as chief, you should do the courtesy, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, asked, and kick in the 5th one? I don't want to commit to pursue a particular practice, Judge Roberts said. But it obviously makes great sense. You don't want to moot the case by not staying the sentence, he added. The available information is sketchy, and the court seldom issues explanations for why it declines to hear cases or issue stays. But it does not seem that Chief Justice Roberts has consistently adopted the practice he had tentatively endorsed. Last Monday, Justice John Paul Stevens issued an unusual statement in the case of Christopher S. Emmett. The court had been set to consider Mr. Emmett's appeal on Sept. 24 after returning from its summer break. Nevertheless, Justice Stevens wrote, Virginia set an execution date of June 13. 4 justices voted in favor of a last-minute stay of execution, but that was not enough. Two hours before Mr. Emmett was to die, Virginia's governor, Tim Kaine, a Democrat, stepped in to do what the court would not. Basic fairness demands that condemned inmates be allowed the opportunity to complete legal appeals prior to execution, Mr. Kaine said in a statement. The irreversibility of an execution and the fact that 4 justices of the court believe a stay is needed to consider the appeal warrant my intervention in this case. In the end, the court turned down Mr. Emmett's appeal, which had been based on a claim of ineffective counsel. He is now scheduled to be executed in October, and his lawyers are working on a stay or reprieve based on the lethal-injection case. Justice Stevens drew a lesson from the experience. Both justice and efficiency would be served, he wrote, by routinely staying all executions until the court can hear a condemned inmate's first petition for a writ of habeas corpus. That would accord death row inmates the same, rather than lesser, procedural safeguards as ordinary litigants. Justice Stevens said he hoped a majority of the court would eventually endorse his thinking. But only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
Oct. 4 USA: US: Executions Across Country On Hold A sudden halt to executions in Texas, the United States's most active death penalty state, may signal that there is now an unofficial national moratorium in place across the nation, pending a ruling by the Supreme Court on whether a specific lethal injection cocktail is legal. On Tuesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a temporary reprieve for a convicted killer, Heliberto Chi, giving the state 30 days to explain why his execution should go ahead. This came 5 days after the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to prevent the execution in Texas of Carlton Turner, Jr., only hours before he was due to die by lethal injection for killing his adoptive parents. At the same time, it also halted the execution of Thomas Arthur in Alabama. It is an unbelievable awakening to see Texas courts following the national norms, said Rick Halperin, president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, explaining that the Texas courts did not have a history of following precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court. The 2 Supreme Court execution stays were interpreted by legal experts as a signal to all U.S. states that they should now wait before carrying out any further executions until the Court ruled on the constitutionality of lethal injections as a method of execution in two separate cases from Kentucky. The 2, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., both convicted killers and now on Kentucky's death row, have appealed to the Supreme Court to halt their executions, arguing that the chemicals used in their state's lethal injections amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. This would make the current cocktail a violation of the eighth amendment of the U.S. constitution. On Sep. 25, it was announced that the Supreme Court's ruling in the 2 cases would be handed down sometime during the court's current session, which formally opened on Oct. 1. The ruling could be announced by June 2008. Immediately following the Supreme Court's decision to review the two lethal injection cases, Texas executed Michael Richard, its 405th inmate since the Supreme Court re-instated the death penalty in 1976. Lawyers were not able to file his appeal in time to take advantage of the Court's decision and he was executed the same night. The Supreme Court's decision led 10 other states to halt executions. The U.S. federal government and all but one of the 38 states still with the death penalty on their statute books, use lethal injections for their executions. Most states use the same cocktail of the 3 the drugs administered in Kentucky, an anaesthetic, pancuronium bromide which paralyses muscles and potassium chloride which stops the heart. Nebraska is the only state which still uses the electric chair. The Supreme Court has not addressed the constitutionality of the method of execution for more than 100 years. There are currently more than 3,500 people on death row in the U.S. The 2 inmates in the Kentucky cases and many death penalty opponents argue that if the drugs in the cocktail are not administered correctly, the prisoner can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out before death. The current flurry of legal activity around the lethal injection issue in the U.S. coincided with the 192-member U.N. General Assembly in New York. It is here that the EU will soon table a resolution for a worldwide moratorium on state executions. The moratorium will need a majority to pass. The U.S. is expected to strongly oppose this, but now with an unofficial moratorium apparently in place as its highest court prepares to review the legality of lethal injections, it may be more muted in the General Assembly and outside before the final casting of votes. This might leave China, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, responsible for most of the world's state killings, more isolated in the anti-moratorium camp. Anti-death penalty activists in the U.S. remain cautious over whether the Supreme Court will eventually rule that execution by lethal injection is unconstitutional, fearing that the current unofficial moratorium may be short-lived. The U.S. Supreme Court has never determined execution to be unconstitutional, and it is not likely they will be any different with lethal injection, Halperin told IPS. They may tinker with lethal injection but the U.S. Supreme Court is so pro-death penalty that they are unlikely to eliminate the death penalty. There may be a slight moratorium or delay in executions. But he agreed that given the high rate of executions in Texas -- 26 so far this year -- the Supreme Court's temporary stay on executions, followed by the state's own stay of Chi's execution, was very welcome. Texas is the lynchpin, the battleground, Halperin said. It's the worst place for judicial killings in the entire free world. The current reassessment of lethal injections, as well as the upcoming attempt to get the U.N. General Assembly to adopt a worldwide moratorium, could
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
here is a newly-released report
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA----October 07 Execution Alert
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 4 to be executed in October Heliberto Chi is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on October 3. Daniel Siebert is scheduled for execution on October 25, by the state of Alabama. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! -- Do Not Execute Heliberto Chi! On October 3, 2007, Texas is set to execute Heliberto Chi for the March 24 2001 murder of Armand Paliotta. The state of Texas should not execute Chi for his role in this crime. Executing Chi would violate the right to life as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and constitute the ultimate cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment. Furthermore, Chi's attorney claims that he was denied the right to contact the Honduran consulate which is a right given to foreigners under the1963 Vienna Convention on consular relations. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that Heliberto Chi execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=13727 - Do Not Execute Daniel Siebert! The state of Alabama is set to execute Daniel Siebert on October 25 for the 1986 murders of Sherri Weathers and her two children. Alabama should not execute Siebert for his role in this crime. Executing Siebert would violate the right to life as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and constitute the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Furthermore, Siebert has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court questioning Alabama's lethal injection protocol. In addition Siebert has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which is almost always fatal. He is stated to be in critical condition. Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=13770 -- October 3: Heliberto Chi, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=13727 October 16: Jack Harold Jones Jr., AR http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=12500 October 17: Christopher Emmett, VA http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=13769 October 25: Daniel Siebert, AL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=13770
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, ALA., TENN.
Sept. 25 USA: Court to decide lethal injection, voter ID cases The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country. The high court will hear a challenge from 2 inmates on death row in Kentucky -- Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. -- who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month. This is probably one of the most important cases in decades as it relates to the death penalty, said David Barron, the public defender who represents Baze and Bowling. The court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to contest the lethal injections used across the country for executions. But until Tuesday, the justices had never agreed to consider the fundamental question of whether the mix of drugs used in Kentucky and elsewhere violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Baze and Bowling say the procedure inflicts unnecessary pain and suffering on the inmate. The 2 inmates sued in 2004 and a trial was held the following spring. A state judge upheld the use of lethal injection and the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed that decision. The appeal taken up Tuesday stems from that decision. All 37 states that perform lethal injections use the same 3-drug cocktail. The three drugs consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned is not given enough anesthetic, he can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out. U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled last week that the Tennessee's method of lethal injection is unconstitutional and ordered the state not to execute a death row inmate. The state is still deciding whether to appeal the judge's ruling, but agreed to stop a pending execution. Justices also agreed to decide whether voter identification laws unfairly deter poor and minority Americans from voting, stepping into a contentious partisan issue in advance of the 2008 elections. The justices will hear arguments early next year in a challenge to an Indiana law that requires voters to present photo ID before casting their ballots. The state has defended the law as a way to combat voter fraud. The state Democratic party and civil rights groups complained that the law unfairly targets poor and minority voters, without any evidence that in-person voter fraud exists in Indiana. Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona and Michigan, but struck down Missouri's. In June, the Georgia Supreme Court threw out a challenge to that state's voter ID law but sidestepped a decision on whether the requirement was constitutional. The Indiana law enacted in 2005 was upheld by a federal judge and by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Before the law's passage, an Indiana voter had only to sign a poll book at the polling place, where a photo copy of the voter's signature was kept on file for comparison. The purpose of the Indiana law is to reduce voting fraud, and voting fraud impairs the right of legitimate voters to vote by diluting their votes, Judge Richard Posner said in his majority opinion. But in a dissent, Judge Terence Evans said, Let's not beat around the bush. The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by folks believed to skew Democratic. The voter ID challenge was among 17 new cases accepted by the court in advance of the start of its new term on Monday. The court also agreed to review the case of a man who successfully challenged a drug charge arising from his illegal arrest for driving on a suspended license. Many state and federal courts say that failing to follow state law in making an arrest does not require that subsequently seized evidence be suppressed. But the Virginia Supreme Court ruled otherwise in the case of David Lee Moore, and state officials asked the justices to consider the issue. 2 police detectives stopped Moore for driving on a suspended license, but under Virginia law they should have issued him a summons and released him rather than taking him into custody. The Virginia Supreme Court said the officers could not lawfully conduct the search that followed his arrest, which turned up crack cocaine. A trial judge ruled against Moore's challenge to the drug charge and he was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison. The Virginia Supreme Court subsequently ordered the charge dismissed and Moore was freed. ** Cruel and Unusual? High Court to Decide The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country. The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, N.J.
Sept. 26 USA: Capital Punishment in Each State A state-by-state look at the status of capital punishment. ___ Ala. Choice of lethal injection or electrocution. Alaska No death penalty. Ariz. Lethal injection with a choice of lethal gas for those sentenced before November 1992. Ark. Lethal injection with a choice of electrocution for those sentenced before July 4, 1983. One execution was halted by a federal judge to allow the inmate to challenge use of lethal injection. Calif. Choice of lethal injection or lethal gas. Executions have been effectively halted due to issues surrounding lethal injections. Colo. Lethal injection. Conn. Lethal injection. Del. Lethal injection with a choice of hanging for those sentenced before June 13, 1986. Executions have been effectively halted due to issues surrounding lethal injections. D.C. No death penalty. Fla. Choice of lethal injection or electrocution. Executions have been effectively halted due to issues surrounding lethal injections. Ga. Lethal injection. Hawaii No death penalty. Idaho Lethal injection or a firing squad if injection is impractical. Ill. Lethal injection. The state has a formal moratorium on executions, imposed by Gov. George Ryan in 2000. Ind. Lethal injection. Iowa No death penalty. Kan. Lethal injection. Ky. Lethal injection with a choice of electrocution for those sentenced before June 1, 1998. La. Lethal injection. Maine No death penalty. Md. Lethal injection with a choice of lethal gas for those sentenced before March 11, 1994. Executions have been effectively halted due to issues surrounding lethal injections. Mass. No death penalty. Mich. No death penalty. Minn. No death penalty. Miss. Lethal injection. Mo. Statute allows for lethal injection or lethal gas. (Missouri has no functioning gas chamber, however.) Mont. Lethal injection. Neb. Electrocution. Executions have been effectively halted due to a challenge to the electrocution process. Nev. Lethal injection. N.H. Lethal injection or hanging if injection not possible. N.J. Lethal injection. The state has a formal moratorium on executions, due to legislation passed in 2006. Previously, a 2004 decision by a state appellate court had effectively halted executions. N.M. Lethal injection. N.Y. Lethal injection. The existing death penalty was declared unconstitutional by the state's high court in 2004. N.C. Lethal injection. Executions have been effectively halted due to issues surrounding lethal injections. N.D. No death penalty. Ohio Lethal injection. Executions have been effectively halted due to issues surrounding lethal injections, although one was allowed to go forward. Okla. Lethal injection with allowances for electrocution, then firing squad should injection be deemed unconstitutional. Ore. Lethal injection. Pa. Lethal injection. R.I. No death penalty. S.C. Choice of lethal injection or electrocution. S.D. Lethal injection. Tenn. Lethal injection with a choice of electrocution for those sentenced after January 1, 1999. Executions have been effectively halted due to issues surrounding lethal injections, although one lethal injection execution and one volunteer electrocution were allowed to go forward. Texas-- Lethal injection. Utah Lethal injection with a choice of firing squad for those sentenced before March 15, 2004. Vt. No death penalty. Va. Choice of lethal injection or electrocution. Wash. Choice of lethal injection or hanging. W.Va. No death penalty. Wis. No death penalty. Wyo. Lethal injection with allowance for lethal gas if injection found unconstitutional. [source: The Death Penalty Information Center.] (source: Associated Press) NEW JERSEY: Death penalty examined during Constitution Day The College's school of Culture and Society and the Pre-Law Advisory Committee hosted a panel discussion on the death penalty for the College's third annual Constitution Day on Tuesday, Sept. 18. Each of the three panelists presented a brief lecture before they held a joint discussion and fielded questions from the audience together. The panel consisted of criminology professors Lynn Goedecke and Christopher Totten, and professor of philosophy and religion Melinda Roberts. Professor of political science Daryl Fair moderated the discussion. The panel marks a shift in how the College recognizes Constitution Day, which federal law mandates all publicly funded educational institutions observe. We wanted to be more purposeful (in dealing with) constitutional issues, Susan Albertine, dean of the School of Culture and Society, said. We want to make the most of Constitution Day. Goedecke detailed the need for continuing discussion and education on the death penalty from the inhumanity of botched lethal injections to the numbers of innocent and exonerated death row inmates. People are shocked to hear one person was exonerated who was on death row, she said. This doesn't enter
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, IND., NEV., KY., FLA.
Sept. 5 USA: Destruction in black America is self-inflicted DEBATING capital punishment at an Ivy League university a few years ago, I was confronted with the claim that since death sentences are more often meted out in cases where the victim is white, the death penalty must be racially biased. It's a spurious argument, I replied. Whites commit fewer than half of all murders in the United States, yet more whites than blacks are sentenced to death and more whites than blacks are executed each year. If there is racial bias in the system, it clearly isn't in favor of whites. But if you choose to focus on the race of victims, I added, remember that nearly all black homicide is intraracial - more than 9 out of 10 black murder victims in the United States are killed by black murderers. So applying the death penalty in more cases where the victim is black would mean sending more black men to death row. After the debate, a young black woman accosted me indignantly. 90-plus % of black blood is shed by black hands? What about all the victims of white supremacists? Hadn't I heard of lynching? Hadn't I heard of James Byrd, who died so horribly in Jasper, Texas? When I assured her that Byrd's murder by whites was utterly untypical of most black homicide, she was dubious. I thought of that young woman when I read recently about James Ford Seale, the former Mississippi Klansman sentenced last month to 3 life terms in prison for his role in murdering two black teenagers 43 years ago. The killing of Charles Moore and Henry Dee in 1964 was one of several unsolved civil-rights-era crimes that prosecutors in the South have reopened in recent years. Seale's trial was a vivid reminder of the days when racial contempt was a deadly fact of life in much of the country. His sentence proclaims even more vividly the transformation of America since then. White racism, once such a murderous force, is now associated mostly with feeble has-beens. Yet many Americans, like the woman at my debate, still seem to view racial questions through an antediluvian haze. To them, white bigotry remains a clear and present danger, and the reason so many black Americans die before their time. But the data aren't in dispute. Though outrage over racism is ever fashionable, African-Americans have long had far less to fear from the violence of racist whites than from the mayhem of the black underclass. Do you realize that the leading killer of young black males is young black males? asked Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan 16 years ago. As a black man and a father of three, this really shakes me to the core of my being. From Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement, came a similar cry of anguish. Nothing in the long history of blacks in America, he lamented in 1994, suggests the terrible destruction blacks are visiting upon each other today. Happily, crime rates have declined from their 1990s peak. But it remains that the worst destruction in black America is self-inflicted. In a new study, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics confirms once again that almost half the people murdered in the United States each year are black, and 93 % of black homicide victims are killed by someone of their own race. (For white homicide victims, the figure is 85 %.) In other words, of the estimated 8,000 African-Americans murdered in 2005, more than 7,400 were cut down by other African-Americans. Though blacks account for just 1/8 of the US population, the BJS reports, they are six times more likely than whites to be victimized by homicide - and 7 times more likely to commit homicide. Such huge disproportions don't just happen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously warned 40 years ago that the collapse of black family life would mean rising chaos and crime in the black community. Today, as many as 70 % of black children are raised in fatherless households. And as reams of research confirm, children raised without married parents and intact, stable families are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior. High rates of black violent crime are a national tragedy, but it is the law-abiding black majority that suffers from them most. There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life, Jesse Jackson said in 1993, than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved. It isn't an insoluble problem. Americans overcame white racism; they can overcome black crime. But the first step, as always, is to face the facts. (source: Opinion, Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe) INDIANA: Mother Pleads Guilty to Killing her Four Children An Indiana woman has pleaded guilty to killing her 4 young children. In court Tuesday, Angelica Alvarez described how she took them to the basement and gave them sleeping pills before strangling them with her bare hands. The children ranged in age from 8 to 2. The 27-year-old told the judge she then tried
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, CALIF., MO., IND., N.C.
August 31 USA: Misgivings raised as U.S. prepares to speed death penalty appeals Since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States 3 decades ago, 124 people awaiting execution have been exonerated. For some prisoners, the appeals process provided time to prove their innocence. Now a move by the government to speed up appeals has alarmed death penalty opponents, and even some supporters, who worry that innocent people could be put to death. The unease involves a new law that would give the U.S. attorney general, instead of judges, the power to shorten some deadlines for appeals if programs are established to ensure convicts get competent lawyers. Supporters of the law argue that families of victims suffer when executions are delayed, because they have to wait for perpetrators to face justice. Proponents also say that the long wait between sentencing and execution blunts the deterrent effect they believe makes criminals think twice before murdering. These cases are being reconsidered in a lot more detail than they need to be, says Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims' rights group based in California. Justice can't take this long. Some lawmakers, defense lawyers and human rights groups believe the attorney general, as the supervisor of U.S. prosecutors, should not be made responsible for ensuring the rights of convicts. Some of these opponents hope Monday's resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could provide an opportunity to alter or repeal the law. The law, approved last year but not yet implemented, would affect only appeals in state courts, which try most death penalty cases. Thirty-eight of 50 U.S. states allow the death penalty, though some have suspended executions. While polls show most Americans favor capital punishment, support has been eroding amid reports of injustices. Among the concerns, some death row convicts have lost their chances to appeal because of mistakes by state-appointed lawyers. Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union documented 16 death penalty cases in Florida alone, where lawyers missed deadlines. Critics of the law say that moving up deadlines without guaranteeing that defendants have competent lawyers would be reckless. Death-row inmates spend an average of 10.5 years in the legal system before execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group that opposes capital punishment. The 124 people who were exonerated spent an average of 9.2 years to overturn their sentences, the center says. If you speed it up, you are going to make more mistakes and execute innocent people, said Brian Evans of Amnesty International. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat Patrick Leahy, recently told The Associated Press that he would use hearings to expose the law's problems and push to repeal it. He could have an opportunity to raise the issue when his panel holds confirmation hearings for nominees to replace Gonzales and for other vacant senior Justice Department posts. Although the law has been passed, the Justice Department has not finished writing the rules needed to implement it. Nevertheless, a published draft of those rules already has heightened concerns. On Monday, the American Bar Association, the U.S. legal profession's largest association, called the rules deeply and fundamentally flawed for not ensuring that convicts have competent attorneys. The rules open the scary possibility that the states are going to wave their arms, and the Department of Justice is just going to let them speed appeals, said Robert Litt, a criminal defense lawyer who helped write the ABA comments. A Justice Department spokesman, Erik Ablin, would not comment on the ABA's criticism but said the department would consider it before completing its rules. States were given the opportunity to try to speed appeals under a 1996 law. But they have been unable to take advantage of the law because federal judges have repeatedly found that states did not provide sufficient legal protections to defendants. Now instead of making states do better, you are changing who decides, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Bruce Fein, a senior Justice Department official under the late Republican President Ronald Reagan, supports the death penalty. But he agrees that the attorney general should not have this power to shorten appeal deadlines. Judges since it's their business pay attention to the law, he said. But the motivation of an attorney general in making this decision could be: 'Let's show that we are tough on criminals.' (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: California Supreme Court tosses out killer's death penalty In a rare move, the California Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out the death sentence of a Long Beach man convicted of killing two people during a drunken shooting spree that injured 2 others. The Supreme
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, MD., LA., FLA., MISS.
Aug. 20 USA: Is this truly the best way to keep things moving? Ms. Danica Szarvas-Kidd Policy Adviser for Adjudication Bureau of Justice Assistance Office of Justice Programs U.S. Department of Justice 810 Seventh St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20531 To Whom It May Concern, We read in the Federal Register that the department is accepting public comment on proposed rules under which states will be able to tighten deadlines for Death Row inmates to challenge the constitutionality of their confinement. We don't really understand what moving capital cases through the courts has to do with fighting foreign terrorists. But Congress must have found a connection in order to tuck this shift in death penalty oversight into last year's USA Patriot Act revisions. Now, we know that streamlining appeals has been part of federal law since the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act went into effect in 1996, letting states move more quickly as long as they provide competent lawyers for indigent inmates. And we have to agree that if a state is going to have the death penalty, it serves everyone -- the defendant, taxpayers, the justice system, even victims' families -- to have skilled lawyers handling cases so that they're resolved fairly and efficiently. But there's continuing evidence from various states, not least among them Texas, that Death Row inmates don't necessarily get the kind of legal assistance that promotes public confidence in the system. And we wonder how making the U.S. attorney general responsible for certifying lawyer-appointment schemes will improve the quality of representation. We understand the frustration of those who complain that it can take decades from trial to execution. (Where's the finality? Where's the justice?) On the other hand, too much of a rush makes mistakes more likely. Consider that 124 people in 25 states (8 in Texas) have been released from Death Rows since 1973 because of evidence that they didn't commit the crimes for which they were condemned, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Most death sentences are upheld on direct appeal and even after a state-court habeas corpus appeal raising constitutional claims, such as bias in jury selection, an ineffective trial attorney or prosecutorial misconduct. But inmates still get a federal habeas appeal because the state courts don't always recognize when fundamental errors were made. The 1996 law set a one-year deadline for federal appeals but made it possible to collapse that to six months (and require federal courts to rule quickly) if states have in place an adequate system for providing and paying lawyers to help inmates with their petitions. Because only Arizona has been certified to qualify for the shorter time frame, members of Congress must have thought it was the courts' fault -- not states' failure to set up and fund adequate systems. Why else would they have shifted the certifying power from the courts to the attorney general? We strenuously object to this change, not just because it puts the attorney general in charge but because the proposed rules don't seem to guard against all-too-real flaws in death penalty representation. And we'd have these same misgivings even with an attorney general who didn't have the egregious credibility problems of Alberto Gonzales. The proposed rules, as we read them, fast-track appeals if the attorney general finds that a state has met 4 criteria: Establishing a mechanism for the appointment of counsel for indigent prisoners under sentence of death in state postconviction proceedings. Establishing a mechanism for compensation of appointed counsel. Establishing a mechanism for the payment of reasonable litigation expenses. Providing competency standards. The Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal judiciary's governing body, points out that the regulations don't define competency standards, don't explain what might be reasonable expenses and don't set any parameters for how much lawyers should be paid. Under the proposed language, a state could speed up the process even with competency standards that don't ensure competent lawyers and with payment levels too low to provide them. Texas provides habeas lawyers, but quality has varied widely over the years. A State Bar of Texas task force reported in April that there are recurring problems which undermine the integrity of capital habeas practice in the Texas courts. It wasn't until December 2006 that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals adopted rules for getting incompetent lawyers off the list of those eligible for appointments. Before that, the task force noted, the list included lawyers who had a history of disciplinary problems; who were unqualified or too busy for assignments; who did little investigation of their cases; and who basically cut and pasted petitions from other cases. Texas pays a maximum of $25,000, which includes costs of investigators and expert witnesses. That isn't
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, COLO., ALA., CALIF., PENN., MO.
August 18 USA: Attorney general back to his old Texas death-penalty tricks When George W. Bush was governor of Texas and Alberto Gonzales was his legal counsel, the 2 of them had a system. The morning of an execution, Gonzales would send a memo to Bush summarizing the facts of the case and giving Bush the opportunity to stay the killing. At the bottom of each memo, the governor's clemency decision would be made with a simple checkmark next to the word GRANT or DENY. Invariably, Bush checked DENY, even, notoriously, in the case of Terry Washington, a 33-year-old with the mental capacities of a 7-year-old. (The Supreme Court in 2002 ruled the execution of the mentally retarded unconstitutional.) By the end of his 6 years as governor, Bush had approved the execution of 150 men and 2 women, the most of any governor in American history. Gonzales drafted execution memos for the first 57 executions before becoming secretary of state and a justice of the Texas Supreme Court. As Alan Berlow wrote 4 years ago in The Atlantic, a close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence. Gonzales and Bush have again positioned themselves to be fast-track arbiters of executions -- for the whole nation. It's a disturbing usurpation of powers previously held by federal judges. It's even more disturbing that Gonzales is the one writing the new rules. His truthfulness and activities as attorney general and as Bush's counsel (from his support of torture to his attempt to strong-arm John Ashcroft, the previous attorney general, while Ashcroft was in a hospital bed, to his machinations over politically motivated firings of federal prosecutors) have been suspect. There's no question that death penalty appeals are long, as they should be, and expensive. The average time for death-row inmates from sentencing to execution rose from 4 years in the early 1980s to 11 years now. But numerous states, including Florida for a while, halted executions as problems with execution methods have multiplied and inmates have been found wrongly convicted. In Florida alone, 22 people have been freed from death row, while 397 inmates are awaiting execution. Delays are not the problem. Hurrying the executioner's conveyor belt is. Until now, federal judges alone had the authority to speed up appeals once a death-row inmate's appeals had been exhausted in state courts. But a little-noticed provision in the USA Patriot Act reauthorization last year strips judges of that authority and grants it to the attorney general. Gonzales' Justice Department is about to write the new rules. But Congress already ratified a fast-track approach in 1996. That's the system designed to give federal judges leeway in deciding how fast to handle a death-penalty appeal, once the judges have established that all necessary procedures had been followed in state courts. The death penalty is a barbaric practice that shouldn't be part of American justice. But so long as it is, severe and, if necessary, cumbersome checks, including the judgments of federal judges, should be a minimum. Gonzales intends to remove that minimum and replace it with -- his judgment. Neither Gonzales nor this administration can be trusted to write fair and just rules regarding the death penalty. (source: News-Journal) COLORADO: Seeking the death penalty El Paso county district attorney John Newsome is asking for the death penalty in the Marco Lee case. He is accused of killing Springs police officer Kenneth Jordan. Former District Attorney Jeanne Smith says seeking the death penalty is the hardest decision made by a prosecutor. To stand up and ask a jury of twelve to take a persons' life is extremely serious, so it is very hard. Marco Lee is accused of shooting police officer Kenneth Jordan last December. The D.A. is asking for the death penalty. Former prosecutor Jeanne Smith knows how agonizing that decision can be. During her tenure, she sought the death penalty for George Woldt. He is convicted for the kidnap, rape and murder of 22 year old Jacine Gielinski. She explains, the proof in a death penalty case has to be strong because it is going to be analyzed with a fine tooth comb. State law outlines when the death penalty is warranted. But a D.A.'s office must consider many other factors - including what lies ahead for the victim's family. Smith says a typical murder case takes two years from the time of arrest to sentencing. A death penalty case can take decades. George Woldt was sentenced to death, but a supreme court decision overturned the sentence. Would she seek it again if she could go back and do it over? The decision to request it is
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, FLA., CALIF., ILL.
Aug. 17 USA: Wrong guy to make the callGonzales' record on executions not good. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Justice Department intends to expand Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' authority to expedite federal executions. However you feel about the death penalty, the changes are a mistake as Gonzales' record so amply illustrates. The rules would allow states to increase haste in reaching the most serious, irreversible decision a court can make, reducing the time for inmates to file appeals to 6 months from a year and imposing strict deadlines on judges' consideration of petitions. More disturbing, the entity that would have to approve these fast track programs, and thus the states' systems of legal representation, would not be a disinterested federal judge, but the nation's lead prosecutor, the attorney general. We think we see a conflict of interest in having the nation's No. 1 prosecutor judge provisions for defense. For this particular attorney general, however, we see a conflict of near-comic proportions. In Gonzales' recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was questioned, among many other things, about the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton for insubordination after Mr. Charlton sought further investigation before imposing the death penalty to cases in his jurisdiction. When questioned about one specific case, Gonzales, characteristically for those hearings, was unable to recall anything, indicating either outright dishonesty or a reckless inattention to death penalty cases; neither of which inspires confidence in his ability to carry out his proposed duties. Gonzales' casually reckless approach to death penalty matters was visible nearly a decade ago when, as general counsel in Texas, he delivered memos and briefings to then-Gov. George W. Bush, informing the governor's decisions to grant or deny clemency. The final decision was generally deny, and the 152 executions under Bush's 6 years as governor set an all-time record. Critics have since raised serious questions about several of these cases, casting the application of the death penalty, if not the verdicts, into doubt. Gonzales' hand in these matters was revealed when journalist Alan Berlow obtained the memos and related documents Mr. Bush used to make clemency decisions. As Mr. Berlow reported in the Atlantic Monthly, the documents showed that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence. That Gonzales could now accelerate executions by rendering judgment on the states' handling of the very issues he ignored as general counsel, is the new regulations' unfortunate implication. The period for public comment to the Justice Department has been extended to Sept. 24 due, among other reasons, to problems with the Web site where the rules are posted: www.regulations.gov. We urge those concerned to make their voices heard; if not through the Web site, then by writing Policy Advisor for Adjudication Danica Szarvas-Kidd at Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, 810 Seventh St., NW, Washington, DC 20531, calling her at 202-305-7418, faxing at 202-307-0036, or e-mailing at OJP_Fed_Reg_Comments at usdoj.gov. Be sure to cite OJP Docket No. 1464. (source: Editorial, Orange County Register) Death Penalty: Slow AG down How does one repay a public official such as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales? If you're President Bush, you give him more power, of course. We're sure Gonzales is not yet done making a mockery out of the Justice Department he's polluted with his Bushwhacked politics. Regardless, the administration is hard at work, reports the Los Angeles Times, creating a fast-tracked death penalty system, giving Gonzales expanded powers over cases. So what if he's not a federal judge? So what if he has a creepy history of being almost enthusiastic about the death penalty? In June, The Washington Post reported that Paul Charlton, one of the nine U.S. attorneys Gonzales fired, told Congress that his former boss has been overzealous in ordering federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty, including in an Arizona murder case in which no body had been recovered (emphasis ours) and that Gonzales was eager to expand the use of capital punishment. The new system, an express lane to the death chamber, if you will, gives inmates less time to appeal their sentences in federal courts (6 months instead of a year), and federal judges would have less time to consider those cases. Gonzales can try to obscure the truth with his lies and peculiar form of amnesia, but we can all see, with horrific clarity, what George Let's-have-'Sanctity-for-Human-Life'-Day Bush is trying to perpetrate in his last months in office. He must be stopped, and we're sure the 3,350 inmates currently on death row
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news------USA
July 30 USA: After Flawed Executions, States Draw Hoods Tighter A Missouri doctor who had supervised more than 50 executions by lethal injection testified last year that he sometimes gave condemned inmates smaller doses of a sedative than the state's protocol called for, explaining that he is dyslexic. So it's not unusual for me to make mistakes, said the doctor, who was referred to in court papers as John Doe I. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch identified him last July as Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff, revealing that he had been a magnet for malpractice suits arising from his day job as a surgeon and that two hospitals had revoked his privileges. In September, a federal judge barred Dr. Doerhoff from participating in any manner, at any level, in the State of Missouri's lethal injection process. Naturally, state lawmakers took action to address the issue. A new law, signed this month by Gov. Matt Blunt, makes it unlawful to reveal the identity of a current or former member of an execution team, and it allows executioners to sue anyone who names them. The governor explained that the law will protect those Missourians who assist in fulfilling the state's execution process. In the wake of several botched executions around the nation, often performed by poorly trained workers, you might think that we would want to know more, not less, about the government employees charged with delivering death on behalf of the state. But corrections officials say that executioners will face harassment or worse if their identities are revealed, and that it is getting hard to attract medically trained people to administer lethal injections, in part because codes of medical ethics prohibit participation in executions. The Missouri law addresses that point, too. It bars licensing boards from taking disciplinary actions against doctors or nurses who participate in executions. The job of executioner has never been a high-status profession, of course, which accounts for the hoods that hangmen wore. But in the old days, as John D. Bessler wrote in a history of executions, killing condemned prisoners called for no expertise apart from the ability to tie a knot. Lethal injections are different. They require executioners to insert catheters and to prepare 3 chemicals and inject them, in the right dosage and sequence, into intravenous lines. If the 1st chemical is ineffective as a sedative, the other 2 are torturous. Yet a federal judge in California found last year that prison execution teams there had been poorly screened and included people who had been disciplined for smuggling drugs and who had post-traumatic stress disorder. In a decision a week ago Sunday, a state court judge in Florida, Carven D. Angel, halted the execution of a death row inmate, saying, We need to have people with competence and experience to perform executions. But, according to lethal injection procedures issued by Florida's corrections department in May, there is only one job requirement to be an executioner there: you must be a person 18 years or older who is selected by the warden to initiate the flow of lethal chemicals into the inmate. Those credentials struck Judge Angel as a little thin. I don't think that any 18-year-old executioner, the judge said from the bench, with the pressure of a governor's warrant behind him to carry out an execution, and with the pressure of the whole world - the press and the whole world - in front of him and looking at him is going to have enough experience and competence to stop an execution when it needs to be stopped. The concern is not hypothetical. In December, Florida executioners had to inject Angel N. Diaz, a convicted murderer, with a second dose of lethal chemicals after the 1st set did not do the trick. It took Mr. Diaz 34 minutes to die, and witnesses said he continued to move, squint and mouth words after the 1st dose hit. It would be good to know more about who is performing executions in Florida. But that state's law, like Missouri's, forbids the disclosure of information which identifies an executioner. Quite a few states have similar laws, and a new Virginia law shielding executioners came into effect this month. A forceful and persuasive article published in the Fordham Law Review in April argued for a right to know who is hiding behind the hood. Its author, Ellyde Roko, who will start her 3rd year of law school at Fordham in the fall, said in an interview that society's interest in knowing how the death penalty is administered should outweigh the relatively flimsy interests supporting secrecy. Not knowing who the executioners are takes away a huge check on the system, she said. A 2002 decision of the federal appeals court in San Francisco allowing the press and public to view executions in California supports Ms. Roko's position. Even assuming an execution team member were identified by a witness, the notion of retaliation is pure speculation, Judge Raymond C. Fisher wrote for a unanimous
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, N.H., ARIZ.
July 15 USA: Bribes and Punishment To many Americans, the execution last week of China's former top food and drug official after he confessed to taking bribes was an extreme reaction by the Beijing government to growing worries about the safety of Chinese exports. After recalls of everything from toothpaste and tires to pet food and toy trains, China's leaders decided to make an example of Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, whose punishment came just 6 weeks after he was found guilty. Indeed, Senator Charels Schumer of New York, a leading critic of China, called it a surreal response. But several people died from the tainted products. And China is not alone in treating corruption as a capital offense. For instance, Vietnam occasionally imposes the death penalty. In 2006, the government executed Phung Long That, a former anti-smuggling investigator in Ho Chi Minh City, for accepting bribes and helping to smuggle roughly $70 million worth of goods. In fact, throughout history, bribery has often been thought of as a crime that could harm the state - thus worthy of extreme punishment. Severe sanctions for bribe-taking have a long and bloody history. Here are a few examples. Stripped of Citizenship Plato said bribe-taking merits disgrace in his Laws, and in ancient Athens, corrupt officials faced the loss of their citizenship and the right to participate in the political institutions of the city-state. Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator and political leader, was found guilty of accepting bribes in 324 B.C. and was fined 50 talents, equivalent to roughly $20 million in today's dollars, says Michael Gagarin, a classics professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Demosthenes, who then went into exile, was comparatively lucky. Other Athenian officials were executed for taking bribes. Bribery was taken very seriously and certainly could lead to capital punishment, Mr. Gagarin says. A Poke in the Eye In Byzantium in the 11th century, corrupt officials were blinded and castrated, according to Walter Kaegi, a history professor at the University of Chicago. Besides being blinded and flogged, bribe takers were deported and their assets confiscated. As for castration, Mr. Kaegi says, it tended not to be a statutory punishment but rather the result of public outrage. Find Religion In Constantinople under Emperor Justinian, Mr. Kaegi says, John the Cappadocian, who supplied the emperor's army with tainted food, was publicly flogged and then forced to become an Orthodox priest. That was a merciful punishment, Mr. Kaegi adds. A Fine and Paying for Meals Bribe-takers in early America didn't have to worry about the pillory or whipping-post, classic punishments in Puritan New England. Instead, they faced a choice of jail or paying a fine. Most chose the latter, says David Konig, professor of history and law at Washington University in St. Louis. Prison wasn't any fun then, says Mr. Konig. And you had to pay for your own food. The Lenient Approach Although the Twelve Tables, an early legal code in the Roman Republic, imposed the death penalty on judges who accepted bribes, enforcement grew lenient after the rise of the Roman Empire. Richard Saller, a history professor at Stanford, says Rome had a real problem trying to define what qualified as a bribe and what was a friendship gift. There was a pretty broad range of quid pro quos. Emperor Tiberias sought to curb rapacious local governors from extorting tax payments from subjects but still left local officials plenty of room to obtain gratuities. Tiberias said he wanted his sheep shorn, not flayed, meaning that while citizens might have to keep paying, local rulers shouldn't be excessively greedy when demanding payments. (source: Editorial, New York Times) NEW HAMPSHIRE: The new debate: With 2 capital murder cases pending, arguments about the death penalty gain momentum in New Hampshire When Attorney General Kelly Ayotte outlines her reasons why John Jay Brooks should be executed for allegedly soliciting people to help him kill a Derry handyman, it will be the 2nd time in a year she's asked for the death penalty. Her requests may lead to New Hampshire's 1st execution in nearly 70 years. Opponents and supporters of capital punishment, including lawmakers, agree that the cases against Brooks and Michael Addison will make the debate far more tangible than it has been in years past. We're going to be doing much more soul searching in this state, said Rep. James Splaine, D-Portsmouth, sponsor of the last two bills calling for the repeal of capital punishment. We're going to ask ourselves, 'Do we really want to do this?' Addison is accused of killing Manchester police Officer Michael Briggs on Oct. 16, 2006. Brooks stands accused of planning out the murder of Jack Reid of Derry in 2005 and soliciting others to help him kill the man he reportedly had a grudge against. The 2 trials are expected to play out in New Hampshire courts through 2008 and 2009.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, ALA., GA., S. DAK.
July 13 USA: Reports, polls, court ruling point to thorny death penalty questions 2 high-profile executions scheduled for July and one capital sentence blocked by the Supreme Court in June provide examples of the range of issues surrounding the death penalty in the United States. Combined with data from recent studies that show increasing public doubts about capital punishment and pointing to persistent racial disparities in how the federal death penalty is applied, and topped off with analyses of several states' uses of it, all of these pieces reflect a conflicted populace and a sometimes messy judicial system. South Dakota carried out its first execution in nearly 60 years July 11, using lethal injection to kill Elijah Page, 25. Page confessed to helping torture and murder Chester Allen Poage in 2000 to cover up a robbery. Although Page's defense attorneys pointed to a childhood of brutal abuse as an extenuating circumstance worth a reduction of his sentence to life imprisonment, he had given up on his appeals. Observers noted the case puts the state in the odd position of getting back into the business of executions just as other states are backing away from it. The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper July 1 reported that 50 death sentences have been overturned in Pennsylvania in the last 7 years. The only 3 state executions since 1962 have been of people who gave up their appeals, leading one district attorney to say that for all practical purposes there is no death penalty in Pennsylvania. In Tennessee, a June report on capital cases where the defendant is indigent found prosecutors had at least twice the financial resources that were available to the defense. When even the most capable and hard-working attorneys lack adequate resources to do their job, there is an increased risk that innocent people will be incarcerated, guilty people may never be prosecuted, and other defendants will receive unfairly excessive sentences, said Bill Redick, director of the Tennessee Justice Project, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Even in states where executions are common, such as Georgia, which executes an average of 3 or 4 people a year, questions are being raised. Local, national and international figures have tried to intervene to stop the execution of Troy Davis, scheduled for July 17, citing serious doubts about whether he's guilty. 7 of 9 key witnesses against him have changed their statements or recanted their testimony, which they said was coerced by police. Several people have implicated another man, who reportedly bragged about killing off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989. Davis has consistently maintained he is innocent of killing the Savannah, Ga., policeman who broke up a fight at a Burger King where he moonlighted as a security guard. No physical evidence linked Davis to the crime. However, the1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act limits Davis' appeals because new information was not brought out using the right procedure. Former FBI Director William Sessions, now a federal judge who supports the death penalty, argued for clemency in an Op-Ed column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. It would be intolerable to execute an innocent man. It would be equally intolerable to execute a man without his claims of innocence ever being considered by the courts or by the executive. In North Carolina, a report by the Charlotte School of Law found problems with the way the system there treats defendants with mental illness, either because they are allowed to represent themselves at trial or because juries apparently treat mental illness as an aggravating factor in murder trials rather than as a mitigating factor as provided by state law. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the mental illness question on the last day of the term, sending a case back to a Texas court to reconsider Scott Panetti's death sentence using a broader standard for whether he is mentally incompetent. Previous Supreme Court rulings said a person must be competent enough to understand the connection between his execution and his crime. Those not-so-simple issues may explain the recent findings of a nationwide opinion poll conducted for the Death Penalty Information Center. 62 % in the poll of 1,000 adults said they support the death penalty in a straight yes-or-no question. But when given another option, only 47 % chose the death penalty over the alternative of life in prison with no chance of parole. 43 % said they would prefer life imprisonment for convicted murderers. In the early 1990s, 80 % of Americans said they support the death penalty, the highest level in recent polls. In the mid-1990s, shortly after the Oklahoma City federal building bombings, just 29 % of Americans favored life imprisonment over execution. In the latest poll, fewer than 40 % of the people questioned expressed confidence that only guilty people are sentenced to death. 59 % said they had only
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, N.Y., FLA.
July 8 USA: For Libby, Bush Seemed to Alter His Texas Policy Until he commuted the 30-month prison sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. on Monday, President Bush had said almost nothing about his philosophy in granting clemency while at the White House. As governor of Texas, though, Mr. Bush discussed and applied a consistent and narrow standard when deciding whether to issue pardons and commutations. And that standard appears to be at odds with his decision in the Libby case. Mr. Bush explained his clemency philosophy in Texas in his 1999 memoir, A Charge to Keep. In every case, he wrote, I would ask: Is there any doubt about this individual's guilt or innocence? And, have the courts had ample opportunity to review all the legal issues in this case? In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Bush expressed no doubts about his guilt. He said he respected the jury's verdict, and he did not pardon Mr. Libby, leaving him a convicted felon. And Mr. Bush acted before the courts had completed their review of his appeal. As governor, Bush essentially viewed the clemency power as limited to cases of demonstrable actual innocence, said Jordan M. Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas who has represented death-row inmates. The exercise of the commutation power in Libby, Professor Steiker continued, represents a dramatic shift from his attitude toward clemency in Texas, and it is entirely inconsistent with his longstanding, very limited approach. In the 6 years that George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a state that executes more people than any other, he commuted a single death sentence and allowed 152 executions to go forward. He also pardoned 20 people charged with lesser crimes, said Maria Ramirez, the state's clemency administrator. That was fewer than any Texas governor since the 1940s. As president, Mr. Bush has commuted three sentences in addition to Mr. Libby's and denied more than 4,000 requests, said Margaret Colgate Love, the pardon lawyer at the Justice Department for most of the 1990s. He has also issued 113 pardons and denied more than 1,000 requests. His grant rate is very low compared to other presidents', she said. In commuting Mr. Libby's sentence, Mr. Bush said he had found it excessive. If Mr. Bush employed a similar calculus in Texas capital cases, he did not say so. Even in cases involving juvenile offenders and mentally retarded people, Mr. Bush allowed executions to proceed, saying that he was satisfied of the inmates' guilt and that they had received a fair hearing. The United States Supreme Court has since barred the execution of juvenile offenders and mentally retarded people as a violation of the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Jeanie Mamo, a White House spokesman, said on Saturday that Mr. Bush has been very careful and deliberative in the use of his pardon powers. The president commuted - not a pardon - the sentence of Mr. Libby based on thoughtful and deliberate reasoning and acted within the lawful authority granted to him under the Constitution, which he has used very sparingly, Ms. Mamo said. As the president has said, he respects the jury's verdict and he felt the punishments that the judge determined were adequate which included a $250,000 fine, 2 years probation and a felony conviction. However, in this case, the president considered the 30-month jail sentence for Mr. Libby to be excessive.As governor, Mr. Bush did not issue formal statements giving reasons for granting or denying clemency. But in his memoir, Mr. Bush wrote that he considered clemency requests carefully. For every death penalty case, he wrote, they brief me thoroughly, review the arguments made by the prosecution and the defense, raise any doubts or problems or questions. Mr. Bush made many of his decisions in Texas based on case summaries prepared by his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, now the attorney general of the United States. The 57 summaries were examined in a 2003 article by Alan Berlow in The Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Berlow found that they were relatively brief, often dwelt on the details of the crime and sometimes omitted information that lawyers for the inmates said was crucial. Mr. Bush apparently rarely reviewed the inmates' actual clemency petitions. In a 1998 interview with The Austin American-Statesman, Mr. Bush said the Texas capital justice system, including its clemency process, was working well. All I can tell you, he said, is that for the 4 years I've been governor, I am confident we have not executed an innocent person, and I'm confident that the system has worked to make sure there is full access to the courts. Mr. Bush did commute one death sentence, that of Henry Lee Lucas, who, though convicted of several other murders, had falsely confessed to the crime that sent him to death row. He also pardoned Roy Criner, who was serving a 99-year sentence for rape, after Mr. Criner was cleared by DNA evidence in 2000. Mr. Bush's attitude toward clemency may
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, S. DAK., IDAHO, OHIO
July 5 USA: Death too good for him Re: Put end to death penalty, by Rick Halperin, Tuesday Letters. Gary Ridgway is found guilty of killing 48 women and girls, but Mr. Halperin thinks it's cruel and unusual punishment to give him the death penalty? After this monster arbitrarily kills all these beautiful mothers and daughters, why should he be allowed to breathe the same air as the rest of us? The only suitable place for him in prison would be under it. Shame on Washington for wasting the taxpayers' money to keep him alive. Anthony Passacantando, Plano (source: Letter to the Editor, Dallas Morning News) Justice Denied In the 1960s, Chief Justice Earl Warren presided over a Supreme Court that interpreted the Constitution in ways that protected the powerless racial and religious minorities, consumers, students and criminal defendants. At the end of its 1st full term, Chief Justice John Roberts's court is emerging as the Warren court's mirror image. Time and again the court has ruled, almost always 5-4, in favor of corporations and powerful interests while slamming the courthouse door on individuals and ideals that truly need the courts shelter. President Bush created this radical new court with 2 appointments in quick succession: Mr. Roberts to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Samuel Alito to replace the far less conservative Sandra Day OConnor. The Roberts court's resulting sharp shift to the right began to be strongly felt in this term. It was on display, most prominently, in the school desegregation ruling last week. The Warren court, and even the Rehnquist court of 2 years ago, would have upheld the integration plans that Seattle and Louisville, Ky., voluntarily adopted. But the Roberts court, on a 5-4 vote, struck them down, choosing to see the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause which was adopted for the express purpose of integrating blacks more fully into society as a tool for protecting white students from integration. On campaign finance, the court handed a major victory to corporations and wealthy individuals again by a 5-4 vote striking down portions of the law that reined in the use of phony issue ads. The ruling will make it easier for corporations and lobbyists to buy the policies they want from Congress. Corporations also won repeatedly over consumers and small stockholders. The court overturned a jury's award of $79.5 million in punitive damages against Philip Morris. The Oregon Supreme Court had upheld the award, calling Philip Morris's 40 years of denying the connection between smoking and cancer extraordinarily reprehensible. In a ruling that will enrich companies at the expense of consumers, the court overturned again by a 5-4 vote a 96-year-old rule that manufacturers cannot impose minimum prices on retailers. The flip side of the courts boundless solicitude for the powerful was its often contemptuous attitude toward common folks looking for justice. It ruled that an inmate who filed his appeal within the deadline set by a federal judge was out of luck, because the judge had given the wrong date a shockingly unjust decision that overturned 2 court precedents on missed deadlines. When Chief Justice Roberts was nominated, his supporters insisted that he believed in judicial modesty, and that he could not be put into a simple ideological box. But Justice Alito and he, who voted together in a remarkable 92 % of nonunanimous decisions, have charted a thoroughly predictable archconservative approach to the law. Chief Justice Roberts said that he wanted to promote greater consensus, but he is presiding over a court that is deeply riven. In the term's major abortion case, the court upheld again by a 5-4 vote the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, even though the court struck down a nearly identical law in 2000. In the term's major church-state case, the court ruled 5-4 that taxpayers challenging the Bush administrations faith-based initiatives lacked standing to sue, again reversing well-established precedents. In a few cases, notably ones challenging the Bush administrations hands-off approach to global warming and executions of the mentally ill, Justice Anthony Kennedy broke with the conservative bloc. But that did not happen often enough. It has been decades since the most privileged members of society corporations, the wealthy, white people who want to attend school with other whites have had such a successful Supreme Court term. Society's have-nots were not the only losers. The basic ideals of American justice lost as well. (source: Editorial, New York Times) * Death As A Deterrent Capital punishment clearly increases the risk to criminals of engaging in various crimes, especially murder. But does this increased risk affect criminals' behavior? Last week the academic debate erupted in the media with an Associated Press article headlined Studies: Death Penalty Discourages Crime, but even this
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, GA.
July 2007 Georgia set to execute an innocent man Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia on July 17. Elijah Page is scheduled for execution on July 9-13, by the state of South Dakota. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! -- Do Not Execute Troy Davis! The state of Georgia has scheduled Troy Davis' execution on July 17 for the murder of Mark McPhail. However, there is no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime and 7 of 9 witnesses have officially recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion. ACT NOW by contacting the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, requesting that they stop the execution of Troy Davis! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/ ncadp/content.jsp?content_KEY=2782 --- Do Not Execute Elijah Page! The state of South Dakota is set to execute Elijah Page on July 9-13 for the March 2000 murder of Allan Poage in Spearfish, SD. Page was 18 at the time of this crime. His mother allowed drug dealers to molest him in exchange for drugs and his stepfather once use him as a human shield in a drug-related shootout. His trial judge even stated, Most parents treated their pets better than your parents treated you. Of his two codefendents, one received the death penalty and another received a life sentence. Page has given up his appeals. This will be South Dakota's first execution in 60 years. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Mike Rounds requesting that Elijah Page's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4745 -- See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html July 9-13: Elijah Page, SD http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4745 July 10: Rolando Ruiz, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=12016 July 17: Troy Davis, GA http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/ organizationsORG/ncadp/content.jsp?content_KEY=2782 July 24: Lonnie Johnson, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=12017 July 26: Darrell Grayson, AL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=12019 (source: National Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty) GEORGIA: URGENT ACTION APPEAL - From Amnesty International USA 3 July 2007 UA 170/07 Death penalty / Legal concern USA (Georgia) Troy Anthony Davis (m), black, aged 38 Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed in Georgia at 7pm local time on 17 July. He has been on death row for more than 15 years for the murder of a police officer which he maintains he did not commit. Many of the witnesses presented by the prosecution at the trial have since recanted or contradicted their testimony. On 28 August 1991 Troy Davis was convicted of the murder of 27-year-old Officer Mark Allen McPhail, white, who was shot and killed in the car park of a Burger King fast food restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, in the early hours of 19 August 1989. Troy Davis was also convicted of assaulting Larry Young, a homeless man, who was accosted and struck across the face with a pistol immediately before Officer McPhail was shot. At the trial, Troy Davis admitted that he had been at the scene of the shooting, but claimed that he had neither assaulted Larry Young nor shot Officer McPhail. There was no physical evidence against Troy Davis and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony. In affidavits signed over the years since the trial, all but three of the state's non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony. One of the three non-recanting witnesses is a man who has not been located for interview by Davis' appeal lawyers. Another, while not recanting, has contradicted her trial testimony. The third non-police witness who has not recanted his testimony is Sylvester Coles, who was the principle alternative suspect, according to the defense at the trial, and against whom there is new witness testimony implicating him as the gunman. Others have recanted their testimony against Troy Davis. In 1989, Kevin McQueen was detained in the same jail as Davis. McQueen told the police that during this time Troy Davis had confessed to shooting Officer McPhail. In a 1996 affidavit, McQueen retracted this statement, saying that he had given it because he wanted to get even with Davis following a confrontation he said the two of them had had. Monty Holmes testified against Troy Davis in a pre-trial hearing, but did not testify at the trial because, according to a 2001 affidavit, he did not want to repeat this false testimony. Jeffrey Sapp testified that Troy Davis had
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, MD., VA., MO., ARK.
July 3 USA: High Court Ruling Could Mean More Death Sentences A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the disqualification of a juror who expressed doubts about the death penalty, combined with an increasing number of U.S. citizens who say their moral convictions make them ineligible to serve as jurors in capital trials, could mean future juries will be less representative of the country's diversity and more likely to hand down convictions, death penalty opponents say. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the death sentence imposed by a trial court in Washington State in the case of Cal Brown, convicted of raping and killing a woman in a Seattle motel in 1991. The Court ruled the trial judge was correct in disqualifying a man from serving as juror because he had expressed doubts about the death penalty. The Court's 5-4 decision overturned an earlier one by a federal court of appeals. In May, Juan A. Luna Jr., who was found guilty of killing seven people in a fast food restaurant in Illinois in 1993, was spared the ultimate punishment because one juror voted against sentencing him to death. In Illinois, as in most of the 38 states which have the death penalty, a death sentence must be unanimous. We are observing a decline in the use of the death penalty in the last six to ten years, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, a group opposing the death penalty. Much of this is due to a change in public opinion about the death penalty. Disqualified and dissenting jurors reflect this trend. Jurors are less willing to impose the death penalty, a fact illustrated by justice department statistics showing a steady decline in death sentences. In the 1990s, about 300 people were sentenced to death every year. In 2005, the number had dropped to 128. Last year, the number of death sentences reached the lowest level in 30 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. A recent poll commissioned by the Centre, sampling 1,000 adults across the country, revealed that almost 40 % of U.S. citizens felt that they would be disqualified from serving on capital juries. The numbers increase significantly for certain groups: 68 % of African-Americans would exclude themselves, 48 % of women, and 47 % of Catholics. The margin of error for the survey was plus or minus 3 %. Dieter and other experts attributed the increasing lack of support for the death penalty to various factors, including reports of DNA exonerations, belief that the death penalty is not a deterrent for future crimes, and moral objections to taking a person's life. Among citizens in general, 87 % said they believed that an innocent person had been executed in recent years, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre poll. Concern about the possibility of executing the innocent was also found to be a significant reason for drawing back from imposing a death sentence. Among jurors, innocence continuously came up, Dieter told IPS. The availability since the 1990s of a life sentence without the possibility of parole is another major factor in the drop in the number of death sentences. But citizens are almost evenly split between their support for the death penalty and life without parole as a punishment for premeditated murder, according to a Gallup poll last year. The single biggest reason for imposing the death penalty was to prevent the convicted person from killing again, Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University and an expert on the death penalty said, adding: The effect of life without parole is permanent incapacitation. But Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School and a supporter of the death penalty for the worst of the worst offenders, disagrees. Even in life without parole, a person can kill again, Blecker told IPS. He can kill fellow prisoners, officers, or medical personnel. Life without parole doesn't mean isolation. And life without parole sentences can be commuted by the executive. Blecker also disagrees with poll findings. He argues that if people were asked about specific, concrete examples of the worst crimes, instead of only about the appropriate punishment for murder, polls would show a much greater support for the death penalty. He believes the Supreme Court was right in its recent ruling, acknowledging that it could have long-term consequences on decisions in capital punishment cases. In capital cases jury selection occurs under a process known as death qualification. Potential jurors are asked about their views and willingness to impose the death penalty. If their unequivocal opposition or endorsement of the death penalty is considered likely to impair their ability to follow the law, judges can exclude them from serving as jurors. Under pre-existing Supreme Court law, people who were opposed to the death penalty could be excluded. But if a juror simply expressed doubts, the juror had to be allowed to serve on the jury because they
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, GA.
June 29 USA: USA: Supreme Court tightens standard on 'competence' for execution A prisoners awareness of the States rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it. US Supreme Court, Panetti v. Quarterman, 28 June 2007 In a 5-4 decision issued on 28 June 2007, the United States Supreme Court blocked the execution of Scott Panetti, a Texas death row inmate who suffers from severe delusions. Amnesty International welcomes the ruling as a step towards ending the use of the death penalty against this and other criminal offenders with serious mental illness in the USA.(1) The Supreme Courts ruling also drew attention once more to the shoddy standards of capital justice in Texas, which accounts for more than 1/3 of executions in the USA and has routinely contravened international standards in sending prisoners to its death chamber. The central question asked of the Supreme Court by the Panetti case was, in effect, to clarify a ruling it made 21 years earlier. In Ford v. Wainwright in 1986, the Court had affirmed that the execution of the insane violates the US Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. However, the Ford ruling neither defined competence for execution, nor did a majority mandate specific procedures that must be followed by the individual states to determine whether an inmate is legally insane. The result over the ensuing two decades has been the adoption of different standards in different states, judicial uncertainty, and minimal protection for seriously mentally ill inmates.(2) The Panetti ruling has the potential, at last, to provide additional protection. Scott Panetti shot his parents-in-law to death in 1992, several years after he was first diagnosed with schizophrenia. He had been hospitalized for mental illness, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, in numerous different facilities before the crime. There is compelling evidence that he was psychotic at the time of the shootings, and that he was incompetent to stand trial. Not only was he tried, however, he was allowed to act as his own lawyer, which he did dressed as a cowboy and presenting an often rambling narrative in his defence. His trial has variously been described as a circus, a joke, a farce, not moral, and a mockery, by various lawyers, doctors and family members who attended. On 4 February 2004, Scott Panetti was 24 hours from execution in the Texas death chamber when a federal court issued a stay to give the state judge, who had set the execution date, time to consider Panetti's mental state. The judge had earlier, without a hearing, dismissed a defence motion claiming that Panetti was incompetent for execution. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had refused to intervene on the grounds that under state law enacted some 13 years after the Ford ruling it would only have jurisdiction to review such a case after the lower court had determined the prisoner to be incompetent. Such are the obstacles faced by lawyers seeking to stop the Texas conveyor belt of death. With the case back in his court, the state judge again failed to hold a hearing. Instead he appointed two mental health experts who reported back to him that Scott Panetti was competent for execution, and claimed that the prisoners bizarre behaviour was calculated and manipulative. Ignoring the defence lawyer's objections, and his motions requesting a competency hearing and funding to hire his own mental health expert, the judge dismissed the case with a finding that Panetti had failed to show that he was incompetent for execution. The case went back to the federal courts. A District Court judge ruled that the state proceedings had been constitutionally inadequate, but ruled that, under the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals precedent relating to Ford claims (the Fifth Circuit is the federal circuit which has jurisdiction over Texas cases), Panetti had not shown incompetence. The judge held that under the Fifth Circuit standard it was sufficient that Panetti knew that he had committed two murders; that he would be executed; and that the reason the state had given for that execution was his commission of the murders. The court rejected the defence lawyer's argument that, under the Ford ruling, the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution of a prisoner who lacks a rational understanding of the States reason for the execution. According to various experts presented by the defence, Panetti had no such rational understanding and believed instead that, notwithstanding the States purported reason for the execution, its real motivation was to punish him for preaching the Gospel. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the District Courts ruling on 9 May 2006. The Supreme Court agreed to take the case and, after rejecting the state's argument that the Ford claim was procedurally barred from federal review,(3) it overturned the Fifth Circuit's ruling. Firstly, however, it levelled strong criticism at Texas. It
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, TENN.
June 18 USA: The Death Penalty Deterrence Myth: No Solid Evidence That Killing Stops The Killing Among the many factors in the debate about the death penalty is whether capital punishment deters violent crime. Although solid research indicates that there is no valid evidence of such deterrence, recent attention has been given to a few flawed studies concluding that the death penalty does deter murder. A June 10 Associated Press article pointed to statistical studies that claimed to directly link numbers of executions with numbers of murders prevented, including a 2003 study from the University of Colorado at Denver and studies from 2003 and 2006 by researchers at Emory University. But follow-up studies by top social scientists soundly reject those conclusions as well as the flawed methodology used to reach them. Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on statistics, testified to Congress that the Emory and Denver studies were fraught with numerous technical and conceptual errors, and fail[ed] to reach the demanding standards of social science. The truth is that it might be impossible to determine a true statistical relationship between homicides and executions because the number of executions is so small compared to the number of homicides. But what we can say with certainty is that there is no legitimate statistical evidence of deterrence. John Donohue, Yale Law School professor and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Justin Wolfers, Wharton School of Business professor and Research Affiliate at the NBER, analyzed the same data used in the Emory and Denver studies, as well as other studies by the same researchers and many other nationwide reports. They found that if anything, executions increase homicides, concluding: The view that the death penalty deters is still the product of belief, not evidence ... On balance, the evidence suggests that the death penalty may increase the murder rate. Donohue and Wolfers analyzed data from the 2006 study by the Emory researchers using non-death penalty states as a control group, a basic statistical tool used to study causation not used in the Emory study. When they compared death penalty states with non-death penalty states, they found no evidence of any effect of executions on murder rates, either up or down. Donohue and Wolfers also analyzed the data from the 2003 Emory study that concluded that each execution prevented 18 murders and found that the reduction or increase in murders was actually more dependent on other factors used in the study than whether or not the states had the death penalty. For example, when Donohue and Wolfers slightly redefined just one of the factors included by the Emory researchers, they found that each execution caused 18 murders. Donohue and Wolfers also recomputed data from the Denver study of select states to account for overall crime trends, a factor not included in the Denver study, and reached inconclusive results. For two states included in the Denver study that had abolished the death penalty, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Donohue and Wolfers found that the homicides rates actually fell after capital punishment was ended. Other studies also refute the deterrence theory. For example, researchers Lawrence Katz, Steven Levitte and Ellen Shustorovich analyzed state data between 1950 and 1990 and did not find a correlation between the death penalty and crime rates. Moreover, one of the Emory researchers, Joanna Shepherd, published a state study of her own and found that while the death penalty deterred murder in 6 states, it actually increased murder in 13 states, and had no effect on the murder rate in eight states. Other statistical analyses show that states with the death penalty do not have the lowest murder rates in the country. In fact, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, states without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates than states with the death penalty, even when comparing neighboring states. In addition, while southern states account for over 80 % of the executions in this country, they have consistently had the highest murder rate of the nation's four regions. Comparing American and Canadian statistics is also telling. While Canada has not had a single execution since 1972 and the United States has executed over 1,000 people in that time, the homicide rates in the United States and Canada have closely tracked each other. If anything, Canada's experience suggests that ending executions leads to a drop in the murder rate. As the death penalty debate continues, it will inevitably be filled with the emotion and passion that have historically and rightly characterized it. But when it comes to analyzing data and reaching statistical conclusions that are used to affect our nation's policy and legislation on a matter as dire as capital punishment, it is critical that the research use statistically valid methodology. When
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, S.C., OHIO, CALIF.
June 12 USA: Evidence of death penalty as crime deterrent is flimsy; THE ISSUERecent studies claim that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder. PROPONENTS of the death penalty are waving recent studies concluding that lethal injections act as a deterrent to murder. The studies have been shown to be flawed, and polls indicate that Americans are increasingly skeptical about state executions as a way to discourage private homicides. Hawaii is among a dozen states and the District of Columbia that disallow the morally reprehensible punishment. 11 of the 38 states where capital punishment is on the books have suspended its use. State Sen. Sam Slom proposed a bill in this year's legislative session to allow death sentences for killing a child, killing when combined with torture or sexual assault and multiple murders, but it was quickly and rightly ignored. A dozen articles published since 2001 contend that each use of capital punishment could save 3 to 18 lives. Some of them maintain that murders of passion can be deterred, while others claim that executions can even reduce robberies and some nonviolent crimes. Jeffrey Fagan, a professor of law and public health at Columbia University, debunked the recent studies as unreliable 2 years ago in testimony before a New York legislative committee. The omissions and errors are so egregious that this work falls well within the unfortunate category of junk science, he said. Fagan said the new deterrent studies lump all forms of murder together, claiming that all are equally deterrable, produce erratic and contradictory results, neglect crime trends, use incomplete data, fail to show if murderers were aware of executions in their own states and fail to account for the deterrent effects of sentences of life without parole, applicable in Hawaii for multiple murders. More than 3,000 inmates in California are serving sentences of life without parole, while 660 are on death row and 13 have been executed since 1976. The omission of this alternate and competing explanation for the decline in murder rates in California and other states is irresponsible and borders on incompetence, Fagan told the New York legislators. While a majority of Americans continue to support capital punishment, a recent poll by the Death Penalty Information Center showed that 58 % favor a moratorium on the death penalty while it undergoes a review. Much of the recent concern about capital punishment results from DNA exonerations. Since 1973, 124 people have gained their freedom from death row after post-conviction evidence proved their innocence. Capital punishment puts the United States in sordid company in terms of human rights. While China accounts for the majority of executions, that country and Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the United States account for more than 90 % of executions. (source: Opinion, Honolulu Star-Bulletin) Does Deterrence Trump Fallibility? After a long and relatively quiet time away, capital punishment appears poised to rejoin the crowded battlefield of America's culture wars, a battlefield upon which already rages issues as contentious as abortion, gun control, stem cell research, and the rights of same-gender couples. For the 1st time since studies completed in the early 1970s, studies scientifically discredited though often still quoted, researchers are reporting what they claim to be clear and statistically significant evidence of the deterrent nature of capital punishment in reducing capital crimes. Several independent studies, each released over the past year, have reached similar conclusions. They count that from 3 to as many as 18 homicides are prevented with each execution of a convicted murderer. Even though these findings will for some time be vigorously debated among scientists, not least because they contradict decades of similar research, it will matter not to death penalty advocates. We should soon expect them to inject these results into the vein of the body politic. Despite Americans' longstanding mistrust for big government, there remains strong, though in recent years declining support for the ultimate form of government power the ability to take away life. So strong, in fact, that in 2005 the United States executed its 1000th prisoner since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. America's machinery of death is cruel, and, in the modern world, unusual. Indeed, much about capital punishment can be said simply by the company we keep. Today, 97 % of all executions worldwide take place in just 5 countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and the United States. Only 3 other democracies retain the death penalty Japan, India, and Taiwan though its use in these countries is quite rare. At the heart of the debate about whether the U.S. should retain the death penalty is the question of whether it deters murder. For decades, the evidence has suggested that it does not. These new studies will bring all the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, IND., VA., MO., US MIL.
June 10 USA: Stacking juries toward death When 5 justices of the US Supreme Court rejected a death row inmate's challenge to his sentence last week, they acknowledged that a capital defendant has the right to trial by an impartial jury -- one that is drawn from a pool that has not been tilted in favor of the death penalty by selective challenges to would-be jurors. Having recognized that principle, though, the justices went on to eviscerate it. In an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled that a Washington state judge had the discretion to grant a prosecutor's request to strike Juror Z, who supported the death penalty but nonetheless expressed some reservations. In doing so, the Supreme Court has given prosecutors permission to try to stack juries toward death, by seeking an all but unconditional commitment to the death penalty on the part of jurors. In capital cases, prosecutors have long been able to exclude opponents of the death penalty, or at least those unwilling to set their own beliefs aside, on the grounds that they cannot impartially decide whether a defendant should be executed. Yet that was not at issue in the Washington case. During jury selection, Juror Z asserted that executions should be allowed but not frequent; that the possibility that a murderer might be released and kill again was the main reason for a death sentence; that, even so, he or she could still consider imposing a death sentence if the alternative were life in prison without parole. Yet this was too much for the prosecutor, who asked the judge to strike Juror Z. In a compelling dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens suggested that the court has misunderstood Juror Z's testimony and the relevant law. Even if death-penalty states have an interest in finding jurors who will consider that option, Stevens pointed out, that does not and cannot mean that jurors must be willing to impose a death sentence in every situation in which a defendant is eligible. The effect of this decision will not be subtle. Prosecutors can now seek from jurors ever higher levels of commitment to executing convicts. Juries, over time, are likely to become less and less representative of the communities from which they are drawn. According to a poll conducted for the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center before the Supreme Court ruling, most African-Americans, and nearly 1/2 of women and Catholics, think their beliefs would exclude them from capital juries. Many who oppose the death penalty -- we on this page are among them -- do so whether public support for it is narrow or broad. It does not deter crime; it is unevenly applied; above all, it is irrevocable. And now 5 justices choose to compound the potential for error. To the nation's highest court, it is now basically fine if capital juries exclude those whose views extend beyond fry him or hang him high. (source: Editorial, Boston Globe) ** Studies say death penalty deters crime Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey. The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations - pointing out flaws in the justice system - has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago. What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument - whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer. The reports have horrified death penalty opponents and several scientists, who vigorously question the data and its implications. So far, the studies have had little impact on public policy. New Jersey's commission on the death penalty this year dismissed the body of knowledge on deterrence as inconclusive. But the ferocious argument in academic circles could eventually spread to a wider audience, as it has in the past. Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it, said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect. A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in 5 fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. The results are robust, they don't really go away, he said. I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) - what am I going to do, hide them? Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory - if the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA----June 07 Execution Alert
9 executions scheduled for June, 5 in Texas Christopher Emmett is scheduled to be executed by the state of Virginia on June 13. Michael Lambert is scheduled for execution on June 15, by the state of Indiana. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! --- Do Not Execute Christopher Emmett! The state of Virginia should not execute Christopher Emmett for the April 2001 murder of Christopher Langley. Emmett claims ineffective assistance of counsel, since his trial counsel never presented his mental health history to the jury. The Virginia Supreme Court unanimously wrote, it is clear that [Emmett's] trial counsel was ineffective. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Tim Kaine requesting that he stop the execution of Christopher Emmett! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/ organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11633 - Do Not Execute Michael Lambert! On June 15, Indiana is set to execute Michael Lambert for the December 1990 murder of Officer Gregg Winters. The jury may have been exposed improperly to victim impact evidence, and the defense did no present a fully mental history of Lambert during their mitigation argument. Currently, LAmbert is a party in a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of the state's lethal injection protocol. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Mitch Daniels requesting that Michael Lambert's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/ organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11739 -- See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html June 6: Michael Griffith, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11632 June 13: Christopher Emmett, VA http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11633 June 13: Cathy Henderson, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7134 June 15: Michael Lambert, IN http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11739 June 20: Lionel Rodriguez, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11634 June 21: Gilberto Reyes, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11635 June 22: Calvin Shuler, SC http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11765 June 26: Patrick Knight, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11636 June 26: Jimmy Dale Bland, OK http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11638 (source: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, N.J., FLA., MO., OKLA.
June 5 USA: The Next Big Thing in Law? The Harsh Jurisprudence of Justice Thomas In the last 100 Supreme Court arguments, Clarence Thomas has not uttered a word. Court watchers have suggested a variety of explanations. Among the least flattering: he is afraid that if he speaks he will reveal his ignorance about the case; he is so ideologically driven that he invariably comes with his mind made up; or he has contempt for the process. In their provocative new book, Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas, 2 Washington Post journalists, Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, ponder Justice Thomas's extraordinary silence, and many other puzzles. They offer a wealth of insight, but they have no answer to the central enigma he poses: why the justice who has faced the greatest hardships regularly rules for the powerful over the weak, and has a legal philosophy notable for its indifference to suffering. It is a particularly timely question. For 15 years, Justice Thomas was a marginal figure, rarely assigned to write major opinions because his views were so far right that he would have had trouble attracting 5 votes. But Justice Thomas is a lot less marginal with the recent changes in the court -- particularly the replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate conservative, with Samuel Alito, a more extreme one. He appears poised in the next few weeks to achieve his longstanding goal: dismantling the integrationist vision of his predecessor Thurgood Marshall. Justice Thomas's early years were not as hardscrabble as his image-makers suggested during his confirmation; he left tiny Pin Point, Ga., young, and was raised in a middle-class home. But he grew up in the Jim Crow South, with an absent father and an often-absent mother. He spent much of his childhood, the authors say, being angry and hurt. In college and law school, he identified strongly with his fellow blacks, and was liberal, even radical, on racial issues. But as he accepted jobs from Republicans eager to hire a conservative black lawyer, he shifted rightward. As chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, his phlegmatic advocacy for victims of discrimination disappointed civil rights activists, while impressing conservatives looking for a replacement for Justice Marshall. His confirmation hearings, at which Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, put an even sharper edge on his ideology. He redirected his anger, much of which had been aimed at whites, at liberals and civil rights organizations. Justice Thomas is now beloved on the far right, with friends like Rush Limbaugh, whose wedding he performed. Justice Thomas wasted no time unveiling his harsh jurisprudence. In his first year on the court, he dissented from a decision holding that the ban on cruel and unusual punishment may have been violated when guards kicked a prisoner and punched him in the stomach, eye, and mouth. The prisoner had a split lip, bruises and loosened teeth, but Justice Thomas insisted that the Constitution did not prohibit such insignificant harm. He dissented from a ruling in favor of a prisoner who was handcuffed to a hitching post in the hot sun for 7 hours while a guard taunted him about his thirst. Justice Thomas also dissented from rulings that the mentally retarded and juveniles could not be executed. He can be counted on to reflexively oppose discrimination claims of minorities and women, as he did last week, when he joined the majority in rejecting the claim of a woman who was underpaid for years because of her sex, on the dubious ground that she complained too late. Justice Thomas claims he is simply faithful to the original intent of the founders. But when the founders' intent is not involved - as in the pay discrimination case, which was based on a modern statute - he is just as quick to reach a harsh result. When Justice Thomas joined the court, he not only filled Justice Marshall's seat, he also labored in his shadow. As a lawyer in Brown v. Board of Education, Justice Marshall had persuaded the court to champion racial integration. When he arrived on the court in 1967, he pushed it in a humane direction not only on race, but also in areas like prisoners' and women's rights and fair elections. The court had largely stopped moving forward in these areas by the time Justice Thomas arrived but, mainly due to Justice O'Connor, it did not move backward that much, either. That appears likely to change. The court heard arguments this term challenging Louisville's and Seattle's voluntary efforts to integrate their schools. The court has long upheld voluntary attempts to bring students of different backgrounds together, including, just a few years ago, the University of Michigan's affirmative action program. But this time, it is expected to strike down Seattle's and Louisville's, which is likely to make public schools much more segregated. With its new members, the court is also likely to make prisons less civilized, and
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, MD., DEL., OHIO, N.C.
June 3 USA: A Demented Doctor Of DeathNational Review Online: Jack Kevorkian, Compassionate Eccentric? The Evidence Paints A Darker Portrait Jack Kevorkian was released from prison Friday. Don't expect Dr. Death to keep a low profile. He is already scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes, where he will be interviewed by euthanasia proponent Mike Wallace. After that, the rest of the media is likely to extravagantly tout Kevorkian as the compassionate, if eccentric, retired doctor who helped desperate, terminally ill people put themselves out of their misery. In actuality, most of Kevorkian's patients were not terminally ill, but disabled and depressed. Several weren't even sick, according to their autopsies. Moreover, Kevorkian never attempted to treat any of the 130 or so persons who traveled to Michigan to be hooked up to his suicide machines to die either by drug overdose or carbon monoxide poisoning. And as for compassion forget about it. Kevorkian was never in the killing business to alleviate unbearable suffering. Indeed, over the course of decades he repeatedly explained his ultimate goals in professional journals and in his 1991 book, Prescription Medicide. As Jack Kevorkian articulately expresses it himself, compassion had absolutely nothing to do with it. Kevorkian's adulthood obsession has been to perform live human experimentation on people he was killing. His first targets were condemned prisoners. Indeed, as far back as 1959, Kevorkian wrote in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminal Political Science: Capital punishment as it exists today offers a golden opportunity to break limits [on human experimentation] by introducing into the situation an involuntary factor without destroying the necessary safeguard of consent. I propose that a prisoner condemned to death by due process of law be allowed to submit, by his own free choice, to medical experimentation under complete anesthesia (at the time appointed for administering the penalty) as a form of execution in lieu of conventional methods. 25 years later, Kevorkian continued advocating experimenting on condemned prisoners, which, in light of the advances in organ transplant medicine, he began to couple with calls to use executed prisoners as organ donors. In the October 1984 edition of MD, Kevorkian published Dr. Guillotine's Example, in which he asserted: Of course, capital punishment has always been rationalized as being retribution allowing the condemned to pay with their lives. What nonsense! Payment means transfer of value. With execution there is no such thing; there is only total loss and, of course, vengeance. That no longer need be true. The fortuitous convergence of lethal injection and of our incredible success with organ transplantation promises to validate at least the erstwhile repayment. Many of the more than 1,200 men and women now crowding our states' death rows are eager to suffer more meaningful death by donating vital organs to dying patientsHere finally, we have the opportunity to extract true payment literal transfer of life from the condemned to the dying. Meanwhile, Kevorkian was still obsessing about human experimentation. Writing in 1985 in the Journal of the National Medical Association, Kevorkian sought to wiggle out of the Nuremberg Codes ethical rules for human experimentation, writing: Postwar analysis of Nazi experimentation on human beings seems to have been so excruciating that it blinded the civilized world to a very important point in the formulation of the Nuremberg Code. Nowhere in the code is there any reference to experimentation (under anesthesia) on those who chose and desire it as an act of atonement when condemned to death by due process of peacetime jurisprudenceIn the United States where death rows are once again becoming over populated, all condemned persons should be allowed to choose to submit to experimentation, or to organ donation, under strictly controlled anesthesia before ultimate death by lethal thiopental injection. By 1986, Kevorkian had expanded his advocacy for human experimentation beyond the condemned to people with serious medical problems, disabilities, and even the depressed. Thus, writing in a 1986 edition of Medicine and Law, Kevorkian asserted: The so-called Nuremberg Code and all its derivatives completely ignore the extraordinary opportunities for terminal experimentation on humans facing imminent and inevitable death...[including] the extraction of medical benefit from the process of judicial execution from those dying of irremediable illness or trauma and from suicide mandated by inflexible religious or philosophical principles or by irrevocable personal choice. Other potential subjects include comatose, brain dead, or totally incapacitated individuals as well as live fetuses in or out of the womb. Toward gaining license to personally experiment on living human bodies, as he described in Prescription Medicide, Kevorkian traveled the country visiting
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, CALIF., KY., MISS.
May 30 USA: FORUM Op-eds on legal news by law professors and JURIST special guests... DNA Evidence and the Death Penalty JURIST Special Guest Columnist and former FBI Director William S. Sessions says that Governor Eliot Spitzers recent proposal to expand the New York DNA database and an Ohio Supreme Court ruling liberalizing DNA testing for inmates should be welcomed as necessary and overdue efforts to protect public safety while pursuing meaningful justice, especially for prisoners facing the prospect of capital punishment... New York Governor Eliot Spitzer recently made headlines by announcing a plan to expand New Yorks DNA database to include genetic samples from those convicted of all felonies and most misdemeanors. The Governor's proposal which would immediately increase the size of New York's database by at least 20 % would also require that samples be taken from all New Yorkers in prison, on probation or parole, or registered as sex offenders. A significant provision of the proposal would greatly expand the ability of inmates to obtain DNA testing that might prove their innocence. The Ohio Supreme Court addressed a similar issue this April when it struck down part of a state law that gave prosecutors control over which inmates were given DNA tests. Governor Spitzer's proposal and the Ohio Supreme Courts decision should both be welcomed as necessary and overdue efforts to protect public safety while pursuing meaningful justice. When I became Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1987, few in the criminal justice system knew much about DNA, and nobody fully understood how it would revolutionize our work. Shortly after I became Director the FBI established a DNA laboratory we hoped could be used to verify that a suspect had indeed committed a crime. During my years as a U.S. Attorney and federal judge in Texas I had seen rapists and murderers walk free for lack of biological evidence; these were the cases I had in mind when we established the laboratory in Washington, D.C. One such case, half a country away from my Texas office, haunted even the most hardened prosecutors. In the summer of 1973 Kathleen Ham was brutally raped at knifepoint in her Manhattan apartment. When a jury failed to convict her alleged attacker, her life was put on hold and her sense of justice forever diluted. At the FBI we hoped that DNA matching technology would allow us to solve cases like Ms. Ham's and bring some justice to victims whose attackers were tried but never convicted. By October 1988 the FBI's DNA lab had completed an analysis of biological evidence in 100 active cases. My colleagues and I anticipated that this federal initiative would enable local prosecutors to address questions that had previously been left unanswered. We were right, but not entirely in the manner we expected. The results of those first 100 tests astonished me. In thirty percent of cases the DNA gathered during the investigation did not match the DNA of the suspect. In three out of ten cases not only did we have the wrong person, but the guilty person was still at large. In capital cases the stakes were unnervingly high: the prospect of executing an innocent person was only slightly more appalling than the prospect of murderers and rapists walking free, unidentified and dangerous. The statistics today are roughly the same as they were 19 years ago. In approximately 25 % of cases the genetic evidence recovered during an investigation does not match the DNA of the suspect. Oftentimes this discrepancy is discovered before irreparable harm is done to either the investigation or the suspect; however, too often we learn of our mistake only after time, money, and sometimes lives have been wasted on empty pursuits. DNA evidence has supported more than 30,000 prosecutions and has led to more than 200 exonerations, including those of fifteen death row inmates. This last group, Americans sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit, stands to gain the most from greater access to DNA evidence. Though most prosecutors are dedicated to the pursuit of justice, for years too many have hidden existing DNA evidence or denied reasonable requests for genetic testing. Granting death row inmates access to DNA testing should be only one of many steps taken to confirm the guilt of suspects of capital crimes; the finality of the death penalty demands that our dedication to honest justice be absolute. Governor Spitzer's plan and the Ohio Supreme Courts decision, both of which will allow more suspects and prisoners to obtain these genetic comparisons, should be welcomed by supporters and opponents of the death penalty alike. When more juries are able to consider genetic evidence that a suspect committed a crime, our neighborhoods will be safer places to live. When the wrongfully convicted are given every opportunity to exonerate themselves, our neighborhoods will be better and safer places to live. Some have objected to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
May 17 USA: Prisoner-assisted homicide - more 'volunteer' executions loom Amnesty International When a capital defendant seeks to circumvent procedures necessary to ensure the propriety of his conviction and sentence, he does not ask the State to permit him to take his own life. Rather, he invites the State to violate 2 of the most basic norms of a civilized society - that the State's penal authority be invoked only where necessary to serve the ends of justice, not the ends of a particular individual, and that punishment be imposed only where the State has adequate assurance that the punishment is justified. United States Supreme Court Justice, 1990(1) You can read the entire report here: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510872007 AI Index: AMR 51/087/2007-UNITED STATES OF AMERICA-Prisoner-assisted homicide more 'volunteer' executions loom When a capital defendant seeks to circumvent procedures necessary to ensure the propriety of his conviction and sentence, he does not ask the State to permit him to take his own life. Rather, he invites the State to violate two of the most basic norms of a civilized society that the State's penal authority be invoked only where necessary to serve the ends of justice, not the ends of a particular individual, and that punishment be imposed only where the State has adequate assurance that the punishment is justified. United States Supreme Court Justice, 1990(1) Robert Comer, Christopher Newton and Elijah Page have something in common, aside from being on death row in the USA. Each of these 3 men is assisting their government in its efforts to kill them. They have given up their appeals and are volunteering for execution. Robert Comer is scheduled for execution in Arizona on 22 May 2007, Christopher Newton in Ohio on 23 May, and in the week of 9 July Elijah Page is due to become the 1st person to be put to death in South Dakota since 1947. In addition, on 4 May 2007, the Tennessee Attorney General requested an execution date for Daryl Holton, a former soldier with a history of depression, who has effectively waived his appeals and has been found competent to do so. The execution of another volunteer, Carey Dean Moore, due to be carried out in Nebraska on 8 May 2007, was stopped by the state Supreme Court on 2 May in view of concerns not raised by Moore about Nebraskas use of the electric chair. In issuing its order, a divided Court noted that the unique problem presented by this case is that Moore has not asked for a stay. It added, however, that we simply are not permitted to avert our eyes from the fairness of a proceeding in which a defendant has received the death sentence, and that we have authority to do all things that are reasonably necessary for the proper administration of justice.(2) It seems that not all courts have adopted such a view, and volunteers have gone to their deaths despite concerns about the fairness of proceedings that put them on death row or about the reliability of determinations that found them competent to waive their appeals. About 1 in 10 of the men and women put to death in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977 had given up their appeals. Outside of the 5 main executing states of Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri and Florida, this figure rises to 1 in 5 for the remaining 28 jurisdictions that have executed since 1977. 4 of the first 5 executions in the USA after 1977 were of volunteers. Put to death by firing squad, electrocution, and gas, perhaps their personal pursuit of execution made it easier for the USA to stomach a return to a punishment that much of the rest of the world was beginning to abandon. 14 US states, and the federal government, resumed executions after 1977 with the killing of a prisoner who had waived his appeals. 5 of the states which have resumed executions, Connecticut, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon and Pennsylvania, have yet to execute a non-volunteer. In other words, if the 8 inmates who have been put to death there had not given up their appeals, these 5 states would likely not yet have resumed executions. 20 of the 27 executions so far carried out in Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Washington have been of prisoners who waived their appeals (see table at end of report). Race and mental health appear to be the strongest predictors of who will waive their appeals most volunteers are white males (as are the 5 prisoners featured in the second half of this report), and many have a history of mental disorders.(3) Nevertheless, a review of such cases suggests that any number of factors may contribute to a prisoners decision not to pursue appeals against their death sentence, including mental disorder, physical illness, remorse, bravado, religious belief, a quest for notoriety, the severity of conditions of confinement, including prolonged isolation and lack of physical contact visits, the bleak alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
May 14 USA: Court ruling hinders death row appeals The US Supreme Court on Monday made it more difficult for death row prisoners to challenge their sentences, as 2 new conservative justices appointed by President George W. Bush made clear their hostility to such challenges. The recent addition of the 2 new Bush appointees, chief justice John Roberts and justice Samuel Alito, may have substantially shifted the balance of power on the court on death penalty issues, experts said. Before their appointment, the court had done much to chip away at the edifice of the death penalty, by insisting on improvements in legal representation for capital defendants and ruling unconstitutional the application of capital punishment to juveniles and the mentally retarded. At the same time, the US public has been demonstrating growing unease about the way prisoners are executed in many states and the possibility that some might be innocent. A nationwide Gallup poll last year showed a significant drop in public support for the death penalty: it showed Americans evenly divided over the best punishment for murder, death or a life sentence without parole, after many years in which capital punishment was strongly preferred. Executions last year fell to their lowest level in a decade. The 5-4 ruling split the court into conservative and liberal camps, and appears to signal that the Supreme Court is no longer going to insist so aggressively that capital defendants most of whom do not have the money to pay a top-class lawyer get a competent defence. Monday's case tested the duty of defence attorneys to find mitigating evidence that could persuade a jury to spare a capital defendant's life. The court ruled that a man, who refused to let his lawyer present mitigating evidence from certain witnesses, did not have the right to challenge his sentence on the grounds that his lawyer did not do a good enough job defending him. The prisoner claimed that he did not have effective assistance of counsel, as required by the US constitution, because his lawyer did not, among other things, uncover evidence that he had a serious brain disorder. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said the man did not deserve a new hearing because he would have undermined the presentation of any mitigating evidence that his attorney might have uncovered. The court's 4 liberal members issued a stinging dissent: The court's decision rests on a parsimonious appraisal of a capital defendant's constitutional right to have the sentencing decision reflect meaningful consideration of all relevant mitigating evidence, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the dissenters. He said a psychological evaluation of the man would have uncovered...a serious organic brain disorder. (source: The Financial Times)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, W. VA., ARIZ., OKLA.
May 11 USA: Medical examiner who came up with deadly cocktail defends execution by lethal injection 30 years ago, Oklahoma Medical Examiner Dr. A. Jay Chapman marched into the Oklahoma Statehouse and dictated the formula for a cocktail of 3 drugs to a lawmaker looking for a more humane way to execute the condemned. As Chapman spoke, Rep. Bill Wiseman scribbled on a legal yellow pad. That afternoon, Wiseman introduced the bill that made Oklahoma the first state to adopt lethal injection. Chapman's method has since been taken up by 37 states in all, the federal government and the U.S. military and has been used to execute 900 U.S. prisoners. But the formula and the way it is administered are now under broad legal assault around the country as a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, with activists arguing that Chapman's protocol was hastily conceived and that some prisoners suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out. Chapman still sees it as a humane way to kill the worst criminals. Everything is political correctness and everyone wants to be a victim today, said the cantankerous 68-year-old Chapman, who lives alone in Santa Rosa when he is not teaching medicine in Nepal or trekking in the Himalayas. All of the sudden, the person on death row is a victim. I reject that thinking, by and large, because these people made choices to do what they did. Next week, California's attorney general is due to submit the state's revised execution plan to a federal judge who ruled in December that officials improperly carried out lethal injections and may have caused inmates to suffer needlessly. Other states are grappling with similar issues: - On Wednesday, Tennessee lifted its brief moratorium on capital punishment and lethally injected a condemned man after prison officials revised execution guidelines that were a jumble of conflicting instructions. - 9 other states, including California, have suspended executions while they evaluate their lethal injection procedures, many of which have not been updated in 2 decades. - And a Florida execution in December required a 2nd dose of drugs after the 1st was mistakenly injected into the prisoner's flesh instead of his veins. A recent study in the online journal PLoS Medicine said some inmates suffer extreme pain during lethal injections because of insufficient and haphazard doses of the chemicals, including the painkiller that is the first drug in the three-part combination. Chapman blames incompetent executioners. This protocol will work if it's administered as it should be, he said. If it is competently administered, there will be no question about this business of pain and suffering. Decades after he developed the protocol, defense lawyers, doctors and death penalty foes publicly question the amount of scientific research that went into the creation of lethal injection. Chapman said he consulted a toxicologist and two anesthesiologists. But he said it didn't actually require much research because the three chemicals -- a painkiller, a muscle-paralyzing agent and a heart-stopper -- are well-known to physicians. It's simply an adaptation of a medical procedure, Chapman said this week. It is anesthetizing someone for a surgical procedure, but simply carried to an extreme. Chapman began thinking about a more humane way to mete out the ultimate punishment in 1976, after watching the debate in Utah over whether to execute killer Gary Gilmore by firing squad or hanging. That notion brought him to Wiseman's office in the Oklahoma Statehouse in 1977. The former lawmaker remembers the short meeting vividly, down to the corduroy jacket Chapman wore that day. It was very simple and straightforward, Wiseman said. Wiseman, a death penalty foe, nonetheless voted to reinstate capital punishment because I didn't want to lose the next election. But he later introduced the bill establishing lethal injection as the method to soothe his guilty conscience. Previously, Oklahoma used the electric chair. Wiseman said he now regrets introducing the world to lethal injection, because it makes capital punishment less gory and thus more acceptable. Chapman, for his part, said he was surprised by how widespread his concoction became, and how quickly. But he said he has no regrets. He moved to Santa Rosa in 1982 to work as a forensic pathologist for the Sonoma County coroner and said that until recently, he had stopped thinking about his role in dramatically changing the way executions are carried out in the United States. He is a man whose fame has come late and bizarrely, said Jamie Fellner, director of the anti-death penalty U.S. arm of Human Rights Watch. I think Chapman proceeded in good faith. But the notion that you can have a humane execution is an oxymoron. The American Medical Association and other doctors groups say medical ethics bar physicians from taking part in executions. Chapman is a rarity among physicians in
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---USA, MASS., N.Y., PENN., TENN.
May 10 USA: 3 Newspapers Reverse 100-Year-Old Stand 3 established U.S. newspapers, 2 of them among the 10 largest in the country, in three different states have in the past weeks abandoned their century-old support of the death penalty and become passionate advocates of a ban on state-sponsored killing. The newspapers -- the Chicago Tribune in Illinois, the smaller Sentinel in Pennsylvania and the Dallas Morning News in Texas -- announced their change of heart in strongly-argued editorials following a series of investigative articles highlighting the flaws in the death penalty system in their states and country. I think in a word it's the issue of innocence that has brought about these editorials, Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, told IPS. The weight of evidence in death penalty cases as seen and confirmed in DNA testing has made the death penalty too risky. The Chicago Tribune said its groundbreaking reporting suggested that innocent people had been convicted and executed. 2 cases in Texas were cited. Also over the last 30 years more than 130 people had been released from death row in the U.S. after evidence was presented that undermined the cases against them. In that time, Illinois had executed 12 people and freed 18 from death row. The evidence of mistakes, the evidence of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge that governments can't provide certainty that the innocent will not be put to death -- all that prompts this call for an end to capital punishment. It is time to stop killing people in the people's name, the Chicago Tribune wrote, reversing its pro-capital punishment position held since 1869. Pennsylvania's Sentinel newspaper, founded in 1861, also came out editorially against capital punishment after its reporters highlighted the ineffectiveness of the death penalty system in the state. The death penalty is useless, the newspaper wrote in its Apr. 3 editorial. The state's lengthy appeals process created an almost indefinite stay of execution. This meant the numbers on Pennsylvania's death row were steadily increasing. There were now 221 on death row, the fourth largest number of any state in the country. This was a huge expense for the taxpayers, the newspaper wrote. We are left with a grueling process that in the end only guarantees more suffering for the victims' families and society at large as faith in the justice system erodes, the editorial said. The majority of public opinion in the U.S. now favoured prison without parole rather than capital punishment -- either out of frustration with the system or revulsion at the punishment. The pendulum is swinging away from Pennsylvania's position on a law it cannot even execute, the editorial concluded. The issue of race was also playing a major role in the fall in public support for the death penalty, particularly in Pennsylvania, Brian Evans of Amnesty USA told IPS. There is a lot of doubt about the death penalty especially in Pennsylvania because of the disproportionate racial mix of those on death row, he said. In Texas, the Dallas Morning News reversed its century-old support for the death penalty in an editorial on Apr. 15, citing mounting evidence that the state had wrongly convicted a number of people in capital trials and probably executed at least one innocent man. Carlos De Luna was executed in 1989 for the murder of a petrol station attendant, although there was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime. Later, another man boasted to relatives that De Luna had been convicted for a murder he had committed. In a second disturbing case cited by the newspaper for its change of mind over the death penalty, Ernest Ray Willis was convicted of the murder of 2 women in 1987. A federal judge later found prosecutors had administered anti-psychotic drugs to Willis during his trial to give him a glazed over appearance and show he was cold-hearted. Prosecutors had also suppressed evidence and provided no physical proof or eyewitnesses. Questions were also raised about the competence of the court-appointed defence lawyers. The sentence was overturned. Another death row inmate also confessed to the killings. Willis was released after 17 years on death row. This board has lost confidence that the state of Texas can guarantee that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder, the Dallas Morning News wrote. We do not believe that any legal system devised by inherently flawed human beings can determine with moral certainty the guilt of every defendant convicted of murder. That is why we believe the state of Texas should abandon the death penalty -- because we cannot reconcile the fact that it is both imperfect and irreversible. The number of death sentences handed down in the U.S. has been steadily decreasing as public opinion in support of capital punishment has been falling. Some 315 death sentences were handed down in 1995, 128 in 2005 and 102 last year. In the last 5
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, CALIF.
May 4 USA: Exonerations Change How Justice System Builds a ProsecutionDNA Tests Have Cleared 200 Convicts Jerry Miller is the newest poster child of the wrongfully convicted, the 200th to be exonerated by DNA evidence -- after he spent 25 years behind bars in Illinois for a rape he did not commit. But Miller, a black man, hardly stands out in the crowd of the exonerated. Of the 200 people whose convictions have been overturned as a result of DNA evidence since 1989, 60 % have been black or Latino, according to the Innocence Project, a liberal organization that works to free the wrongfully convicted. Of those exonerated after a rape conviction, 85 % were black men accused of assaulting a white woman. In contrast, black men are accused in 33.6 percent of rapes or sexual assaults of white women, according to a 2005 Bureau of Justice Statistics study of victims. What it says to me is that, ultimately, if you are a black man charged with sexually assaulting a white woman, the likelihood that you will be convicted, even if you are stone-cold innocent, is much, much higher, said Peter J. Neufeld, a co-director of the Innocence Project who asserted that the 200 exonerations are the tip of the iceberg. The overturning of convictions based on DNA evidence is prompting changes in criminal procedures that reach beyond race. States and cities are starting to enact or consider laws to change decades-old police methods such as eyewitness identifications and police interrogations that lead to confessions. The exonerations have been an extremely important force in getting the legal system to recognize there's a problem, said Gary L. Wells, an Iowa State University psychology professor whose research led to new practices in eyewitness identification. I've been working at this for 30 years, and before DNA they pretty much ignored the studies. In New Jersey, where four convictions were overturned by DNA evidence, the state attorney general issued a directive requiring law enforcement agencies to electronically record police interrogations for all violent crimes to guard against false confessions, said Paul H. Heinzel, a deputy attorney general for the state. At least 500 smaller police jurisdictions have begun to tape confessions, and 20 states -- including Maryland, Virginia, California, Florida and Tennessee -- are considering it. Police and prosecutors I've talked to thought it was a good thing, said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a former county prosecutor whose state started taping 11 years ago, after a ruling from its supreme court. It builds police credibility. People talked about it being too expensive. But I would put buying a cheap tape over paying some of these multimillion-dollar wrongful-conviction judgments any day. New Jersey also led the way in discarding the old police lineup, in which victims and witnesses identified suspects first from an array of photographs and later from an in-person lineup as detectives intent on solving the case stood by, sometimes offering encouragement. The state now presents individuals -- in person or in photos -- one after the other so witnesses cannot compare one member of a lineup to another, making relative judgments about which individual most looks like the perpetrator, according to guidelines set by the New Jersey attorney general. Bad eyewitness identifications contributed to 75 % of wrongful convictions in cases that were overturned by DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project. Georgia, West Virginia, Connecticut, New Mexico and Texas, where 25 convictions were overturned by DNA evidence, are now considering legislation that would similarly change eyewitness identifications. Miami is considering an overhaul of its procedures, said John F. Timoney, chief of police. The city now videotapes all confessions. DNA evidence is tested in every rape case. The city has collected more DNA evidence than its labs can test. Timoney said he is in discussions with the district attorney over whether to implement a sequential process for eyewitness identification. Joshua Marquis, district attorney for Clatsop County, Ore., and vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, warned against the new eyewitness procedures. He called the process an unproven fad that could unwittingly set perpetrators free. It's way far from being established that this is the magic bullet, he said, adding that prosecutors want eyewitness identification that is valid. Miller was a young Army veteran and line cook when he was identified as a rapist and arrested in September 1981. Police said his face resembled the composite sketch created from the memory of the victim, who was attacked in a parking garage and stuffed in the trunk of her car by an assailant. Miller protested, saying he was at home watching Sugar Ray Leonard box Tommy Hearns in their famous bout. He offered a witness to corroborate his alibi: his father, who watched with him. I can remember all of
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, FLA., IND., TENN.
April 29 USA: Thousands await executions in U.S. prisons Ryan Dickson was killed on Thursday by the State of Texas. The 30 year old double-murderer was put to death by lethal injection in the state's 13th execution this year. Texas currently has 385 prisoners on death row, 10 of which are female. The clearance rate is just as high. 5 inmates were put to death last month. 8 will be executed in the next 90 days, 2 in May, 4 in June, and 2 in July. Dickson was 18 at the time of his offence, and had been on Death Row for ten years. He and his 15 year old step brother robbed a grocery store owned by a couple in their sixties in Amarillo in November 1994. They were confronted by the store owner, who was 61. Dickson brought a sawed-off 22-caliber rifle from under his coat and shot the owner in the chest. He then shot the man's wife, 60, in the face notwithstanding she had all the money from the cash register on to the counter for the robbers to take. For their efforts the Dicksons netted $52 in cash and some beer. On Thursday, nearly 13 years later he was injected with sodium thiopental to sedate him; pancuronium bromide to relax his muscles and to collapse his diaphragm and lungs; and potassium chloride to stop his heart beat. It took seven minutes for him to die. The cost for the drugs injected: $86.08. Three people died for $52, and it cost $86.08 to kill the one who murdered the other 2. Death Row detainees are allowed a last statement prior to their execution. Dickson apologized to his victims and said goodbye to his family. Many of the last statements are similar, some however are chilling as detainees maintain their innocence or vent their fury at their keepers at the prison. James Clark who was executed 2 weeks ago was brief. Uh, I don't know, Um, I don't know what to say. I don't know. (pause) I didn't know anybody was there. Howdy, he said. Clark was convicted of robbery, rape, and murder of a 17-year-girl in 1993. Roy Pippen who was executed 2 weeks earlier had more to say. Yes sir, I charge the people of the jury. Trial Judge, the Prosecutor that cheated to get this conviction. I charge each and every one of you with the murder of an innocent man. All the way to the CCA, Federal Court, 5th Circuit and Supreme Court. You will answer to your Maker when God has found out that you executed an innocent man. May God have mercy on you. My love to my son, my daughter, Nancy, Cathy, Randy, and my future grandchildren. I ask for forgiveness for all of the poison that I brought into the US, the country I love. Please forgive me for my sins. f my murder makes it easier for everyone else let the forgiveness please be a part of the healing. Go ahead Warden, murder me. Jesus take me home, Pippen said. Pippen who was involved in the Columbian drug trade was convicted of kidnapping and murder. Vincent Gutierrez who, with two associates, murdered a 40 year old Hispanic man during a carjacking said, I would like to tell everybody that I'm sorry about the situation that happened. My bad - everybody is here because of what happened. I'd like to thank everybody that's been here through the years. The little kids overseas - they really changed me. Sister Doris, mom, brothers, sister, dad; I love ya'll. My brother... where's my stunt double when you need one? My Lord is my life and savior, nothing shall I fear. Charles Neal, who murdered a 25 year old Asian male clerk while robbing a convenience store in Dallas in 1997, in his last statement said, Ya'll know I love you, you too Ward. You have been a good friend. You are a good investigator. Doug, I thank you for coming from Michigan. Chris and David, I love you. Thank them for their support Doug. Debra, James, I'm not crying so you don't cry. Don't be sad for me. I'm going to be with God, Allah, and Momma. I'm gonna ask dad why didn't give you away at your wedding. Randy Greer, my little brother, I'll be watching you, stay out of trouble. All my nieces and nephews, I love you all. Sammie, Vincent, and Yolanda, I will be watching over you all. The reason it took them so long is because they couldn't find a vein. You know how I hate needles - I used to stay in the Doctor's Office. Tell the guys on death row that I'm not wearing a diaper. I can't think of anything else. You all stay strong. Now you can put this all aside. Don't bury me in the prison cemetery. Bury me right beside momma. Don't bury me to the left of dad, bury me on the right side of mom, Neal said. Kim Schaeffer, you are a evil woman. You broke the law. The judges and courts helped you and you didn't have all the facts. hen you look at the video, you know you can't see anyone. You overplayed your hand looking for something against me and to cover it up the State is killing me. I'm not mad or bitter though. I'm sad that you are stuck here and have to go through all of this. I am going somewhere better. My time is up. Let me get ready to make my transition. Doug, don't forget Marcy, Neal
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, N.J., ILL., FLA., S.C., N.Y.
April 25 USA: Lethally inhumane injectionsWhen the state kills, it tortures first. The Virginia General Assembly this year decided the state should kill more criminals. It overrode a gubernatorial veto and made more crimes eligible for the death penalty. Lawmakers refuse to acknowledge the barbarity of their ultimate punishment. Virginia, with rare exception, uses lethal injections for executions. In theory, it is supposed to be the most humane way to kill a prisoner. In practice, a new study finds, it is often anything but humane. Lethal injections work by administering 3 drugs to the condemned prisoner. One renders him unconscious; the 2nd paralyzes him; and the 3rd stops his heart. The injections don't always work that way, though. Because doctors do not participate in executions, mistakes often occur. In recent years, there have been reports of prisoners awakening during their executions. They suffer through intense pain, all the while paralyzed and unable to respond. Such anecdotes convinced about a dozen states to impose a moratorium on lethal injections, but not Virginia. Now, however, there are more than just stories. A group of scientists studied execution data, including some from Virginia, and confirmed the worst. Some people do awaken mid-execution, an experience the researchers likened to suffocating slowly while on fire. That does not bother many death-penalty supporters. A prosecutor in Indiana, for example, told The New York Times, It doesn't matter a whole lot to me that someone may have felt some pain before they were administered the poison as a method of execution. It might not matter to him, but it does matter to the Constitution. America's fundamental legal document forbids cruel and unusual punishment. If paralyzing someone and triggering every pain receptor in his body while he suffocates isn't cruel, what is? Perhaps now that the scientific evidence is on the table, Virginia lawmakers will stop looking for reasons to torture more people before killing them and will instead end a practice that has no place in a civilized society. Don't hold your breath while you're on fire. (source: Editorial, Roanoke Times) * Prisoners Executed By Lethal Injection May Suffocate In Pain While Awake A new US study suggests that some prisoners executed by lethal injection die from asphyxiation while conscious, paralyzed and in pain. The study is published in the journal PLoS Medicine. Dr Leonidas Koniaris and colleagues from the University of Miami in Florida, USA, reviewed data on executions from two US states, North Carolina and California, and assessed the medical literature on the three drugs that are used to administer lethal injections. They concluded that the lethal injection system used to execute prisoners may not be working in the way intended. The lethal injection is a cocktail of three drugs, each of which is supposed to be fatal on its own, according to those who originally designed the method. -- Drug number 1 is a barbiturate: thiopental. This is an anesthetic but not a painkiller (analgesic). -- Drug number 2 is a a neuromuscular blocker: pancuronium bromide. This paralyses the muscles, including those that control breathing. -- Drug number 3 is an electrolyte: potassium chloride. This stops the heart beating. These 3 drugs combined are supposed to cause death by rendering the prisoner unconscious and then inducing respiratory and cardiac arrest. However, the researchers suggest that the doses are not tailored to the individual prisoner, for instance to adjust for body weight. Reports on a number of recent executions reveal that some prisoners take many minutes to die, and others become very distressed, because the method is not working as intended. Dr Koniaris and colleagues say their findings suggest that in some cases the dose of the anasthetic, thiopental, is not sufficient to cause death and may even not be enough to keep the prisoner unconscious for the duration of the execution. They also suggest that the dose of potassium chloride is sometimes not enough to stop the heart, which results in prisoners being conscious while the paralysis brought about by the pancuronium bromide asphyxiates them. The research team concluded that: The conventional view of lethal injection leading to an invariably peaceful and painless death is questionable. We concluded that the original design of the lethal injection drug protocol itself is flawed, said Dr Teresa A. Zimmers, research assistant professor of surgery at the Miller School of Medicine and lead author of the report. The drug protocol is based on little clinical and scientific data and contradicts clinical veterinary practice, she added. Dr Koniaris and colleagues mention that the current regimens for lethal injection in the US are derived from one designed by Oklahoma legislators and appear to be founded on personal opinion rather than independent research. In an
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
7 executions scheduled for May, including 1 volunteer Carey Dean Moore is scheduled to be executed by the state of Nebraska on May 8. Aaron Lee Jones is scheduled for execution on May 3, by the state of Alabama. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! --- Do Not Execute Carey Dean Moore! The state of Nebraska should not execute Carey Dean Moore for the murders of Maynard D. Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness. Moore is volunteering for execution, after a decades-long appeals process that included a challenge to the state's use of the electric chair. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Dave Heineman requesting that he stop the execution of Carey Dean Moore! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/ organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11154 --- Do Not Execute Aaron Lee Jones! The On May 3, Alabama is set to execute Aaron Lee Jones for the Novermber 1978 murders of Carl and Willene Nelson. Jones claims inefective assistance of counsel and has tried to challenge the state's lethal injection protocols. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Bob Riley requesting that Aaron Lee Jones' execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/ organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11152 --- See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html May 3: Aaron Lee Jones, AL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11152 May 4: David Wood, IN http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11153 May 8: Carey Dean Moore, NE http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11154 May 9: Philip Workman, TN http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11155 May 10: Jose Moreno, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11156 May 16: Charles Smith, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11163 May 24: Christopher Newton, OH http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11165
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, PENN.
April 24 USA: Bad Drugs: Lethal Injection Does Not Work as Designed A new study shows that failure to inject proper dosages potentially leads to slow, painful deaths from chemical asphyxiation Lethal injection was invented in 1977 by Oklahoma state medical examiner Jay Chapman, who, based on his own experiences under anesthesia, concocted the drug cocktail from an ultrashort-acting barbiturate and a chemical paralytic. He added a heart-stopping drug to the mix to provide a painless, quick death with built-in redundancy. If one drug didn't kill the death row inmate, one of the other 2 would. But dosage is critical to the efficacy of lethal injection according to a new study, which found that if any of the doses are off the recipient not only feels pain, but he or she also must suffer a slow death by the asphyxiation following total paralysis. Molecular biologist Teresa Zimmers of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and colleagues, including a surgeon, an anesthesiologist and a lawyer, analyzed the sparse public records of executions. Only 2 states provide such records: North Carolina and California, the latter of which was forced to do so by court order. In each of these states, varying dosages of sodium thiopental (a barbiturate to induce anesthesia), pancuronium bromide (a muscle relaxant that paralyzes all the muscles of the body) and potassium chloride (a salt that speeds the heart until it stops) are injected in doses designed to kill condemned inmates. Though the dosages vary by state, they do not vary by inmateeach is given the same amount of the drug whether short or tall, fat or thin. As a result, death by lethal injection is not necessarily quick or painless, according to the study published in PLoS Medicine. In North Carolina inmates took an average of nine minutes to die (and much longer before flawed drug protocols were changed), and in California cessation of the heartbeat took from 2 to 8 minutes after the last injection of the heart-stopping potassium chloride. When potassium chloride was added, it didn't seem to change the time of death, Zimmers notes. This suggests that potassium chloride may not be the agent of death. In addition, researchers found that the amounts of thiopental used may not be sufficient to render the procedure painless, based on comparisons with veterinary data. In the veterinary realm, government and professional oversight has led to the development of strict dosage guidelines for the appropriate painless killing of animals. The dosages used in human executions are, in some cases, lower by body weight than the dosages that would kill only 50 % of mice and from which monkeys have been able to successfully recover. The way that thiopental is administered, it would be an unacceptably low dose if the inmate was a pig scheduled for euthanasia, Zimmers says. And, although the dosages of potassium chloride would be considered adequate to kill animals, they do not appear to have the intended effect in humans, failing to hasten the time of death. We are doing it successfully in animals and we're doing it successfully because they've taken a hard look at it, notes Jon Sheldon, a study co-author and criminal defense attorney in Virginia. When you do it with animals, there is no pain. It's likely there is with people. That pain takes the form of slow asphyxiation due to an inability to use the diaphragm muscle to breathe as a result of the pancuronium bromide. In such case death by suffocation would occur in a paralyzed inmate fully aware of the progressive suffocation and potassium-induced sensation of burning, the researchers write. The scientists analyzed only 41 of the 891 lethal injections that have taken place in the U.S. to date (and considerably more worldwide). But many of the remaining states' drug protocols and details of their executions remain secret. Nevertheless, researchers say the small sample indicates that the cocktail is not working as intended. This idea that this is a painless procedure is completely wrong, Zimmers says. It's just invisible because the person is paralyzed. The legal standard is you can't have unnecessary or gratuitous pain, under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Sheldon adds. It seems quite likely that a number of people are suffering pain. If a change to the protocol would be fairly simple to do, then the pain you are inflicting is clearly unnecessary. (source: Scientific American) ** Does Execution By Lethal Injection Involve Conscious Asphyxiation? Execution by lethal injection may cause death by asphyxiation, and prisoners being executed may be conscious and may experience pain, claim the authors of a new study published this week in PLoS Medicine. Leonidas Koniaris and colleagues from the University of Miami assessed data from 2 US states that release information on executions together with previously published work on the drugs used in the protocols for lethal
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, CALIF., ARIZ., S. DAK., GA.
April 16 USA: Abolish the death penalty-the right way The death penalty and capital punishment in the United States has certainly accrued much praise as well as some harsh judgment recently. The proponents of capital punishment argue that there is no better deterrent for committing murder than the possibility of facing a death sentence. The left uses rhetoric such as it is racist and unjust in order to further their own agenda. The fact is that due to its unlimited amount of appeals, the death penalty becomes very expensive. Even more expensive than keeping the criminal in prison for life. The people's right to appeal stems from the sixth amendment to the Constitution, which are used mainly to ensure that the people who are sentenced to death are not convicted unjustly, but only beyond a reasonable doubt. With every appeal, we see increasingly greater profits from the big law firms. My solution: abolish the death penalty, and replace it with national concealed carry laws so people can protect themselves. Laws are not impenetrable, and the police take time to respond to calls. With any government-run system (the court system for example), there will always be loopholes in the laws where criminals will walk free and the innocent will be convicted. Our basic individual freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness need to be upheld, and people should be able to stand up and protect themselves from any infringement of them. Concealed carry laws would achieve the goals of both sides: the cost for appeals would be driven down to nearly nothing, because the crime deterrent would be preventative rather than reactionary. The costs of law enforcement will go down, because people will be able to defend themselves, and people will always be sure that justice is done, because they will see to it personally. Forty-eight out of 50 states currently offer some kind of conceal carry. This is up from 35 states 20 years ago. The people of America are realizing that the only way to truly be safe from violent crime is to stop it yourself. Not everyone is eligible for a conceal carry permit, of course. Anyone who is restricted from buying guns, such as non-U.S. citizens and convicted felons are immediately excluded. Also, in order to receive a carry permit, you have to go through rigorous training in the use and proper application of a firearm. As a matter of fact, states where there is a shall issue rather than may issue conceal carry laws statistically see drastically lower crime rates. In pretty much every state that recently issued a concealed carry permit, the rate of murder and violent crime went down. Conversely, after the City of Chicago issued a handgun registration and gun ban in 1989, the murder rate increased dramatically. The fact is criminals don't want to assault someone who will shoot back, and gun control strips power from the individual and puts it in the hands of gang members and organized crime. Let's stop relying on bureaucratic organizations to protect us and let's step up and do the job ourselves. An effective police force is required to convict criminals, but there has to be a front line of personal defense so we don't have to rely on capital punishment to do the job for us, because if it fails, it's your life on the line. (source: Chris Kelle, College Republicans; Chicago Flame, University of Illinois at Chicago) CALIFORNIA: OAKLAND: PROSECUTOR ASKS FOR DEATH PENALTY IN MURDER, RAPE OF GIRL A prosecutor told jurors today that an Oakland man deserves the death penalty for raping and strangling an 11-year-old girl more than 7 years ago. In his opening statement in the penalty phase of the trial of Alex DeMolle, who's now 32, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney John Brouhard said the death of 11-year-old Jaquita Mack in the early evening hours of July 24, 1999, wreaked enormous devastation on her family members, friends, classmates and teachers. Brouhard said DeMolle hasn't been convicted of any other crimes, but he said DeMolle was involved in 2 prior incidents in which he used or threatened violence, which are factors jurors can consider when they decide if he deserves the death penalty. The prosecutor said that when DeMolle was 15, he was one of a group of teenagers who brutally kicked a 13-year-old boy while he was on the ground after the 13-year-old was involved in a dispute with a girl. Brouhard said when DeMolle was 23, he threatened to shoot a construction worker after the man told DeMolle to move his car from a parking lot at a Kaiser facility in Hayward where fresh asphalt had just been poured. But Daniel Horowitz, 1 of 2 lawyers representing DeMolle, said that although the rape and murder of Jaquita was a horrible incident, there are no other aggravating factors that would justify a death penalty recommendation. Horowitz said DeMolle's friends and family members say that the crime was inexplicable to them because it doesn't fit in with the person they
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA----April 07 Execution Alert
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty NCADP 2008 Annual Conference Jan. 17-20 San Jose Holiday Inn San Jose, California 3 executions scheduled for April, 2 in Texas James Lee Clark is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on April 11. Ryan Dickson is scheduled for execution on April 26, by the state of Texas. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! Do Not Execute James Lee Clark! The state of Texas should not execute James Lee Clark for his role in the murder of Shari Catherine Crews. In June 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the state cannot execute someone who is mentally retarded. Several experts have found Clark's IQ to be under 70, thus fitting the definition of mental retardation. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that he stop the execution of James Lee Clark! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7133 -- Do Not Execute Ryan Dickson! The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Ryan Dickson on April 26 for the 1994 murders of Carmelo and Marie Surace. There is a question as to whether or not a juror in the trial phase withheld information about prior knowledge of the case. Furthermore, the trial judge has stated that he believes Dickson deserves a new trial due to evidence that the prosecution withheld. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that Ryan Dickson's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7136 See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html April 11: James Lee Clark, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7133 April 24: James Filiaggi, OH http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7135 April 26: Ryan Dickson, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7136
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, WYO. OHIO, CALIF.
March 29 USA: Alberto Gonzales and the death penalty: A time for candor. A time for fairness. 2 years ago, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced confirmation hearings, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty stressed that the nation's chief law enforcement officer must demonstrate the highest commitment to fairness, due process and equal protection under the law. We based our opposition to Gonzales' confirmation on our belief that his track record on death penalty cases in Texas failed to meet this challenge. Time and again the legal analysis he provided to then-Gov. George W. Bush on the eve of executions failed to include any discussion of the most salient issues, including severe mental retardation and mental illness, abysmally poor legal representation and, in more than a handful of cases, even credible claims of innocence. With the recent revelations that differences regarding the death penalty played a role in the dismissal of at least three U.S. attorneys, our fears, sadly, have been justified. Then, as now, Mr. Gonzales placed Bush's political agenda above honesty, integrity , and commitment to fairness. In Texas this took the form of cursory review - and then denial in every single case but one - of clemency applications as President Bush parlayed his tough-on-crime persona into a successful run for the Republican presidential nomination. Today, Mr. Gonzales' failed priorities have contributed to a politicized federal death penalty system instead of one based on fairness and integrity. Consider: * At least 3 U.S. attorneys - Paul Charlton of Arizona, Margaret Chiara of Michigan, and Kevin Ryan of California - were dismissed after clashing with the Justice Department over death penalty policy. Although the final decision has always rested with the U.S. Attorney General, a U.S. attorney's recommendation that death should not be sought has traditionally been given great deference - until recently. * During the 6 years that President Bush has been in office (a span of time marked by Mr. Gonzales and his predecessor, former Attorney General John Ashcroft) the federal death penalty was sought 95 times, or about 16 times a year. That's twice as often as the 55 times it was sought during the 8 years of the Clinton Administration, roughly seven times a year. * Ominously, the Bush Department of Justice has sought the federal death penalty in states where voters, through their elected representatives, have rejected capital punishment. These jurisdictions include Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Dakota, and Vermont, as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. (New York, a state without a functioning state death penalty, has a stunning 51 potential federal death penalty cases in the works.) Perhaps the most telling statistic: The size of federal death row has tripled since Bush took office, while state death sentences and executions are down sharply from their historic highs in the late 1990s. 3 federal death row inmates already have been executed under the Bush administration; another 4 federal death row inmates are nearing the end of their appeals. What does it say that the federal death penalty under Gonzales is inconsistent with state trends, which show capital punishment is on the wane? It says, simply, that the Bush Administration has chosen to politicize the death penalty. That is wrong. Both death penalty proponents and opponents agree on this: Fairness and integrity must be present at the highest levels of our criminal justice system, especially when a person's life is in the balance. That is why, increasingly, groups such as murder victims' family members, religious groups, and leaders in the law enforcement community are calling for fairness. Mr. Gonzales promised fairness in 2005 when he faced confirmation hearings. He was not candid about his record on the death penalty then and he is not candid today. It is past time for General Gonzales to tender his resignation, for the President to nominate, and for the Senate to confirm an Attorney General who will demonstrate the highest commitment to fairness, due process and equal protection under the law. (source: NCADP; Rust-Tierney is executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty) ** Prosecutors and the Death Penalty As the scandal over the US Attorney purge intensifies, each day brings stark revelations. From intimidating phone calls made to prosecutors' homes to incriminating e-mails from the office of former White House counsel Harriet Miers, to the lurking shadow of Karl Rove, it's a political firestorm that threatens to reduce the career of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to ashes. But long before this controversy shed light on the political maneuvering between the White House and the Justice Department, two of the fired attorneys were engaged in a largely invisible internal struggle with the Justice Department over its aggressive pursuit of the death
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, NEB., MD., VA., TENN., N.C.
March 28 USA: Fired attorneys all reluctant to seek death penalty in federal cases Margaret Chiara, a former U.S. Attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., appealed several times to the Justice Department against having to seek the federal death penalty. In hindsight, for her it was a risky business. No prisoner has been executed in a Michigan case since 1938, but the Bush administration seemed determined to change that. Indeed, under Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales, far more federal defendants have been dispatched to death row than under the previous administration. And any prosecutors wishing to do otherwise often find themselves overruled. Chiara was not the only one to run afoul of the administration's stance on the death penalty. In San Francisco, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan was ordered by Ashcroft to conduct a capital trial for a Californian charged with killing a man with a mailed, booby-trapped bomb. Ryan persuaded Ashcroft's successor, Gonzales, to drop the death charge; in February, the defendant, David Lin, was acquitted in federal court in San Jose. In Phoenix, prosecutor Paul Charlton was told repeatedly, despite his resistance, to file capital murder in a case where the victim's body has never been recovered. The woman's remains are believed buried in an Arizona landfill, but the Justice Department refused Charlton's request to shoulder the cost -- up to $1 million -- to retrieve the corpse. The 3 prosecutors are among 8 U.S. attorneys terminated in 2006 in a housecleaning by the Justice Department. And while their hesitation over the death penalty was not cited as a reason for their dismissals, Washington officials have made it clear they have little patience for prosecutors who are not with the program. The Justice Department under Ashcroft and Gonzales has demanded far more death-penalty cases than it did under the Clinton administration. Data from the Federal Death Penalty Information Center in Washington show that there have been 95 federal death-penalty trials in the 6 years under Ashcroft and Gonzales, compared with 55 during the 8 years under Attorney General Janet Reno. Richard Dieter, executive director of the center, said that when President Bush came to Washington in 2001, his administration seemed determined not only to toughen the federal death penalty statute but to seek it equitably around the nation -- including in states such as Michigan where laws forbid it. As a result, he said, you see a lot more (capital) cases going to trial, unlike what was happening before, where U.S. attorneys were given some leeway to settle cases or take plea bargains.'' Dieter said: Bush certainly believes in the death penalty, Ashcroft was a fervent believer, and Gonzales was Bush's adviser in Texas, denying all those clemency requests.'' When Chiara was appointed to be the top prosecutor in Grand Rapids in November 2001, she told reporters that she was opposed to the death penalty. But, she added, her personal views would not affect her performance. Nevertheless, said her predecessor, Mike Dettmer: She did not pass the Bush loyalty test on her concerns over the death penalty,'' and she caught a lot of flak for it.'' Two years into her term, she filed capital charges against Michael and Robert Ostrander -- brothers from Cadillac, Mich. -- in the slaying and robbery of an alleged fellow drug dealer. The decision to pursue the death penalty was made by Ashcroft after Chiara and a deputy, Phil Green, flew to Washington and attempted to convince him otherwise, Dettmer said. Paul Mitchell, who represented one of the brothers, said the state law against execution in Michigan was bypassed when Washington made it a federal case based on a firearm being used in a drug-related offense. Police said the brothers met another alleged drug dealer, Hansle Andrews, and invited him to go with them to buy drugs in Grand Rapids. Instead they drove to a remote area outside Cadillac, shot Andrews, robbed him and buried the body in a pre-dug grave. They were convicted of murder but were spared death, receiving life sentences instead. In firing Chiara, the Justice Department did not mention the death penalty but did note that officials felt they had no assurance that DOJ priorities/polices (were) being carried out'' in Grand Rapids. In San Francisco, federal public defender Barry J. Portman said he wonders whether Ryan's hesitation to charge the death penalty might have hurt his standing with Washington too. He cited the Lin case and Ryan's ability to get Gonzales to reverse Ashcroft's decision to raise it to a capital level. Most defense attorneys felt Ryan was not eager to seek the death penalty,'' Portman said. On Feb. 23 Lin was acquitted of mailing a robot dog containing a bomb that killed Patrick Hsu, 18, of San Jose. Ryan was fired for a number of reasons, according to the Justice documents, including complaints that his office was the most fractured one in the country.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
March 21 USA: Executions halted as doctors balk After 897 executions by lethal injection over the past 25 years, the role of doctors in carrying out the death penalty is surfacing as the latest ethical issue to force a re-examination of capital punishment in the United States. A conflict between medical ethics and court orders that a doctor participate in lethal injections has halted executions in California, Missouri and North Carolina. But the ethical issue raised by doctors in the death chamber lurks beneath the surface in most of the 37 capital-punishment states that sanction chemical execution, a mode of death also facing separate constitutional challenges over whether it unduly inflicts pain on prisoners. The American Medical Association is adamant that it is a violation of medical ethics for doctors to participate in, or even be present at, executions. But recent court rulings have called for people with medical expertise to assist in executions by mixing and injecting the lethal drugs or monitoring the inmate's vital signs. That's the conundrum, right? The people who are best able to ensure that the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment is not going to be violated are the people who want to have nothing to do with this, said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law and a capital-punishment expert. Lethal injection, in theory, provides a quiet death in which inmates simply sleep and never awaken. First used in 1982, it was seen as a more humane alternative to the gas chamber, electric chair, firing squad or gallows. (Nebraska is the only of 38 states with the death penalty not to use lethal injection; it still uses the electric chair.) But personnel with little or no medical training at times have struggled to find veins of inmates or have incorrectly administered the drugs. In Florida, the December execution of Angel Diaz, who killed a topless club manager, required 34 minutes twice the usual time and 2 lethal doses because, on the 1st attempt, the needle missed the vein and went into soft tissue. It was later revealed that the lead executioner had no medical training whatsoever. The death penalty is now on hold in 13 states, in 11 because of questions over use of lethal injections. 3 of those moratoriums force a spotlight on the largely hidden role of doctors in overseeing executions. The sharpest debate over use of doctors in executing prisoners is shaping up in North Carolina, where the state corrections department and the state medical board are headed for a showdown over the board's declaration that it will punish any doctor who participates in executions. The fight in North Carolina is the 1st time a state medical board, a state agency that licenses and disciplines physicians, willingly has pushed itself into the debate. Months after a judge said a doctor must monitor a death-row inmates vital signs to ensure there is no pain, the states medical board in January said it would punish any doctor who did anything more than observe executions. As a result, a judge has stayed five executions. The situation escalated March 6 when the North Carolina Department of Corrections filed a lawsuit seeking to strip away the medical board's power to punish physicians for assisting in executions. The corrections department claimed that executions arent medical procedures and so arent under the jurisdiction of the board. In California, a federal judge in February 2006 ordered anesthesiologists to be at the execution of Michael Morales, who killed and raped a 17-year-old girl, after hearing evidence that previous inmates still may have been conscious when the final, heart-stopping drug in the lethal mix was injected. But two anesthesiologists who agreed to be present later backed out when they realized they might have to participate should something go wrong. Morales execution was stayed. In December, a federal judge found that Californias current lethal-injection procedure is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. Among the reasons were lack of training for the execution team and improper mixing of the anesthetic. While the judge ruled that a medical professional wasnt required, he said the state's lethal-injection procedures must ensure that enough anesthetic is given and provide a reliable way to monitor the inmate's vital signs. In Missouri, a lawsuit by inmate Michael Taylor, who killed and raped a 15-year-old honor student, exposed that a dyslexic surgeon was mixing the lethal drugs, despite little training in anesthesiology, no written execution protocol and little oversight. The judge called for a licensed anesthesiologist to be used. The state then sent letters to 298 certified anesthesiologists in Missouri and southern Illinois but could find no one willing to participate. In Maryland, where one inmate's lawyers demanded the state add a general surgeon to the execution team, the state likewise said it wouldnt be able to find doctors.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
March 21 USA: Executions halted as doctors balk After 897 executions by lethal injection over the past 25 years, the role of doctors in carrying out the death penalty is surfacing as the latest ethical issue to force a re-examination of capital punishment in the United States. A conflict between medical ethics and court orders that a doctor participate in lethal injections has halted executions in California, Missouri and North Carolina. But the ethical issue raised by doctors in the death chamber lurks beneath the surface in most of the 37 capital-punishment states that sanction chemical execution, a mode of death also facing separate constitutional challenges over whether it unduly inflicts pain on prisoners. The American Medical Association is adamant that it is a violation of medical ethics for doctors to participate in, or even be present at, executions. But recent court rulings have called for people with medical expertise to assist in executions by mixing and injecting the lethal drugs or monitoring the inmate's vital signs. That's the conundrum, right? The people who are best able to ensure that the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment is not going to be violated are the people who want to have nothing to do with this, said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law and a capital-punishment expert. Lethal injection, in theory, provides a quiet death in which inmates simply sleep and never awaken. First used in 1982, it was seen as a more humane alternative to the gas chamber, electric chair, firing squad or gallows. (Nebraska is the only of 38 states with the death penalty not to use lethal injection; it still uses the electric chair.) But personnel with little or no medical training at times have struggled to find veins of inmates or have incorrectly administered the drugs. In Florida, the December execution of Angel Diaz, who killed a topless club manager, required 34 minutes twice the usual time and 2 lethal doses because, on the 1st attempt, the needle missed the vein and went into soft tissue. It was later revealed that the lead executioner had no medical training whatsoever. The death penalty is now on hold in 13 states, in 11 because of questions over use of lethal injections. 3 of those moratoriums force a spotlight on the largely hidden role of doctors in overseeing executions. The sharpest debate over use of doctors in executing prisoners is shaping up in North Carolina, where the state corrections department and the state medical board are headed for a showdown over the board's declaration that it will punish any doctor who participates in executions. The fight in North Carolina is the 1st time a state medical board, a state agency that licenses and disciplines physicians, willingly has pushed itself into the debate. Months after a judge said a doctor must monitor a death-row inmates vital signs to ensure there is no pain, the states medical board in January said it would punish any doctor who did anything more than observe executions. As a result, a judge has stayed five executions. The situation escalated March 6 when the North Carolina Department of Corrections filed a lawsuit seeking to strip away the medical board's power to punish physicians for assisting in executions. The corrections department claimed that executions arent medical procedures and so arent under the jurisdiction of the board. In California, a federal judge in February 2006 ordered anesthesiologists to be at the execution of Michael Morales, who killed and raped a 17-year-old girl, after hearing evidence that previous inmates still may have been conscious when the final, heart-stopping drug in the lethal mix was injected. But two anesthesiologists who agreed to be present later backed out when they realized they might have to participate should something go wrong. Morales execution was stayed. In December, a federal judge found that Californias current lethal-injection procedure is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. Among the reasons were lack of training for the execution team and improper mixing of the anesthetic. While the judge ruled that a medical professional wasnt required, he said the state's lethal-injection procedures must ensure that enough anesthetic is given and provide a reliable way to monitor the inmate's vital signs. In Missouri, a lawsuit by inmate Michael Taylor, who killed and raped a 15-year-old honor student, exposed that a dyslexic surgeon was mixing the lethal drugs, despite little training in anesthesiology, no written execution protocol and little oversight. The judge called for a licensed anesthesiologist to be used. The state then sent letters to 298 certified anesthesiologists in Missouri and southern Illinois but could find no one willing to participate. In Maryland, where one inmate's lawyers demanded the state add a general surgeon to the execution team, the state likewise said it wouldnt be able to find doctors.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, ARIZ.
March 8 USA: Fired U.S. Attorney Accuses Republicans of Exerting Political Pressure New Mexico's former U.S. Attorney accused Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., Tuesday of exerting political pressure on him about an ongoing public-corruption investigation just before Election Day last fall. David Iglesias, who was asked to resign from the Justice Department with at least six other U.S. Attorneys on Dec. 7, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Wilson had telephoned him on Oct. 16, about 3 weeks before the elections, to inquire about the status of sealed indictments in a probe involving a Democratic state legislator. When Iglesias told Wilson that he couldn't speak about the existence of sealed indictments, She was not happy with that answer, he said, and their call ended a short time later. Wilson was then in the middle of a heated re-election campaign against former New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid. Wilson won the election over Madrid by fewer than 900 votes. Justice Department guidelines strictly limit what prosecutors can say about ongoing investigations. Nonetheless, two weeks after Wilson's call, Iglesias testified that he received an unusual call from Domenici at his home in late October, just days before the November elections. The senator also wanted to know about the prospect of charges in the public-corruption case. Are these going to be unsealed by November? Iglesias said Domenici told him. Iglesias says that after he told Domenici it was unlikely charges would be brought before November, Domenici told him, I'm very sorry to hear that, and the line went dead. I felt sick afterwards, Iglesias said. I felt leaned on. Asked why he did not immediately report the calls from Wilson and Domenici to his superiors at the Justice Department -- as mandated by internal Justice rules -- Iglesias said he felt torn between his loyalties to Domenici, whom he described as a mentor, and to Wilson, whom he said had been a friend. Domenici had supported Iglesias' nomination to become U.S. Attorney in 2001. Iglesias suggested that his firing, given his office's high marks in internal Justice Department performance reviews, may have come as a result of Domenici or Wilson pressuring the White House or Justice to ask for his resignation. I suspect they felt I was not a help to them during the campaign, Iglesias said. After he was fired, he said, he began to put the dots together. In response to questions about her call with Iglesias, a spokeswoman for Wilson's office forwarded a statement saying she had contacted Iglesias' office after a constituent complained about the pace of ongoing corruption investigations. I did not ask about the timing of any indictments, and I did not tell Mr. Iglesias what course of action I thought he should take or pressure him in any way, Wilson says in the statement. If the purpose of my call has somehow been misperceived, I am sorry for any confusion. Domenici's office did not return a call for this article. But earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that Domenici had complained about Iglesias to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on 3 occasions in 2005 and 2006, and had spoken with Gonzales' top deputy last October. The contacts by Domenici and Wilson could prove problematic. Ethics rules prohibit members of Congress from contacting federal officials involved in ongoing investigations. This week, a left-leaning public interest group asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Domenici's contacts with Iglesias. HOUSE CALL Iglesias recounted his story during morning testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, flanked by 3 other of the fired U.S. attorneys. All of them said that the Justice Department had not informed them why they had been fired. During the afternoon, the same 4 former prosecutors, as well as 2 others that had been asked to resign, were called before a House Judiciary subcommittee. There, they were joined William Moschella, a top Justice Department official, who laid out the department's case for the firings. Moschella, the Justice Department's principal deputy associate attorney general, acknowledged the dismissals were poorly executed. In hindsight, it could have been handled better, Moschella said. It would have been much better to address the relevant issues [with each U.S. Attorney] upfront. Moschella said the firings for seven of the U.S. Attorneys were for reasons related to policy, priorities and management -- what has been broadly stated as performance-related reasons. He also called speculation that the firings were related to political pressure over various public-corruption investigations dangerous, baseless and irresponsible. After the subcommittee chairwoman, Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., asked the 6 testifying former U.S. Attorneys to waive any privacy concerns over the reasons for their firings, Moschella laid out the case against each one. With respect to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, US MIL., ARIZ., KY., S.C.
March 7 USA: The Attorney-Client Privilege and the 'Complete Lawyer': More than Mere Legal Advice The complete lawyer, in order to best serve the client, often does more than provide only legal advice in a narrow sense. A valuable attorney frequently provides specific guidance and recommendations concerning changes to a client's policies and practices. The client does not lose the protection of the attorney-client privilege when an attorney offers such practical advice. A skilled lawyer takes the time to get to know his client well, whether that client is an individual or a public or private corporate entity, so that the lawyer does not provide the client with legal advice in a context-free vacuum. For example, a lawyer who understands the industry in which a corporate client operates is equipped to do more than merely recite starchy legal precepts to the client. The well-informed and well-prepared lawyer -- the complete lawyer -- can provide nuanced guidance and direct the client down a path that is sensible from both a legal and a business perspective. That lawyer becomes a valuable and trusted business advisor, and not a narrow specialist brought in to address discreet legal issues and then expected to retreat to the shadows until summoned again. ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE AND THE 'COMPLETE LAWYER' In a recent decision, Pritchard v. Erie County, No. 06-2459-op (Jan. 3, 2007), the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a client does not forfeit the protection of the attorney-client privilege merely because that client has the good sense or good fortune to have hired a lawyer who is able not only to tell the client what the law is, but can also make recommendations and advise the client on how the client should proceed given the status of the law. Pritchard is a class action filed on behalf of people who had been arrested and subjected to strip searches by the defendant, Erie County, N.Y. During discovery, the county, on the basis of the attorney-client privilege, withheld from production a series of e-mails between county officials and a county attorney. In the e-mails, the county attorney, who herself had no policy-making authority, did more than tell county officials what the law was; she, after explaining the status of the law, also assessed the County's current search policy, recommended alternative policies, and monitored the implementation of these policy changes. The trial court held that the attorney-client privilege did not protect the e-mails from disclosure because the county attorney, by proposing policy changes and then monitoring the implementation of those policy changes, went beyond rendering legal analysis. In essence, the trial court concluded that the attorney-client privilege did not apply because the county attorney was acting as a policy maker, not as a lawyer. The 2nd Circuit reversed, holding that the county attorney was merely doing her job as a lawyer, and doing it well, when she went beyond a mere rendering of legal analysis, and that the client did not lose the protection of the attorney-client privilege because she did so. The 2nd Circuit acknowledged, of course, that the privilege applies only to communications between client and counsel made for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal assistance. And clearly, the attorney-client privilege would not apply if, for instance, county officials sought media relations advice from someone who happened to be a lawyer. In Pritchard though, the 2nd Circuit, upon an in camera review of the documents, held that the predominant purpose of the e-mails at issue was legal in nature. The fact that the e-mails included policy recommendations, assessments and oversight did not transform the county attorney into something other than a lawyer; nor did that fact render the attorney-client privilege inapplicable. Instead, the county attorney was merely doing what her client had a right to expect her to do as a complete lawyer. According to the court, the: complete lawyer may well promote and reinforce the legal advice given, weigh it, and lay out its ramifications by explaining: how the advice is feasible and can be implemented; the legal downsides, risks and costs of taking the advice or doing otherwise; what alternatives exist to present measures or the measures advised; what other persons are doing or thinking about the matter; or the collateral benefits, risks or costs in terms of expense, politics, insurance, commerce, morals, and appearances. So long as the predominant purpose of the communication is legal advice, these considerations and caveats are not other than legal advice or severable from it. Pennsylvania law is consistent with the 2nd Circuit's treatment of the attorney-client privilege in Pritchard. In order to qualify for the protection of the privilege, a communication from client to counsel must be for the purpose of obtaining legal advice. See Commonwealth v. Mrozek, 657 A.2d 997, 998 (Pa. Super.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, TENN., CALIF., MD., PENN.
March 1 USA: Passionate cause is thrivingSister Helen Prejean's anti-death penalty story is now a stage play. Sister Helen Prejean has seen herself portrayed repeatedly on film and on stage. And while that might go to a persons head, Prejean, 67, is about the least pretentious media star youre likely to encounter. It's about me, but I'm like the prism through which the light comes, Prejean said by telephone from the Burbank Airport last weekend. It began with Dead Man Walking, her nonfiction account of her ministry to convicts on death row in Louisiana. It was on the best-seller charts for 31 weeks. Then Tim Robbins adapted it as a film. Sean Penn played a fictional convict, a composite of 2 of the real death-row inmates Prejean worked with, and Prejean was played by Susan Sarandon, who won an Oscar for her performance. It became an opera by composer Jake Heggie with a libretto by playwright Terrence McNally. And Prejean talked Robbins into adapting it as a stage play, which the Avila University theater department is presenting this weekend. I remember I sat at the San Francisco Opera and there was Sister Helen and she was singing, 'My journey, my journey, and I know it's taking the people on this journey, too, Prejean said. So I'm like an instrument or a witness. I'm not trying to be overly humble in this. It's really the way I feel. Because I know that before that ride is over they're gonna be brought deep into the depths of that issue. So every time the opera is produced, every time the play is staged, every time someone rents the DVD, Prejean sees it all as a way to heighten the death penalty in the public consciousness. She approached Robbins about the idea of writing a stage version after reading an article about Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, which has been produced countless times all over the world. I prevailed on him that for a year we would just let Jesuit schools do it, and he agreed to that, she said. And the understanding was that at the end of that year he would take the play back. Robbins was so impressed by the response of young people and the play's ability to stir discussion in the community that he decided to continue licensing it to schools. Now it's in its 3rd year. He knows the important thing is to get the discourse going and also to start the educational process, she said. Theater was always meant to deal with the issues of the time and not just be this fantasy thing It's using the arts to bring people to deeper reflection. And the death penalty is so hidden for most people it's not a moral issue that affects most people personally. And so this brings them close to the reality. You know, the play is constructed just like the film. It brings you over to both sides. It's not just a polemic against the death penalty. Anyone else in Prejean's position would probably be enjoying the wealth that comes from literary success. What do I do with money? I take the money and run, she cracked. In reality she gives everything she earns to her order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille. The sisterhood supports you in whatever you want to do, she said. So it gives you beautiful freedom. So whatever you make you turn back into the sisterhood for the needs of the community and the mission of the community. Critics of those who would do away with the penalty usually make a simple argument: That society would be better off without housing and feeding killers in prison. Prejean, obviously, sees it another way. If there were no death penalty, she said, society would benefit because then we don't engage ourselves in this protocol of death, of killing them, and by even claiming the arrogance that we can decide who lives and who dies. Sustaining the death penalty doesnt make sense even if you look at it simply as a matter of money. It takes huge amounts of resources to keep this death machine going, she said. And we could be putting that into life and preventing violence. We know where the seeds of violence are, where they're given birth to in our society, and we need to prevent it. We need to deal with at-risk kids, we need to deal with homelessness, we need to deal with education, jobs, people being addicted to drugs and alcohol. It actually costs less to keep somebody in prison for life, she said. But the bottom line is what is says about us as a society. The less we involve ourselves in making our social policy legalizing torture and death, the better off we are as a people, she said. We're really not worthy of this thing. That's the main reason we need to get rid of it. in town Sister Helen Prejean will do a book signing from 2 to 3:30 p.m. today at Barnes and Noble at Town Center Plaza, 119th and Roe, Leawood. She will also speak in a question- and-answer session after the opening night performance of Dead Man Walking tonight at the Goppert Theatre at Avila University,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA-----March 07 Execution Alert
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 4 of 5 scheduled March executions in Texas Joseph Nichols is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on March 7. Kenneth Biros is scheduled for execution on Feb. 27, by the state of Ohio. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! - Do Not Execute Joseph Nichols! Joseph Nichols received a death sentence for his role in the murder of Claude Shaffer in 1980. Nichols was not the triggerman. Schaffer died of a single shot to the back, and Willie Ray Williams confessed to shooting him after Nichols exited the store. Williams was executed in 1995. Nichols' first trial was dismissed after jurors could not unanimously agree upon a punishment. Also, Nichols claims ineffective assistance of counsel ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that he stop the execution of Joseph Nichols! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6859 Do Not Execute Kenneth Biros! The state of Ohio is scheduled to execute Kenneth Biros on March 20 for the 1991 murder of Tami Engstrom. At his trial, Biros' family members testified that his father was emotionally abusive, and that Biros suffered from depression, drinking problems, and schizoid personality disorder. Also, Biros claims ineffective assistance of counsel during part of his appeals. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Ted Strickland requesting that Kenneth Biros's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6852 --- See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html March 6: Robert Perez, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6845 March 7: Joseph Nichols, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6859 March 20: Kenneth Biros, OH http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6852 March 28: Vincent Gutierrez, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6848 March 29: Roy Pippin, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6850
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, PENN., OHIO, CONN., MD.
Feb. 28 USA: Benefit of death penalty overlooked Steven Asin provides a few reasons to abolish the death penalty and there is good faith debate on both sides of this argument (Death penalty repeal is sound policy, Feb. 21 letter). However, Mr. Asin overlooks one critical benefit to the death penalty; it may be the most effective negotiating tool for law enforcement. Ironically, murderers become very concerned with life when its their own that hangs in the balance. Possible imposition of the death penalty often results in plea bargains that spare the victims family from reliving the murder. The best local example is the case of Bruman Alvarez, who killed 5 people in Potomac in 1995. In exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, he spared everyone the pain of a trial. Plea bargaining away a death penalty also results in agreements to locate where bodies have been disposed. It seems to me that this certainly provides comfort to a victim's family. Chester Speed, Bethesda (source: Letter to the Editor, (Md.) Business Gazette) PENNSYLVANIA: Death penalty out in Flanigan Park fatal shooting case The Philadelphia man accused of killing 19-year-old Michael K. Riley and wounding a teenager on the busy basketball courts of Flanigan Park on March 27, 2006, chose to waive his right to a jury trial Monday afternoon in exchange for the district attorney's agreement to withdraw the death penalty. First Assistant Public Defender Nicole J. Spring said discussions about an exchange in the case against Kyion Ball are relatively recent. Jury selection which was to span over three days was scheduled to begin this morning. Ball, 24, is accused of approaching Riley, pulling a gun out from the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and firing 3 shots at him from behind, a prosecution witness testified at Balls preliminary hearing. A stray bullet struck 16-year-old Anthony Barasky in the back of his right arm. The teen, who was treated for his injuries at Williamsport Hospital, previously testified that he never saw the shooter. The trial was scheduled to take place over two weeks, Spring said, with the first week dedicated to the guilt phase and the second week dedicated to the penalty phase. She now expects the trial, which will begin March 12, to last only 4 days. District Attorney Michael A. Dinges said time was one of the many factors he considered when agreeing to withdraw the death penalty in exchange for a nonjury trial. Basically, with a nonjury trial, you're in a situation where its just one person and there's no chance of a hung jury, he said. Generally, it's a better procedure for the commonwealth and theres clearly a cost savings to the county as well. County Judge William S. Kieser was to preside over the jury trial but because he has heard and ruled on many pre-trial motions in the case, the trial is now scheduled to take place before Judge Dudley N. Anderson. Sometimes things come up in pre-trial motions that shouldn't come up at trial, Spring said. We thought, and he (Kieser) agreed, that he'd heard some things that could influence his decision one way or another if he thought the evidence was a close call. Ball will stand trial on several charges, including an open count of criminal homicide, possessing instruments of a crime, carrying a firearm without a license, aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person. Spring declined to comment on the defense team's strategy. (source: Williamsport Sun-Gazette) OHIOfemale faces federal death sentence Moonda asks judge for no death penalty Donna Moonda is asking a federal judge to declare the death penalty unconstitutional or at the very least take it off the table in her upcoming trial. The Sharpsville, Pa., woman accused in the May 13, 2005, shooting death of her millionaire urologist husband, Dr. Gulam Moonda, on the side of the Ohio Turnpike filed a slew of motions late last week. Moonda is being held in the Medina County Jail in Ohio until her June 4 trial in which she will face the death penalty if found guilty. Moonda also is seeking to bar any testimony from nonfamily members on the impact of Dr. Moonda's death. A motion in federal court in Akron filed by Moonda's attorneys specifically asks to exclude friends and patients from testifying in the matter. Moonda, 47, was arrested and charged in July 2006 after her former boyfriend, Damian Bradford, agreed to cooperate with authorities. Bradford, 25, of Beaver County, Pa., had been set to go on trial in Dr. Moonda's death when he told authorities he shot Dr. Moonda at the urging of the urologist's wife. Police have said Bradford and Donna Moonda met in an outpatient drug rehabilitation program in Beaver County and began an affair. Bradford has been promised a 171/2-year prison sentence in exchange for his testimony. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Dowd, as of late Monday afternoon, had not ruled on Moonda's motion. (source: Youngstown
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, US MIL., OHIO, MD., OKLA.
Feb. 17 USA: After Innocence: DVD Documents Plight of the Guilty till Proven Innocent This revealing documentary is essentially ten different stories, each a tragic case of mistaken identity and a rush to judgment. For all of the men profiled here can thank their lucky stars that evidence was preserved, otherwise theyd still be in jail. For example, Herman Atkins had been sentenced to 45 years for rape and robbery despite having an alibi and no previous criminal record. In the film, his father, a cop, admits that he now regrets never visiting his son even once during his 11-year incarceration, explaining that, as an officer of the law, he had believed in the justice system. Another of the unfortunate subjects, Scott Hornoff, was a police officer when he found himself arrested for murder. Although he sat on death row for over 6 years till his conviction was overturned, the State of Rhode Island still refuses to pay him any damages or back pay. A common theme running through each of the frightening tales told here is that none of the victims have been compensated for the ordeals they had to endure. Without money to get back on their feet, they presently find themselves ill-equipped to cope in a world which has moved on without them. We also see the toll that the time in jail has exacted on their families, from wives having to work and to raise children alone to kids feeling alienated to relatives not living long enough to see a sons name cleared before they passed on. One mother wonders why the jury had so callously dismissed her passionate testimony, under oath, that her son had been with her at the time that the crime had been committed. Meanwhile, one false accuser contritely tries to explain away her regrettable mistake of identifying the wrong man as her rapist. By shining a scientific spotlight on the criminal justice systems dirty little secret, After Innocence leaves no doubt that thousands of other wrongly-imprisoned persons must currently be rotting away behind bars, with only the ability to afford a Dream Team of DNA experts standing between them and their freedom. Excellent (4 stars) Unrated Running time: 95 minutes Distributor: New Yorker Video DVD Extras: Deleted scenes, bonus footage, updates, interviews, Pearl Jam performance, media coverage, footage from the Sundance and theatrical premieres, MTV and Larry King Live coverage, website and contact info, and a theatrical trailer. (source: Insight Magazine) ** The Chief Justice's Quest for Less Fractured Supreme Court Rulings The U.S. Supreme Court plays an essential role in resolving splits that have arisen among lower federal and state courts on questions of federal law. Often, the correct answer in these cases is far from apparent; if the question presented had an easy answer, no lower court division of authority would have occurred. Because the vast bulk of the Supreme Court's workload consists of cases that present the most difficult and important questions of federal law, it does not come as any great surprise that many of those cases produce sharply divided rulings from the Supreme Court itself. But while sharply divided high court rulings provide countless hours of enjoyment to the media and other Court watchers, they don't offer the same promise of legal stability that unanimous decisions or nearly unanimous decisions provide. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recently addressed this matter at length in a very interesting interview with law professor Jeffrey Rosen that is the subject of an article in the January/February 2007 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. According to the article, Roberts said, There was a question from one of these [tour] groups that come in here: 'How do you decide who's going to be the swing vote?' The chief justice jokingly responded to Rosen, I don't know, we rotate, before remarking more seriously that the question to him identified a steady wasting away of the notion of the rule of law, a personalization of it. The article went on to quote Roberts as saying, The whole notion that it's functioning as a Court doesn't seem to appeal to anyone ... I think it's bad, long-term, if people identify the rule of law with how individual justices vote. In the aftermath of the interview, disagreement has arisen among commentators over whether the chief justice's remarks were meant for two of his most unyielding colleagues on the Court's conservative wing, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, or whether they targeted the Court's newly perceived centrist, Justice Anthony Kennedy. My guess, for what it's worth, is that the chief justice was aiming his remarks more at Kennedy than at the other 2 justices. Any discussion of the high court's current output must begin with the recognition that the Court presently enjoys a remarkable amount of unanimity in many cases and that the outlook of the justices is not all that divergent on many important issues of the day.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, MONT., GA., MO.
Feb. 15 USA: Catholic wrongly convicted seeks end to death penalty If anyone has experienced sheer terror, its Kirk Bloodsworth. Tried and found guilty of the brutal rape and murder of a 9-year-old Rosedale, Md., girl, the barrel-chested crabber from the Eastern Shore was sentenced to die in the gas chamber for his horrific crimes. But Mr. Bloodsworth didnt have anything to do with what he was accused of. A former Marine with no criminal record, he had been wrongly convicted and would later become the first American on death row to be exonerated by DNA testing. But as he was led onto the grounds of the Maryland State Penitentiary in Baltimore, Md., in 1985 on his first day on death row, no one believed his story - least of all the other prisoners. Handcuffed and shackled as he slowly made his way across the yard of the penitentiary, Mr. Bloodsworth noticed other prisoners racing to the fences to glimpse the monster they had heard so much about. This was the man a Baltimore County jury convicted of beating Dawn Hamilton with a rock, sexually mutilating her, raping her and strangling her to death by stepping on her neck. As the new prisoner shuffled onto the old prison campus, he was dwarfed by the gothic structures tall granite walls, silver spires and imposing turrets that loomed ominously over Forrest Street like a medieval castle. Jeering at him, the inmates shouted repeated threats of violence. We're going to do to you what you did to that little girl, they screamed. We're going to get you, Kirk! Seated on the couch in the living room of his small home in Cambridge more than 20 years later, pain was still visible on Mr. Bloodsworths face as he recalled those long-ago events that forever changed his life. With his brow deeply furrowed, the plainspoken 46-year-old man said he believed hell is a place of torment and that his experiences must be similar to those in that place of misery. I remember that 1st night in my cell and the smell coming from this place, he said, recounting how roaches frequently scurried along the walls of his small living quarters. Not only did it stink of every kind of excrement you could think of, he said, but you also could smell hatred - and it was all pointing at me. The threats that greeted him when he first entered the state penitentiary continued through the night and beyond, with inmates shouting through the air vents how they planned to torture him. Despite the strong temptation to despair, Mr. Bloodsworth said he decided he would fight to prove his innocence. He believes God sustained him through nearly 9 years of taxing prison life, sending him otherworldly consolations and leading him into the Catholic Church. With the same steely determination that got him through his prison ordeal, Mr. Bloodsworth is now devoting the rest of his life to abolishing the death penalty and seeking reforms of what he calls a broken criminal justice system. It's a battle he is convinced he has been called to win. A journey of faith On the day he was found guilty, Mr. Bloodsworth said he remembers being housed in a Baltimore County holding cell with another man who sat in the shadows. For 2 hours, the stranger didn't say a word as he ate a sandwich and sipped an orange drink. Then he turned to his fellow prisoner and told Mr. Bloodsworth not to worry. The Eastern Shore native couldn't tell if the man was black or white because there wasn't much lighting, which he said was odd. Everything is going to be alright, Mr. Bloodsworth recalled the man saying. You'll be OK. After Mr. Bloodsworth heard the guilty verdict and returned to the holding cell, the man was gone and only half the sandwich remained. When he asked the sheriff's deputy where the other guy was, the deputy responded that Mr. Bloodsworth had been the only person in the cell. Looking back, Mr. Bloodsworth thinks he was visited by an angel. Maybe I wanted to see something - I don't know, said Mr. Bloodsworth, pausing to light up a cigarette - the white smoke of which swirled in soft vaporous pirouettes near his now-graying hair. But I tell you what, he was as real as you are, he said emphatically. The encounter with the angel wasn't Mr. Bloodsworth's only dealing in the spiritual realm. Another time, he remembers being touched on the shoulder with 2 fingers while he was alone in his cell. He thinks it was a sign from God that he wasn't really alone. Growing up in the Baptist and Methodist traditions, Mr. Bloodsworth had attended a small Christian high school and had counted himself a believer. His mother was a deeply devoted Christian who encouraged him to read the Bible - an assignment he took up in earnest in prison, reading through the Scriptures twice. As a young man, Mr. Bloodsworth had worked for a funeral home where his only exposure to Catholics came during funeral liturgies. That's where he first learned to genuflect and was impressed by the reverence Catholics showed in the practice of
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, ILL., MONT., PENN., TENN., FLA.
Feb. 9 USA: Kill the Death Penalty Working as a police officer, I have a unique vantage point from which to view the death penalty: It is no less than a vestige of medievalism. I have to live with the fact that at any given moment, to protect someone's life, I might become the judge, jury and executioner. I would lose no sleep if that came about. I have stood over corpses of children and elderly victims, I have seen perpetrators and victims of gang violence and I have investigated sickening murders where an entire family was bound and burned to death. I have met more than my share of cold-blooded murderers, including some in my own family. I have also lost dozens of my family members in religious massacres; one of my uncles was blown to bits by a bomb planted by terrorists. The pain, suffering, bitterness and the feeling of helplessness leave a never-healing mark on a victim's family. Years after some of my uncles and aunts were murdered, my father still harbors hatred in his heart, thinks of revenge and ruminates over how things could have been different. On the other hand, having a close relative in my own family who killed 3 elderly people in cold blood has shown me another side of the picture. Instead of a caricature of a murderer we can all hate and condemn with ease, I was forced to see the human face on the criminal and the crime. I have also learned that the pain and suffering are not limited to the victim's family. Not only did we feel humiliated and disgraced, my relative's parents lay awake nights wondering what went wrong and whether they could have raised their child differently. (source: Comment, Sunil Dutta, The Nation) ILLINOIS: Death-penalty testimony emotional Erica Drane was fine when she got sworn in, and she was composed while answering some basic questions about her best friend, Erin Justice. But Thursday afternoon when DuPage County prosecutors asked her to point to Laurence Lovejoy, the man convicted of brutally murdering Erin on March 27, 2004, she changed. Before the in-court identification, Drane -- wearing a chain with Erin's picture engraved on it -- had calmly answered standard questions. We hit it off pretty well, she said, referring to her friendship with Erin. She liked to do hair. She kind of had that vibe. But then Drane had to look directly at Lovejoy. Although he never seemed to look at her, Drane stared directly at him. Her voice started to crack. She answered the next 4 questions in a monotone. Yes, she had talked to Erin about Lovejoy, her stepfather. Yes, Erin was afraid of him. Yes, Erin told Drane that Lovejoy had raped her. Yes, studying was a word Erin used when she wanted Drane to come over so she wouldn't be alone with Lovejoy. It was kind of code to come over and be superwoman and save her, said Drane, 19. I just went to be with her. Since March of 2004, do you have another best friend? Bob Berlin asked Drane. No, she answered. The three-week trial has already been a wrenching process as the jury heard evidence about Lovejoy allegedly raping his 16-year-old stepdaughter, then poisoning, stabbing and finally drowning the girl in her Aurora townhome. The death penalty hearing could be equally emotional. At this phase, attorneys are given more latitude to present evidence, as long as it is relevant. It can be hearsay or opinionated. Thursday, prosecutors opened their case with testimony about Lovejoy's past arrests for trespassing and burglary, as well as exposing himself to other relatives. They also called to the stand Erin's boyfriend and a Waubonsie Valley High School guidance counselor to whom she had talked about the rape 24 days before the murder. Prosecutors are trying to show, based on Lovejoy's background and the nature of the crime, that the death penalty should be applied in this case. On the other side, defense attorneys are expected to present evidence today that Lovejoy's background does not merit his execution. Lovejoy and his relatives could testify during this phase, which is not expected to go to the jury until at least Tuesday. Monday is a court holiday. If Lovejoy did not receive the death penalty, the judge would determine his sentence. He is eligible for anywhere from 20 years to a life sentence. The case will resume this morning. (source: Aurora Beacon News) MONTANA: Montanas Death Penalty -- Yea or Nay ?Debate in Montana after Democrat introduces bill to abolish death penalty Senator Dan Harrington, (D) Butte, says that Montana's death penalty is barbaric, discriminatory, ineffective and costly. He's introducing a bill to abolish capitol punishment in Montana. You must be absolutely sure that there is no chance that an innocent person should be executed. And yet 123 people on death row have been exonerated of the crime of which they were accused, said Harrington. Senator Harrington is proposing that the death penalty be abolished and replaced with a sentence of life imprisonment
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, VA, IDAHO, N.C., TENN.
Jan. 23 USA: Evidence grows that America has begun to lose faith in death penalty On Friday, the US Supreme Court agreed to set a new standard for when a death row prisoner is too mentally ill to be executed. Scrutiny of the practice comes against a background of growing public unease. America's attachment to the death penalty is well-rooted but there are significant signs that US courts, politicians and public opinion may be turning against capital punishment. On Friday, the US Supreme Court agreed to set a new standard for when a death row prisoner is too mentally ill to be executed without violating the constitution. Tomorrow, the justices will consider whether to force attorneys representing death row prisoners to take extraordinary measures to persuade juries to spare their lives. And next week the court will hear 3 cases that could have a significant impact on the imposition of the death penalty in Texas - the heartland of capital punishment - where nearly half of last year's executions took place. The Supreme Court's scrutiny of the practice comes against a background of growing public unease about the way prisoners are executed in many states, and the possibility that some might be innocent. A nationwide Gallup poll last year showed a big drop in public support for the death penalty. It showed Americans divided over the best punishment for murder - death or a life sentence without parole - after many years in which capital punishment was strongly preferred. Death penalty opponents say there are several reasons for this trend, including publicity about DNA testing that has exonerated some prisoners and recent Supreme Court decisions that improve legal representation for capital defendants. In recent years, America's top court has been chipping away at the edifice of the death penalty. It has declared unconstitutional the execution of mentally impaired defendants and those who committed murder before the age of 18. Tomorrow the court will consider the duty of defence attorneys to find mitigating evidence that could persuade a jury to spare a capital defendant's life. The case before them involves a death row prisoner who refused to let his lawyer present testimony from his mother and ex-wife to mitigate his sentence. Now he is claiming that his lawyer did not do his job because he did not advise him of other ways that he could improve his case - without the testimony of his relatives. The justices must decide how much to require of defence attorneys in such circumstances: must they ferret out mitigating evidence, even when the defendant appears not to want them to do so? And later this term, the court must decide how severe a defendant's mental illness must be to spare him a death sentence. They agreed on Friday to rule whether the execution of a schizophrenic death row prisoner in Texas would breach his constitutional rights given that he seems unable to appreciate why he has been sentenced to death. (source: Financial Times) Unabomber sues to reclaim 40,000 pages of 'murderabilia' Theodore Kaczynski, the infamous unabomber whose 18-year terror campaign killed three and injured 28, is now embroiled in a legal battle with the U.S. government for control of his writings. Kaczynski, 64, is serving a life sentence for a string of murders from 16 mail bombings carried out from 1978 to 1995 in the United States. The former mountain hermit is citing the First Amendment in his attempt to salvage more than 40,000 pages of his scribblings and manuscripts. The protest from Kaczynski comes after a federal appeals court in San Francisco decided to auction off the Chicago-born anarchist's diaries, correspondence, and drafts of his Industrial Society and Its Future, commonly referred to as the unabomber's manifesto. The federal government ruled the funds raised should be paid out to 4 of Kaczynski's bombing victims, who are owed $15 million by a court order in a civil suit. That ruling raised controversy even before Kaczynski objected. Kaczynski's younger brother David, whose tips led the FBI to finally arrest the unabomber in 1996, said his family had reservations about the sale, although he said he was in favour of anything that would help his brother's victims. In a personal sense, having these letters treated as murderabilia is appalling to us. How do you balance the need for human decency and dignity with doing the best thing? David Kaczynski said. Even the 4 victims were at first divided over whether the documents should be sold. 'Wronged in different ways' In an interview with the New York Times, one of the four victims seeking restitution, Gary Wright, spoke about the difficulty in reaching a consensus with the other victims. Wright became the 11th unabomber victim when he was seriously wounded in 1987 by a bomb disguised as a piece of lumber. How do you take four people and try to come to an agreement when they have been wronged in different ways
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, ARIZ., KY., TENN., N.C.
Jan. 24 USA: High Court Eases Path for Inmates to Pursue Lawsuits A unanimous Supreme Court on Monday sided with 3 Michigan inmates by making it easier for them to pursue lawsuits complaining about their treatment behind bars. The Court reversed lower court rulings that had thrown out the prisoners' suits on grounds that all three had failed to exhaust the administrative grievance procedure. Chief Justice John Roberts said the procedural rules that the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used in the cases are not required under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The law requires prisoners to go through a lengthy administrative grievance process before they may sue in court. Roberts said the Michigan inmates are not required to demonstrate that they have exhausted the administrative complaint procedure. The chief justice said nothing in Michigan prison policy requires that an individual be named in an administrative grievance. The Supreme Court is not insensitive to the challenges faced by the lower federal courts in managing their dockets and attempting to separate, when it comes to prison suits ..., needles from haystacks, Roberts wrote. But the chief justice added that adopting different and more onerous pleading rules ... should not be done on a case-by-case basis by the courts. In addition, Roberts wrote, the prison litigation law does not require dismissing the entire lawsuit when an inmate fails to exhaust some of the inmate's claims administratively. With courts flooded by inmate litigation, the Republican-controlled Congress approved a law in 1995 that sought to limit the number of federal lawsuits filed by prisoners over the conditions of their incarceration. Nearly 42,000 civil rights petitions were filed in 1995 before the law took effect. About 24,000 are now filed each year. Some prisoner advocates have expressed worries that the law has led to some legitimate claims being pushed aside because of technicalities. The Supreme Court decision came in the cases of Michigan inmates Lorenzo Jones, John Walton and Timothy Williams on grounds that all three had failed to exhaust the administrative grievance procedure. The cases are Jones v. Bock, 05-7058, and Williams v. Overton, and Walton v. Bouchard, 05-7142. (source: Associated Press) *** On wrongful prosecutions, the right engages in selective outrage The contempt heaped on District Attorney Mike Nifong over his handling of the Duke University lacrosse team legal fiasco was predictable. Conservative pundits have had a fine time, luxuriating in the collapse of a stripper's charges that she was beaten, raped and sodomized by 3 of the school's athletes. Right-wing talk shows have depicted the accused as victims of the leftist mob -- the hysterical do-gooders who rush, unthinking, to any place where a black woman claims to have been victimized by a white male, no matter what the evidence really suggests . the liberals, who take special delight in condemning a lineup of elite white male athletes at a socially and academically precious Southern school, before the facts are in. The critics cite, as a prime example, my Male High classmate, distinguished scholar Houston Baker Jr., who was on the Duke faculty at the time and who demanded to know, How many more people of color must fall victim to violent, white, male, athletic privilege before coaches who make Chevrolet and American Express commercials, athletic directors who engage in Miss Ophelia-styled 'perfectly horrible' rhetoric, higher administrators who are salaried at least in part to keep us safe, and publicists who are supposed not to praise Caesar but to damn the unconscionable . how many? There is a particular kind of rage on both sides of this argument, which is both understandable and regrettable. But what amazes me is that you don't see the same kind of fury when other people are definitively proven innocent of crimes for which they were sent to prison. Where was the right-wing rage last week when DNA testing showed that James Waller was wrongly convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy in 1982? Where was the indignation when it proved that the white boy's description of his black assailant -- 5-foot-8 and about 150 pounds, with the lower part of his face covered by a red bandana -- didn't apply to the 6-foot-4, heavyset Waller? Where was the outcry against the prosecutors who put him in prison for 10 years, and on parole after that, and made him register as a sex offender, despite discrepancies in the boy's account, and despite the witnesses who said Waller was at his own home when the crime was committed? Where was the condemnation of a process in which, despite all the holes in the prosecutor's case, it took the jury only 46 minutes to convict? Last week, as reported in The New York Times, a new prosecutor shook Waller's hand and told him, I'm sorry it happened to you, man. And in an act of grace that I can't begin to comprehend, Waller said he
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, N.J., N.C., ALA., N.Y.
Jan. 22 USA: Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American. Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn't explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended. There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there's a prohibition against taking it away, Gonzales said. Gonzales's remark left Specter, the committee's ranking Republican, stammering. Wait a minute, Specter interjected. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless theres a rebellion or invasion? Gonzales continued, The Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesnt say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion. You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense, Specter said. While Gonzales's statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also dont exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative. For instance, the First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Applying Gonzales's reasoning, one could argue that the First Amendment doesn't explicitly say Americans have the right to worship as they choose, speak as they wish or assemble peacefully. The amendment simply bars the government, i.e. Congress, from passing laws that would impinge on these rights. Similarly, Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English law principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial. That Attorney General Gonzales would express such an extraordinary opinion, doubting the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, suggests either a sophomoric mind or an unwillingness to respect this well-established right, one that the Founders considered so important that they embedded it in the original text of the Constitution. Other cherished rights including freedom of religion and speech were added later in the first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. Ironically, Gonzales may be wrong in another way about the lack of specificity in the Constitution's granting of habeas corpus rights. Many of the legal features attributed to habeas corpus are delineated in a positive way in the Sixth Amendment, which reads: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses. Bush's Powers Gonzales's Jan. 18 statement suggests that he is still seeking reasons to make habeas corpus optional, subordinate to President George W. Bushs executive powers that Bush's neoconservative legal advisers claim are virtually unlimited during a time of war, even one as vaguely defined as the war on terror which may last forever. In the final weeks of the Republican-controlled Congress, the Bush administration pushed through the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that effectively eliminated habeas corpus for non-citizens, including legal resident aliens. Under the new law, Bush can declare any non-citizen an unlawful enemy combatant and put the person into a system of military tribunals that give defendants only limited rights. Critics have called the tribunals kangaroo courts because the rules are heavily weighted in favor of the prosecution. Some language in the new law also suggests that any person, presumably including American citizens, could be swept up into indefinite detention if they are suspected of having aided and abetted terrorists. Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA
Jan. 21 USA: SPECIAL REPORT: The Death PenaltyPitiful efforts at defending a life; HOW 4 STATES HAVE HANDLED CAPITAL CASES Defense often inadequate in death-penalty casesReview shows many on death row due to ineffective lawyers The jurors heard all about the convenience store holdup, the gunshots and the dead clerk. Their unanimous verdict came swiftly: Warren King was guilty of a senseless murder that shocked rural Appling County, Ga. A death sentence almost certainly would be next, unless King's lawyer could convince the jury to spare his life. But G. Terry Jackson, King's state-appointed lawyer, didn't do much. With little money to unearth details about his client's past, Jackson did not chronicle the mitigating circumstances that could have helped his client's cause. The jury learned almost nothing about the import of King's low IQ, his childhood in a log cabin with no plumbing or electricity, the savage beatings he took from his alcoholic parents or the succession of foster homes he shuttled through. In desperation, Jackson turned to Jesus. WWJD, he said, invoking the popular bumper-sticker phrase What Would Jesus Do? Jackson told jurors to keep those four letters in mind as they weighed King's future. A stunned prosecutor objected. The judge told the jury to ignore the comment. The jurors deliberated for 90 minutes and returned with their sentence: death. Now Warren King sits on death row in Georgia, one of many inmates whose lawyers, at the crucial point when jurors decide between life and death after conviction, made only feeble, incomplete or tragically laughable efforts to defend them. 4 states: A broad review by McClatchy Newspapers of recent death-penalty cases in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia provides, for the first time, an assessment of how commonplace these failures have become. McClatchy reviewed trial transcripts and appeal records and interviewed lawyers for 80 men and women who were sentenced to death from 1997 through 2004 in those four states. The review found that: In 73 of the 80 cases, defense lawyers gave jurors little or no evidence to help them decide whether the accused should live or die. The lawyers routinely missed myriad issues of abuse and mental deficiency, abject poverty and serious psychological problems. By failing to investigate their clients' histories, lawyers in these 73 cases fell far short of the 20-year-old professional standards set by the American Bar Association. Their performances also appear inconsistent with standards that the U.S. Supreme Court has mandated several times. Appeals courts for the most part have ducked those Supreme Court directives about the importance of quality defense counsel. So far, only two of the 80 death sentences have been overturned for bad lawyering. In 11 of the cases, the defendants already have been executed. Their cases moved through the appeals process without a single judge flagging lapses in the defense attorneys' performances. In Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi, this poor legal representation is a result of official policy. The states pay no more than a pittance to help lawyers defend their clients, and none requires that well-trained attorneys handle death cases. Georgia had a similarly inadequate system until 2005, when a publicly funded, statewide capital defenders office began spending whatever is necessary to scour clients' backgrounds for mitigating evidence. So far, none of that office's 46 clients has been sentenced to death. 'Unspeakably shameful': Overall, the 80 cases that McClatchy reviewed show how poorly these four key death-penalty states fulfill a basic constitutional principle. For government, this is the ultimate policy decision outside of going to war, said Kenneth Starr, a former federal judge and independent counsel. Starr, who's now the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law, has represented several death-row inmates on appeal, including one whose case was part of McClatchy's review. We are going to sit in judgment of one of our own and take their life. Not doing it right is unspeakably shameful, said Starr, who supports capital punishment. Starr thinks that the trial lawyers for his client, Robin Lovitt, didn't do it right. Lovitt was found guilty of killing an Arlington, Va., pool-hall manager during a robbery. Lovitt's lawyers did almost nothing to look into his background. They never interviewed family members, collected records or even planned how they might defend his life. Had they looked, they would have discovered a nightmare. Lovitt's parents were drug dealers who beat their kids, forced them to help package and distribute narcotics, and had wild parties during which guests took turns molesting the children. There's no dispute that very able counsel simply failed to do the job in this case, Starr said. Most of the other cases McClatchy reviewed reflect similar failures. Little to work with: Warren King's lawyer, G.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
Jan. 17 USA: USA: 30 years of executions, 30 years of wrongs 16 January 2007 AI Index: AMR 51/012/2007 If the USA's capital justice system was a private company it would have been shut down long ago. After 3 decades, this is an enterprise showing no measurable benefit for society despite an investment of billions of dollars. On the cost side have been multiple errors and inconsistencies, racism, cruelty and damage to the national image abroad. This business may repeatedly be making a killing, but it is operating at a huge loss, and has been from the outset. Executions resumed in the USA on 17 January 1977 after a decade without them. By 16 January 2007, there had been 1,059 executions. A third of these killings 380 had been carried out in Texas, which is set to mark the 30th anniversary with another execution.(1) In the same 30 years, some 70 countries have abolished the death penalty, bringing to 128 the number that have turned their backs on judicial killing. There are signs that the USA, too, is slowly turning against the death penalty. The 53 executions in 2006 was the lowest annual total for a decade, and death sentencing continues to drop from its peak in the mid-1990s. The number of people sentenced to death in 2006 was the lowest since 1977. An erosion of the public's belief in the deterrence value of the death penalty, an increased awareness of the frequency of wrongful convictions in capital cases, and a greater confidence that public safety can be guaranteed by life prison terms rather than death sentences have all contributed to the waning of enthusiasm for capital punishment. Under US law, the death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst. The execution of at least 50 offenders with mental retardation or who were children at the time of their crimes alone show that this has been a principle on paper only. Although the US Supreme Court belatedly outlawed such executions after finding that standards of decency had evolved in the USA to make them unconstitutional, offenders with serious mental illness remain subject to the death penalty, with at least 100 such individuals having been executed since 1977 and scores more remaining on death row. In a country where the difference between a death sentence and a life term can hinge not only on where the crime was committed, but also on the quality of the defence lawyer, the conduct of the prosecutor, or the race of the victim or defendant, the question arises as to whether US executions generally violate the prohibition on the arbitrary deprivation of life, as enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which the USA ratified in 1992. Arbitrariness riddles the system: James Elledge was executed in Washington State in 2001 for the murder of a woman. He had turned himself in after the crime, and pleaded guilty at the trial. He refused to allow any mitigating evidence to be presented and waived his right to appeal. 2 years later in Washington State, Gary Ridgway was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 48 women. He avoided a death sentence in return for his cooperation with the authorities and a guilty plea. If Gary Ridgway was not subject to the death penalty, why was James Elledge executed for killing 47 fewer victims? Gary Graham was sentenced to death in Texas for the murder of a man in 1981. There was no physical evidence against him and the witness testimony against him was highly suspect and witnesses not heard at trial said that he was not the killer. Phillip Smith was sentenced to death in Oklahoma for the murder of a man in 1983. There was no physical evidence against him and the witness testimony against him was either inconsistent or later recanted. In 2001, the governor of Oklahoma commuted Smiths death sentence because of doubts about his guilt. A year earlier, the governor of Texas refused to intervene in Graham's case and he went to his death proclaiming his innocence. John Luttig and Ivan Holland were murdered in the same town in Texas. John Luttig was a wealthy white businessman, Ivan Holland was a homeless African American man. Ivan Holland's assailants were 3 young white men who targeted him because of his race. John Luttigs attackers were 3 black teenagers who targeted him for his Mercedez Benz. 2 of John Luttig's attackers were sentenced to life imprisonment and will be eligible for parole after 80 years, or about 6 decades after Ivan Holland's assailants. The 3rd black youth, Napoleon Beazley, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury and executed in 2002. A few hours earlier, in Missouri, the state high court granted an indefinite stay of execution to Christopher Simmons like Napoleon Beazley, 17 years old at the time of the crime on exactly the same argument that had been rejected by the Texas court in Beazley's case. The US Supreme Court then took the Simmons case to decide that juvenile offenders should be exempt from execution. Yet it had
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---USA, ARIZ.
Jan. 17 USA: Noose around our society the same as swings in Iraq In case you haven't made the connection, the crowd that is botching the official lynchings in Baghdad is the same government that more American soldiers are being sent to prop up. And if you're trying to draw some distinction between the gruesome scenes at the death house in the Iraqi capital and what happens regularly on a gurney at Huntsville in your name, don't strain. They are exactly the same final, not to mention ultimate, step in a supposedly regular-order legal procedure. Our death-penalty enthusiasts, with President Bush toward the head of the pack, have sought to hide behind a veil of respectability on the really bizarre belief that somehow a chemical cocktail fed through a needle is more dignified even, get this, more humane than the scaffold along the Tigris that seems incapable of shedding its medieval air. It was sweet of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to fret, after the fact, about the decapitation of Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam Hussein's half brother and chief of the secret police. We were disappointed there was not greater dignity given to the accused under these circumstances, Rice said. Dignity? Who writes this stuff? Folks laid off from Mad TV? But Rice's comment Monday followed the pallid example set by Bush when reporters finally wrung a personal reaction from the president to the macabre scene at Saddam's hanging late last year. Getting a complete sentence out of Bush was like extracting an impacted third molar. I wish, obviously, that the proceedings had been done in a more dignified way, Bush said almost a week after Saddam's execution. It seems clear that if it had not been for the clandestine cell phone video from Saddam's execution that Bush would have said nothing of the sort. Oh, for a clandestine cell phone video of the botched death-by-injection last month in Florida that prompted Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, to suspend executions in his state. In that case, it took 34 minutes and a second injection to kill convicted murderer Angel Nieves Diaz. At the same time, across the country, a federal judge in California said that state must revise its lethal-injection procedure. U.S. District Judge Jeremy D. Fogel said that the pervasive lack of professionalism surrounding California's form of execution at the least is very disturbing. As David Elliot, a spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said then: This demonstrates that there is no happy and kind and nice way to execute someone. Tuesday, after the latest screw-up in Iraq, Elliot said, The more we learn ... , the more we understand how things can go horribly wrong. It doesn't take a rope in Baghdad to turn an execution into a sideshow act. According to Michael L. Radelet, a University of Colorado sociologist, there have been at least 38 botched executions in the United States since the death penalty was reinstituted following a 1976 Supreme Court ruling. 10 of those incidents were in Texas. If you'd care to test your own sensibilities against these examples, Radelet's list is available on the Web site of the Death Penalty Information Center at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article. php?scid=8did=478. It does not require a shred of sympathy for Saddam, his henchman, the Florida convict or any of the people on Radelet's list to understand that the death penalty represents the state descending to the level of the accused. Supposedly, as Elliot said, governments and their people, in sanctioning the death penalty, even for those who commit the most heinous crimes, are not sentencing them to feel extraordinary pain. That praiseworthy position might not stand up too well in a poll in Texas or Florida or any of our nation's other leading execution venues. But it's one of the tests that the Supreme Court clings to in its abiding, if narrowing, defense of allowing some form of legal state-sponsored execution to be cloaked by the rule of law. The developments holding the most hope for removing this noose from the neck of the nation are at the state level. And the latest bright ray comes from New Jersey, where a legislative commission has recommended abolition of the state's death penalty. The sole dissenter was the state senator who sponsored the bill that reinstated New Jersey's death penalty law in 1982. The commission found no compelling evidence that the state's death penalty rationally serves a legitimate penological intent. There is increasing evidence, the commission held, that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency. That is as true in Austin as it is in Trenton. Until that fact is addressed nationally or on a state-by-state basis, Americans are faced with the fact we remain atop the gallows with regimes such as in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and, as we've been reminded ghoulishly of late, Iraq. (source: Cragg Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, OKLA., PENN., COLO.
Jan. 13 USA: Left hangingIn the aftermath of the controversial execution of Saddam Hussein, SCOTT TUROW writes, the always thorny issue of state killings is once again up for debate The hanging of Saddam Hussein, in the face of ethnic jeers and smuggled cameras, will likely be remembered as yet another bungled episode in the Anglo-American misadventure of Iraq, rather than as a provocative example of what is wrong with capital punishment. But the execution of a person like Saddam, who committed such monstrous evil, inevitably provides an opportunity for reflection about this most vexed of all legal questions: whether the law may ever require the sacrifice of a life. As a contemplation of what it means in human terms to execute anyone, I inevitably recommend two prize-winning works of literature, The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (Little, Brown, 1979) and A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines (Knopf, 1993). Mailer's non-fiction book -- which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 -- evoked the contorted life of Gary Gilmore, the first American executed, by firing squad in Utah, in January, 1977, after the death penalty, which had briefly been banned in the United States as unconstitutional, was restored, as it were, by popular demand. Full of all of Mailer's Nietzschean ruminations, The Executioner's Song is an overpowering imagining both of what it means to do evil and to address it. Divided into two sections and based almost completely on interviews with Gilmore's family and friends, as well as with those of his victims, the book is an account of a life that ends in disaster, and of Gilmore's trial and refusal to appeal his death sentence. In contrast, A Lesson Before Dying tells, in beguilingly understated fashion, the story of a Louisiana school teacher who, in the late 1940s, is asked to teach an illiterate young black man, ironically named Jefferson, to read in the days before his execution for the murder of a white shopkeeper, a murder he did not commit. Although American racism and the shortcomings of American justice confine the characters like bad weather, the novel never wavers from its most fundamental purpose of exploring what dignifies a human being. At the other extreme, for those who prefer an analytic approach to the topic, there is an ultimate resource, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies (Oxford University Press, 1998) by Hugo Adam Bedau, which collects the leading philosophical, sociological and jurisprudential essays on the subject. Bedau is probably the foremost academic expert on capital punishment in the U.S. and a committed opponent of the practice. But his scholarship is rigorous and uncompromising and his appreciation for the power of opposing arguments is substantial. This is also a sourcebook of abolitionism, with an extensive bibliography, excerpts from important legal decisions and much statistical data, including murders by type of weapon and length of time spent on death row by state. As to Saddam, I would argue that from a very restricted legal standpoint, his execution has little to do with the central juristic question of capital punishment, which asks whether it is ever right or moral for the state to take the life of a citizen as the price for violating the law. Saddam was not condemned for his misconduct as an ordinary Iraqi citizen. He was punished for his lawless abuse of state power. His execution raises the singular question of how to respond when a state actor runs amok. This distinction is what led the Israelis in 1962 to execute Adolph Eichmann, who had supervised the Nazi death camps, even though their constitution generally prohibits capital punishment and has kept them from executing even captured terrorists But the manner in which Saddam's execution was carried out proves yet again why capital punishment is always a parlous enterprise. My own contemplation of the death penalty, as a lawyer frequently involved with the issue, has led me to conclude that the chief justification for capital punishment is symbolic. There is little evidence that executions deter other persons from becoming murderers, nor is death really necessary in the era of super-max facilities to ensure that the most violent offenders do not kill again. Some of the surviving loved ones of murder victims may be assuaged by an execution, but the truth is that no civilized society allows victims alone to determine the punishment for any crime. The only rigorous justification for the death penalty, I believe, is as a symbol of moral restoration. For ultimate evil, the argument goes, there must be ultimate punishment, because a society needs to make as bold and emphatic a statement as possible that some crimes go beyond the boundaries of what we can envisage as human. The problem, however, is that once we accept that justification for capital punishment, it must be carried out in a way that preserves its force as a moral statement. We must faultlessly
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, OKLA., PENN., COLO.
Jan. 13 USA: Left hangingIn the aftermath of the controversial execution of Saddam Hussein, SCOTT TUROW writes, the always thorny issue of state killings is once again up for debate The hanging of Saddam Hussein, in the face of ethnic jeers and smuggled cameras, will likely be remembered as yet another bungled episode in the Anglo-American misadventure of Iraq, rather than as a provocative example of what is wrong with capital punishment. But the execution of a person like Saddam, who committed such monstrous evil, inevitably provides an opportunity for reflection about this most vexed of all legal questions: whether the law may ever require the sacrifice of a life. As a contemplation of what it means in human terms to execute anyone, I inevitably recommend two prize-winning works of literature, The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (Little, Brown, 1979) and A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines (Knopf, 1993). Mailer's non-fiction book -- which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 -- evoked the contorted life of Gary Gilmore, the first American executed, by firing squad in Utah, in January, 1977, after the death penalty, which had briefly been banned in the United States as unconstitutional, was restored, as it were, by popular demand. Full of all of Mailer's Nietzschean ruminations, The Executioner's Song is an overpowering imagining both of what it means to do evil and to address it. Divided into two sections and based almost completely on interviews with Gilmore's family and friends, as well as with those of his victims, the book is an account of a life that ends in disaster, and of Gilmore's trial and refusal to appeal his death sentence. In contrast, A Lesson Before Dying tells, in beguilingly understated fashion, the story of a Louisiana school teacher who, in the late 1940s, is asked to teach an illiterate young black man, ironically named Jefferson, to read in the days before his execution for the murder of a white shopkeeper, a murder he did not commit. Although American racism and the shortcomings of American justice confine the characters like bad weather, the novel never wavers from its most fundamental purpose of exploring what dignifies a human being. At the other extreme, for those who prefer an analytic approach to the topic, there is an ultimate resource, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies (Oxford University Press, 1998) by Hugo Adam Bedau, which collects the leading philosophical, sociological and jurisprudential essays on the subject. Bedau is probably the foremost academic expert on capital punishment in the U.S. and a committed opponent of the practice. But his scholarship is rigorous and uncompromising and his appreciation for the power of opposing arguments is substantial. This is also a sourcebook of abolitionism, with an extensive bibliography, excerpts from important legal decisions and much statistical data, including murders by type of weapon and length of time spent on death row by state. As to Saddam, I would argue that from a very restricted legal standpoint, his execution has little to do with the central juristic question of capital punishment, which asks whether it is ever right or moral for the state to take the life of a citizen as the price for violating the law. Saddam was not condemned for his misconduct as an ordinary Iraqi citizen. He was punished for his lawless abuse of state power. His execution raises the singular question of how to respond when a state actor runs amok. This distinction is what led the Israelis in 1962 to execute Adolph Eichmann, who had supervised the Nazi death camps, even though their constitution generally prohibits capital punishment and has kept them from executing even captured terrorists But the manner in which Saddam's execution was carried out proves yet again why capital punishment is always a parlous enterprise. My own contemplation of the death penalty, as a lawyer frequently involved with the issue, has led me to conclude that the chief justification for capital punishment is symbolic. There is little evidence that executions deter other persons from becoming murderers, nor is death really necessary in the era of super-max facilities to ensure that the most violent offenders do not kill again. Some of the surviving loved ones of murder victims may be assuaged by an execution, but the truth is that no civilized society allows victims alone to determine the punishment for any crime. The only rigorous justification for the death penalty, I believe, is as a symbol of moral restoration. For ultimate evil, the argument goes, there must be ultimate punishment, because a society needs to make as bold and emphatic a statement as possible that some crimes go beyond the boundaries of what we can envisage as human. The problem, however, is that once we accept that justification for capital punishment, it must be carried out in a way that preserves its force as a moral statement. We must faultlessly
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, IND.
Jan. 10 USA: Capital punishment America turns its back on death penalty after botched lethal injection of killerNumber of condemned at lowest point for 30 years as opinion begins to change It took Angel Nieves Diaz 34 minutes to die from the time the 2 executioners inserted the IV tubes into each arm and began pumping the chemicals into his body. His eyes widened. His head rolled. He appeared to speak. It was my observation that he was in pain, Neal Dupree, a lawyer for Diaz and a witness to the execution, wrote in an affidavit. The faint signs of movement from the body strapped to the trolley continued for 24 minutes. His face was contorted, and he grimaced on several occasions. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down continually, and his jaw was clenched. Diaz's execution in Florida on December 13 for the murder of the manager of a topless bar was the last in the state for some months to come. Almost immediately after his body was removed from the execution chamber, it became clear that the execution had gone wrong. The cocktail of 3 chemicals that was meant to have sent him to oblivion within moments had led to a painful, lingering death. After a report from the medical examiner found 12-inch-long chemical burns on Diaz's arms, the state governor, Jeb Bush, opened an inquiry into his death and suspended all executions, granting more than 370 people on Florida's death row at least a temporary reprieve. Brutality Although the brutality of Diaz's death merited attention across America, what has gone almost unnoticed is that the death penalty, once an article of faith for conservatives, is now in retreat. The penalty remains the law in 38 states, but last year saw the lowest number of executions in a decade - 53 including Diaz. The number of condemned fell to the lowest level since the restoration of capital punishment in 1976: 114, compared with 317 in 1996. 10 states have suspended executions, and for the first time last week, one state - New Jersey - announced it was leaning towards abolition. The death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency, an official commission reported. New Jersey would be the 1st to take such a step since capital punishment was restored. The death penalty is on the defensive, said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington DC. Its flaws are much more obvious now. If you are for the death penalty you are going to have to say how are we going to avoid executing innocent people. Mr Dieter attributes much of the declining taste for the death penalty to science, with DNA and other new technologies used to establish innocence in cases where a jury has chosen to convict. More than 120 people have been freed from death row because of doubts about their conviction, including at least a dozen because of DNA testing. Such doubts led George Ryan, the conservative Republican governor of Illinois, to impose a moratorium on executions 7 years ago after more than a dozen wrongful convictions were overturned. His conversion came about when journalism students at Northwestern University produced a taped confession exonerating a man who had been on death row for 17 years. Other inmates on death row were later cleared by DNA, and subsequent investigations. Juries make mistakes. Prosecutors make mistakes. If you are for the death penalty you have to say we are going to lose innocent lives but it is worth it, Mr Dieter said. In Florida, executions are on hold because of public queasiness about lethal injection following Diaz's botched execution. As the medical examiner discovered, technicians missed the veins when they were inserting the intravenous tubes into Diaz's arms, and it took a 2nd injection to kill him. Death penalty opponents say such excruciating deaths are to be expected in American prisons. According to Human Rights Watch, one of the three chemicals in the mix of lethal injections has been banned for use on animals because of fears that it masks, rather than relieves, pain. In New Jersey, where there have been no executions since the state restored the death penalty 25 years ago, the argument came down to the high cost of legal appeals while keeping people on death row. An official commission last week concluded it did not work. There is no compelling evidence that the New Jersey death penalty rationally serves a legitimate penological intent. Last defence The judiciary has also turned against the death penalty, with the supreme court barring the execution of the insane, people with learning difficulties, or minors, and lower courts turning to alternative sentences. 37 of the 38 states that retain the death penalty now have life without parole. Death penalty opponents say that such lifelong prison terms make it increasingly difficult to argue that the death penalty is the last defence against a convicted killer going free. In the last few years, juries in celebrated capital cases have balked at imposing
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, S. DAK., VA., N.Y., PENN.
Jan. 9 USA: We need humane ways to conduct executions YES, this is the 21st century, but when it comes to capital punishment in California, how far have we advanced? At least, we've done away with hangings and firing squads. But given the growth and evolution of available technology, our state has much farther to travel. Apparently, we're not alone in thinking this way. Lethal injection has been this state's - indeed our nation's - choice for executions. But U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel late last year put his foot down on the system and halted all executions in California. He gave the state 30 days to come up with an alternative plan. Fogel said a deeply disturbing, and pervasive lack of professionalism plagues our system to the point where it crosses the line of cruel and unusual punishment. The San Jose-based judge proclaimed this an important opportunity for executive leadership. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took the cue and ordered state officials to comply with the judge's ruling. But did he really have any choice? Procedures for execution in this state had been ignored. Now we're finally taking a closer look, and what we're seeing isn't a pretty picture. Fogel saw numerous problems, including poor screening of executioners; inadequate training and oversight of execution team members; sloppy handling of the drug cocktails used in executions; unreliable execution records; an improper mixing of the 3 drugs used; and an antiquated, cramped death chamber designed as a gas chamber, not for lethal injections. The judge's ruling came on the same day that Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida halted lethal injections after one execution took 34 minutes - twice as long as it was supposed to - because the first dose was wrongly administered. California officials have insisted the state's lethal injection procedure is constitutional, and for years death penalty advocates went along with this, as long as those who committed the worst crimes paid the ultimate price. But, early last year a legal challenge from death row inmate Michael Morales made us take a hard look at our execution procedures. Morales was found guilty of the rape and murder of a 17-year-old Lodi girl in 1981. Last February, he was granted a reprieve while the judge and state considered the lethal injection issue. Perhaps it's a stalling tactic, but John Grele, one of Morales' attorneys, said, The importance of the decision is to look at these issues thoughtfully and carefully. That is sound advice. If we are to maintain the death penalty in California - there are 650 death row inmates - we must make a thorough examination of our procedure. It's time we build an execution facility that meets federal standards, adequately train those who perform executions and ensure that our method doesn't constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Schwarzenegger ordered his administration to consult with the best experts in other states. That's a good start. We can utilize science and technology to help find a humane means of executions. This is the 21st century. Let's not lower ourselves to the level of these convicted criminals. The state should strive to find the right answer. To be honest, public hangings and firing squads aren't very appealing. (source: The Argus) SOUTH DAKOTA: Death-penalty reform to go forward Legal questions about the death penalty in other states likely won't stop South Dakota legislators from rewriting the state's lethal-injection law, according to a legislative leader. Most South Dakotans favor the death penalty and support legislative efforts to clarify the protocols used for injections, according to state Rep. Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center, the Republican leader in the South Dakota House. But, he said, I think a lot of the stuff happening in other states (could) influence the way we in statute leave authorities enough latitude for the protocols to adjust to best methods and changing technology. Last summer, Gov. Mike Rounds delayed the planned execution of Elijah Page because of a conflict on whether the injection should involve 2 or 3 drugs. The governor ordered the delay, saying it would give legislators time to correct the conflict. Page's execution now is scheduled for early July. Other states are facing similar issues. In California, a federal judge said the state's execution procedure was unconstitutional and extended a moratorium on executions. In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions there after a bungled execution in December. Missouri's injection method, which is similar to Californias, was declared unconstitutional in November by a federal judge. State Rep. Chuck Turbiville, R-Deadwood, had planned to co-sponsor a bill to fix the state's death-penalty protocols, but he and other sponsors backed off when Rounds and Attorney General Larry Long made it known they were working on such a bill. Turbiville, whose legislative district includes the site of the murder for which Page was convicted,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, N.C.
Jan. 4 USA: Faced again with question about public executions We haven't yet had, in the West, a true crystallization of opinion on the matter of (a) what can be shown on TV news, or (b) what the public should be allowed to see via other media. Divisions on these questions were very clear following the execution of Saddam Hussein. There was some confusion traceable to eclectic authority. Saddam was physically imprisoned under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army, but he was tried by an Iraqi court, in a courtroom made possible by U.S. caretakers. When the time for the end came, the United States delivered Saddam to the execution site, which was under overall U.S. control. But he was delivered into the hands of Iraqi judges and executioners. Here the question of authority got confused. The United States, as a general proposition, does not permit moving pictures of death scenes. Sometimes these are taken for the record, but not for public exhibition. Some of the photos taken of the medical proceedings after the shooting of President Kennedy have not yet been released. The delicate question has to do with prurience. Do we wish to make possible the gratification of that sense, quite overt in some people e.g., the tricoteuses during the French Revolution, who went early to make certain to get seats for the morning's decapitations. There is, then, a class of people who would keep their eyes open even if they knew that what was coming up on the screen was the neck-breaking of Saddam Hussein. At the opposite end of the scale are those who so deplore the spectacle that they are willing to pass laws criminalizing the exhibition, and here and there have succeeded in doing so. We run into a conflict in priorities. There are always those who believe that there should be no censorship of any public event. People who hold to that view were supported for a very long time by moralists who believed that public exposure of the wages of sin would diminish the incidence of sin. The anomaly was famously exposed when, in Great Britain, capital-punishment abolitionists drove home the point that hanging 10-year-olds for stealing something worth sixpence had no apparent effect on the frequency of larceny. The ambivalence is heightened by the aggressive growth in the technology that tends to reveal all. It may be that the journalistic infrastructure aims less at revelation in the spirit of free speech than at satisfying appetites that we would like to think civilization would succeed in frustrating. But there it is: In a matter of hours, one would learn that tuning in to any of a half-dozen Web sites would yield very nearly a clinically complete version of what happened to Saddam Hussein in the two minutes after the noose was strung about his neck. It is technically possible to screen everyone admitted to a death chamber in order to locate and embargo cameras, but as we have vividly seen over the weekend, even when such cameras are prohibited, the likelihood that they will be kept from the scene is slight. So that we face again the question we faced for so many years awaiting the consolidation of the taboo: What are we going to do now? And to what extent is U.S. resolve in the matter the decisive factor? Perhaps the public question will simply yield to practical imperatives. We are not going to instruct the nations of the Mideast in our protocols about viewing executions. To begin with, we aren't even going to instruct them on whether capital punishment will be tolerated. The government of Israel made an exception for Nazis when constructing its law against capital punishment, so that there was no impediment to Israel's hanging of Adolf Eichmann. We have many problems in Iraq, to which we would not wish to add a regulation forbidding the execution of tyrants. An obeisance of sorts was paid to the old tradition by the major networks. They simply didn't film the neck-breaking. They looked to one side, and probably saw it at home. (source: Opinion, WIlliam F. Buckley is a nationally syndicated columnist based in New York; Houston Chronicle) NORTH CAROLINA: Lawmakers could suspend executions A state House committee is holding a public hearing Thursday on the death penalty in anticipation of the upcoming legislative session. There are currently 167 people on death row in North Carolina and some groups are urging the General Assembly to place a 2-year moratorium on their executions and conduct further studies on the issue. Others contend that capital punishment should be abolished altogether and a third group believes the current system is working and shouldnt be changed. There are currently 167 people on death row in North Carolina. The death penalty issue regained some steam after a botched attempt last month in Florida in which it took 34 minutes and two doses of lethal injection to execute a convicted killer. Following that incident, as many as 10 states decided to put executions on hold. Of the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA-----seeking information
Friends--- I pass the following item alongplease respond directly to Melonyce if you can be of assistance thanks! * I'm researching an article for Slate.com on the history of recording executions in the U.S. and am wondering if you could help answer a couple of questions or point me in the right direction. Do any state or federal corrections departments record executions in the U.S. via video and/or audio? I've heard of audio recordings and came across some of executions years ago in Georgia, but I'm not sure what the modern protocol on this is. I'm sure it varies state by state, but I'm wondering if any audio/video record is kept on each execution other than just having a doctor and witnesses there to verify that it took place. Whatever insight you could provide would be much appreciated. My deadline is tomorrow 1/4 at 4 p.m. Thank you. Melonyce McAfee melonyce.mcafee at slate.com 202-261-1369 Washington DC
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, FLA., CALIF.
Dec. 18 USA: When Executions Go Wrong: A Horribly Botched Florida Killing Adds Strong Impetus to a National Reconsideration of Capital Punishment Last Wednesday, the name of Angel Diaz was added to a long list of persons whose executions have been botched in recent American history. As widely reported in the press, it took Florida thirty-four minutes to kill him, twice the usual time. The needles that carried the lethal chemicals were mistakenly inserted completely through their intended targets--the veins in Diaz's arm--into the flesh of his arms. Thus, instead of being unconscious within the usual three or four minutes after the administration of the first chemical in the execution protocol, Diaz appeared to be moving 24 minutes after the first injection, grimacing, blinking, licking his lips, blowing and appearing to mouth words. After this execution, a spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty noted that Florida has certainly deservedly earned a reputation for being a state that conducts botched executions, whether electrocution or lethal injection. Like the king and his men trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, Florida Governor Jeb Bush immediately reacted to the Diaz fiasco by reaffirming his belief in capital punishment, ordering a halt to all executions, and convening a special commission to review that state's lethal injection procedures to insure that, in the future, they do not result in cruelty and needless suffering. Yet whatever Governor Bush's commission recommends, it is getting harder and harder for supporters of the death penalty to defend the system. The Diaz case is just the latest is a series of developments adding impetus to abolitionists' efforts to shift attention away from abstract philosophical debates, to the way the death penalty actually works. Abolitionists have recent cited not only botched executions, but also dramatic exonerations of persons from death row, cases in which defense lawyers fell asleep during capital trials, and concerns over racial disparities in the death penalty system. These abolitionist arguments, each powerful in its own right, have gained so much traction that it now seems safe to say that the future of capital punishment in the United States is very much in doubt. Indeed, the prospect of its end, which once seemed so remote, is a distinct possibility in the foreseeable future. Willie Francis's Progeny: The Most Famous Botched Execution in U.S. History Perhaps the most famous botched execution occurred in the case of Willie Francis in the 1940s. In his case, the United States Supreme Court allowed the state of Louisiana to electrocute a convicted murderer twice. As the Court recounted the relevant facts, Francis was prepared for execution and on May 3, 1946...was placed in the official electric chair of the State of Louisiana...The executioner threw the switch but, presumably because of some mechanical difficulty, death did not result. Evidence was offered to suggest that during this botched execution Francis had experienced extreme pain, that his lips puffed out and he groaned and jumped so that the chair came off the floor. Sometime later, Francis sought to prevent a second execution by contending that it would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Yet Justice Reed, writing for a majority of the Court, held that the first, unsuccessful execution would not add an element of cruelty to a subsequent execution. The constitutional question, as Reed saw it, turned instead on the behavior of those in charge of Francis's first execution. From the facts as he understood them, Reed found those officials to have carried out their duties in a careful and humane manner with no suggestion of malevolence and no purpose to inflict unnecessary pain. He described diligent, indeed even compassionate, executioners whom he believed were frustrated by what he labeled an unforeseeable accident...for which no man is to blame, and concluded that the state should not be deprived of a second chance to execute Francis. The list of botched executions from Francis to Diaz is lengthy, and includes almost every imaginable kind of failure. Recently cataloged by sociologist Michael Radelet, that list includes Alabama's 1983 execution of John Evans. During Evans's electrocution, the electrode attached to his leg burst from the strap holding it in place, and caught on fire. Smoke and sparks also came out from under the hood over Evans's head, in the vicinity of his left temple. 2 physicians entered the chamber and found a heartbeat. The electrode was reattached to Evans's leg, and another jolt of electricity was applied. This resulted in more smoke and burning flesh. Again, the doctors found a heartbeat. A 3rd jolt of electricity was applied. The execution took 14 minutes and left Evans's body charred and smoldering. In 1997, newspapers around the country described the gruesome circumstances of the Florida electrocution of Pedro
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, CALIF.
Dec. 15 USA: Toobin: Cruelty-free execution is difficult After it took 34 minutes for an inmate in Florida to die by injection, Gov. Jeb Bush on Friday ordered a moratorium on all executions in the state. Meanwhile, a federal judge in California ruled Friday that lethal injection could be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment and stopped executions in that state. CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin discussed the meaning of these developments with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room. BLITZER: Jeff, let's talk about the decision by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to issue a moratorium, a suspension of all executions in the state of Florida after one prisoner who was executed, it took him more than a half an hour to use the lethal injection to kill him. TOOBIN: This is the culmination of something that's been building for several years. The lethal injection was invented as a supposedly more humane alternative to the gas chamber, which replaced electrocution, which replaced hanging. And it turns out, this is simply a lot harder to do than people expected. And one of the chemicals used in lethal injections in this country has been banned for veterinarians to put animals to sleep because of its supposed cruelty. This is filtering through the legal system. ... The executions aren't going well, so the courts are now having a struggle with this issue once again. BLITZER: And the constitutional issue is that, presumably, the person about to be executed was going through an unreasonable amount of torture or suffering. Is that the issue? TOOBIN: Exactly. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court has held that that doesn't mean that you can't execute people. The court has said many times that executions are legal, but they have never said what kinds of executions are legally permissible. And what seems very likely to happen as a result of these latest series of controversies, both legal and political, that is, the decision in California and the political decision by Gov. Bush, is that the Supreme Court is going to have to deal with this issue because so many states have lethal injection now, and it is now just not clear whether that constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. BLITZER: The federal judge in California issued his ruling opposing a moratorium on executions in California, saying that that state's lethal injection method is unconstitutional. Implementation of lethal injection is broken, Judge Jeremy Fogel said in San Jose. But he also said it can be fixed. So that means, I would surmise, that they have to come up with a better way, a better lethal injection or some other way of executing prisoners. TOOBIN: It turns out that it's actually hard to kill someone in a humane way. It seems odd to say it, but it is just harder than you might -- than those of us who are not scientists might -- expect. And cases like this are filtering all through the legal system. The judge in California decided this one today, but there's a case in Tennessee. There are cases in Florida. In fact, most prisoners who are on the verge of execution because -- with the use of lethal injection, which is overwhelmingly the choice of the 38 states that have the death penalty -- are challenging their execution on this ground, and the Supreme Court in the next year or so almost certainly is going to have to take up this issue, which it has not yet done. (source: CNN) CALIFORNIA: California judge: Lethal injection may be unconstitutional Judge says lethal injection may be cruel and unusual punishment. Judge Jeremy Fogel says lethal injection can be fixed Injection the preferred execution method in 37 states A federal judge who imposed a moratorium on executions in California ruled Friday that the state's method of lethal injection is at risk of violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. California's implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said. Fogel's decision came on the same day that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions in that state after a botched execution this week. Injection is the preferred execution method in 37 states. Last month, a federal judge declared unconstitutional Missouri's injection method, which is similar to California's. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld executions -- by hanging, firing squad, electric chair and gas chamber -- despite the pain they might cause but has left unsettled the issue of whether the pain is unconstitutionally excessive. (source: Associated Press)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, CALIF., ALA., OHIO
Dec. 14 USA: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: USE OF DEATH PENALTY DECLINES IN 2006 Public Now Favors Life Without Parole Lethal Injection Challenges Lead to Fewest Executions in a Decade; Death Sentences at 30-Year Low For the first time in 2 decades, the Gallup Poll this year revealed that more Americans support the alternative sentence of life without parole over the death penalty as the proper punishment for murder. This result is in-step with the Death Penalty Information Center's (DPIC) 2006 Year End Report detailing a continuing trend away from capital punishment in the United States. In its report, DPIC notes that U.S. death sentences are now at an historic 30-year low, executions have sharply declined, and the size of death row has been dropping since 2000. In the states this year, New Jersey became the first jurisdiction to enact a moratorium on executions through legislation and joined a lengthy list of states, including California and North Carolina, in forming a study commission to review the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty. New York legislators chose not to reinstate that jurisdiction's defunct death penalty. More changes may emerge in the coming years as a growing number of candidates who are opposed to the death penalty were elected to public office in 2006. The American public has turned an important corner in this debate. Support for the death penalty is on the decline and more people are embracing the alternative sentence of life without parole, which is now available in almost every state, said Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Capital punishment is risky, expensive, and could result in irreversible error. Fewer people are now willing to put their faith in such a flawed policy. In its report, DPIC noted that the number of executions in 2006 reached a 10-year low of 53, down 46% since its highpoint in 1999. Evidence that lethal injections could be causing needless and excruciating pain delayed a number of executions and led to a series of court hearings this year. Individual executions in Arkansas, California, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota, and in the federal system were halted because of this issue. The number of people sentenced to death annually has dropped by nearly 60% since 1999, falling from nearly 300 death sentences annually in the 1990s to a projected 114 death sentences this year. The size of death row decreased for the 5th consecutive year after 25 years of increases, declining from 3,415 last year to 3,366 in 2006. The issue of innocence remained an important cornerstone of the death penalty debate in 2006 as an expanding list of judges, law enforcement officials, religious leaders, and other new voices joined in challenging capital punishment's implementation and accuracy. Former Chicago Tribune editor and publisher Jack Fuller echoed the concerns of many when he wrote: [N]o government is good enough to entrust with the absolute power that capital punishment entails. In August, the American Bar Association unanimously passed a resolution calling for an exemption from the death penalty for the severely mentally ill. An almost identical resolution had been endorsed earlier by such mental health groups as the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. This is the 12th Year End Report published by DPIC, a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on capital punishment. To receive a copy of the report or to schedule an interview with Richard Dieter or other experts who are willing to address topics covered in the 2006 review, please contact Brenda Bowser Soder at 301-906-4460, or call DPIC at 202-289-2275. To see additional graphs and links related to material in the report, see http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=2026 (source: Death Penalty Information Center) CALIFORNIA: New trial is weighed in '79 slayingA federal court is trying to determine if actions by jurors contaminated the conviction and death sentence of a man who killed a USC librarian. In San Francisco, a federal appeals court wrestled Wednesday with whether to grant a new trial to a man on death row for the horrific 1979 murder of a USC student librarian. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether Stevie Lamar Fields' conviction for the rape, robbery and murder of Rosemary Carr Cobb was contaminated by a juror's failure to disclose that his wife had been a rape victim, and by the jury foreman's recitation of Bible verses during the trial's death penalty phase. Fields, now 49, has been on death row for a quarter-century. When the California Supreme Court upheld his conviction more than 20 years ago, Justice Alan Broussard described him as a one-man crime wave. Just 14 days after his parole from a manslaughter sentence, Fields killed Cobb, robbed,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, GA., N.C., US MIL., LA.
Dec. 5 USA: Report: Death Penalty Creates More VictimsFamily members, especially children, suffer in the aftermath of an execution Families of the executed are victims too, according to a new report that Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights will release on December 10. Creating More Victims: How Executions Hurt the Families Left Behind draws upon the stories of three dozen family members of people executed in the United States and demonstrates that their experiences and traumatic symptoms resemble those of others who have suffered a violent loss. It's something you don't ever get over, said Pam Crawford, one of the family members featured in the report. Crawford, a Charlotte native, is the sister of a man who was executed in Alabama in 1996. She described the nightmares and other difficulties that her teenaged granddaughter still experiences in the aftermath of the execution. Other family members agreed that children, in particular, suffer as they struggle to understand a relative's death at the hands of the state. What impact does this event have on children's impressionable lives, and what cost does society pay for that impact? asks Robert Meeropol, another survivor featured in the report. Meeropol's parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed in New York when Meeropol was 6 years old. As a victims' organization, Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) researched and published the report to highlight the similarities between the experiences of survivors of homicide victims and survivors of people who are executed. Family members of the executed are the death penalty's invisible victims, said Renny Cushing, executive director of MVFHR. With each execution, we create a new grieving family who experience many familiar symptoms of trauma, some of them long-lasting. As a society, what are we doing to address the suffering of these families? Creating More Victims includes recommendations for mental health professionals, educators, and child welfare advocates. MVFHR also plans to deliver the report to the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights and request that that office undertake further study of the impact of executions on surviving families. (source: BBS News) GEORGIA: Lawyer says death row client not strangler Defense: Columbus case evidence suppressed A lawyer for the so-called Columbus stocking strangler said Tuesday that serendipitously discovered new evidence bolsters his claim that his death row client, Carlton Gary, was wrongly convicted of raping and murdering three elderly women 20 years ago. Attorney Jack Martin said the evidence which he says had been suppressed by prosecutors until now suggests Gary was not the man who terrified Columbus residents in 1978 and '79 during an eight-month crime spree that left victims strangled with their own stockings. This case is a tragic example of the prosecution refusing to reveal to the defense powerful physical evidence pointing toward innocence which has only been discovered by chance decades later, he said. No one from the state attorney general's office could be reached for comment Tuesday evening. Martin filed a motion with the federal court in Columbus on Monday asking for a hearing for consideration of the new evidence. Among the items: During Gary's original trial and the appeals process, prosecutors did not disclose that they had made a mold of a bite mark found on the breast of one of the victims, Martin said. The defense was later told that the mold was lost or had been misplaced. Then, while cleaning out his office, the Muscogee County coroner found the mold, which allowed a forensic dentist to compare it with a mold of Gary's teeth, Martin said. The dentist concluded to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that several inconsistencies show that Gary was probably not the biter. Defense attorneys, during Gary's original trial, also were not told that police had obtained shoe print sizes from the scene of 2 attacks that Gary had been tied to. Martin learned of the shoe prints when a GBI agent called him last year. The agent had been part of the GBI task force on the case, but later retired. He provided Martin with photocopies of one of the prints. It was of a size 9 shoe. Gary wears a size 13 1/2. Martin found a similar discrepancy while reviewing shoe prints obtained from a 2nd crime scene. That didn't match, either, he said. The new evidence do not involve the 3 victims Gary was convicted of strangling. But in their efforts to prove Gary committed those murders, prosecutors implicated him in the raping and killing four others in a virtually identical manner. He was not tried in those cases. If the evidence now shows he didn't commit one of these crimes, it proves he didn't commit any of them, Martin said. Gary was arrested May 3, 1984, after Columbus police traced to him a gun that had been stolen from a home in the neighborhood where the killings occurred.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, PENN.
Dec. 3 USAbook review Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row Author: David R. Dow-ISBN: 0807044199-Pages: 272 The story of the death row inmates who changed one Texas lawyer's mind about capital punishment When David Dow took his first capital case, he supported the death penalty. He changed his position as the men on death row became real people to him, and as he came to witness the profound injustices they endured: from coerced confessions to disconcertingly incompetent lawyers; from racist juries and backward judges to a highly arbitrary death penalty system. It is these concrete accounts of the people Dow has known and represented that prove the death penalty is consistently unjust, and it's precisely this fundamental-and lethal-injustice, Dow argues, that should compel us to abandon the system altogether. An honorably dispassionate and logical broadside against a shameful practice. -Kirkus Reviews Dow reveals the dirty little secret of American death-penalty litigation: procedure trumps innocence . . . [His book] is insightful and full of the kinds of revelations that may lead readers to reconsider their stand on the death penalty. -Steve Mills, Chicago Tribune Dow's book leaves all else behind. It is powerful, direct, informative, and told in compelling human terms. He makes us see that the issue is not sentiment or retribution or even innocence. It is justice. -Anthony Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning former columnist for the New York Times (source: Akron Beacon Journal; David R. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against the death penalty. He is the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network and has represented more than thirty death row inmates. Regularly quoted in publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, Dow lives in Houston, Texas.) CONNECTICUT: 'I Took Her Dream Away' Tormented by the memory of Groton hotel killing, Jos Torres says he wants to die for his crime. It is a no-contact visit, and the corrections officer says to look for the Puerto Rican guy with the tattoos. But when the door opens at the top of the stairs, 45-year-old Jos Torres a slightly built man who's pacing is the only one inside the room, which has a wall of solid Plexiglas. As he sits to face a visitor on this Saturday night in mid-November, Torres talks into a phone that, like the others along the wall, has a short cord a measure to prevent prisoners from strangling themselves. Without fanfare, Torres says he wants the death penalty and, very specifically, death by electric chair. I don't want lethal injection. It's like putting a dog to sleep, he says, curling both hands into fists to reveal letters tattooed across his knuckles that spell out his hometown: L-Y-N-N M-A-S-S. Torres has been accused of strangling to death his 1-time girlfriend Elizabeth Reynes on June 30 at The Days Inn on Groton's Gold Star Highway, where they both worked when it was called the Best Way Inn Suites. Police found her body stuffed in a locker in a small room there, her hands and feet tied with wire. Reynes, 46, was in the United States on a temporary work visa from the Philippines. Torres has entered a plea of not guilty in the case, but he has not been cooperating with New London attorney John F. Cocheo, who, Torres says, was hired by a friend to represent him. Torres claims he doesn't agree with his plea. Cocheo did not return calls for comment. On this Saturday night, during the hour he speaks to a visitor, Torres' accent is that of a New Yorker, an affect from the handful of years he lived in Manhattan after his childhood in Lynn, before he came to live and work in Groton. Inside Garner Correctional Institution where 527 high-security inmates are housed in what the prison system calls its mental health facility for adult male offenders with significant mental health needs many people think he's Italian. And, because of his tattoos and the murder charge, Torres says, most think he's part of a gang. As if to re-enforce the evidence, he lifts up his arms to show twin spider web tattoos around his elbows. Since turning himself in to police the evening of the killing, he says, he has been despondent. He remains on suicide watch in prison. In various letters to friends, Reynes' family and the newspaper, he has repeatedly admitted to the killing: I HATE MYSELF FOR WHAT I'VE DONE HER DREAM WAS TO BECOME AN AMERICAN I TOOK HER DREAM AWAY I HATE MYSELF FOR WHAT I'VE DONE Torres confesses he doesn't know how to read and write, although teachers kept passing him up to the next grade until he left school in the 10th grade. Each word in his letters from prison, he says, was spelled out by a cellmate, and he wrote them down in pencil and capital letters. His letters of confession were sent out along with pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary ripped from a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA-----NCADP December Execution Alert
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty December 2006 Please forward and cross-post this message widely. --- Three inmates scheduled for execution in December Three inmates have scheduled execution dates in December, all of which are slated before December 15. Of the three, one pleaded guilty to the crimes and suffers from mental illness, while another maintains his innocence. Percy Walton is scheduled to be executed by the state of Virginia on Dec. 8, even though he suffers from severe chronic schizophrenia. Angel Nieves Diaz is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 13 by the state of Florida, despite the fact that no one witnessed the murder. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! --- Do Not Execute Percy Walton! Although Percy Walton pled guilty to the shooting murders of three people, a group of mental health professionals diagnosed him with severe chronic schizophrenia. He has told people that he looks forward to his execution so that he can resurrect dead family members. Walton has suffered from mental illness for years, and he now has no idea that his execution is imminent. Executing Walton would be the same as execution a person with mental retardation, in that he has makes no connections between action and consequence. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Tim Kaine requesting that he stop the execution of Percy Walton! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3864 --- Do Not Execute Angel Nieves Diaz! Angel Nieves Diaz was convicted in the murder of a bar manager in Miami, but no one witnessed the crime. Diaz maintains he was out of the state at the time of the murder, and his girlfriend has admitted that she testified against him after being coerced by the police. Also, Angel Toro, who allegedly was with Diaz during the crime, received a plea bargain and is now serving a life term. Diaz represented himself at the trial, even though he did not speak English at the time, and the trial jury was influenced by the heavy security surrounding Diaz during the trial. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Jeb Bush requesting that Angel Nieves Diaz's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6019 - See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html December 5: Jerome Henderson, OH http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6018 December 8: Percy Walton, VA http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3864 December 13: Angel Nieves Diaz, FL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6019
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, N.C., TENN., WIS.
my news postings will resume on Sunday, Nov. 26 Nov. 22 USA: Justice is the purpose of the death penalty This letter is in response to the letter written by Lisa Gartner regarding the death penalty (Nov. 8 issue). She has chosen to address a difficult and divisive issue, and I appreciate her willingness to share her thoughts on capital punishment. While I happen to be an advocate for the death penalty, I am encouraged to see the value that she places on the lives of convicted criminals and trust that she places that same value on the lives of unborn children, the elderly and the mentally/physically handicapped. The primary purpose of the death penalty has never been to serve as a deterrent, but rather as a form of justice-which it does. Justice is a virtue of social institutions (government) that enables that institution to establish and maintain order in society. Behavior that is conducive to maintaining structure is rewarded while behavior that is destructive is disciplined. Every individual born in the United States, or that has citizenship here, is entitled to unalienable rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. If an individual chooses to participate in socially unacceptable or morally reprehensible behavior as defined by that institution, they forfeit those rights -this is why prisoners aren't allowed to vote-and subjugate themselves to the consequences of that choice as established by the judicial system of the United States. Taking a person's car has different consequences than taking a person's life. Yet, Ms. Gartner fails to make the distinction between taking the life of an innocent person by an individual, and taking the life of a convicted murderer by an institution. The death penalty is reserved for individuals who partake in the most destructive of societal behavior, namely murder. When an individual chooses to devalue life to the point that they take someone else's, they forfeit the value of their own life and submit to the consequences established by the government-which has the right and responsibility to carry out the consequences of that individual's choice. Joel Smith Hillsboro * Death penalty should be prompt and harsh In regard to Lisa Gartner's letter about the death penalty, I would like to explain a few things she may be too young to realize. Lisa, you are partly right that the death penalty should at least be handled differently. First, when someone commits a capital crime and is given the death penalty, it should be carried out the very next day. And, instead of going ever so gentle with them, they should be treated in the same way they killed their victim. Letting them sit around and be babied for 15 to 20 years-now that's inhumane. Punishment is not only to deter others, it is to pay for your crime. The U.S. Constitution was mostly taken from the Bible. It is written: God said when someone commits a capital crime, send them to me and this will cease to happen. That does not mean to pack their lunch and put them on a bus. Whether you are a believer or not has no bearing on the fact it will stop that person from doing it again. It doesn't matter whether a person is white, black, brown, red or purple, if they commit a capital crime and get the death penalty, they should die. Racism has nothing to do with it. One last thing, Lisa. Maybe you should try to get all the inmates on death row paroled to take home with when you return (to your home in Germany). Then you could give them whatever it is you think they deserve. James HoffnerDurham (source: Letters to the Editor, Hillsboro (Kan.) Free Press) NORTH CAROLINA: Death penalty case centers on competency of hitman Guy Tobias LeGrande wore a Superman T-shirt the day he stood before a jury as his own lawyer and argued for his own execution: Pull the switch and let the good times roll. Jurors sentenced LeGrande, a man many say is mentally ill and never should have been allowed to represent himself, to death. He was able to pass the I-know-what-day-it-is test, but clearly not represent his own best interests, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. Now it may be too late. Last minute appeals are pending, but as LeGrande's Dec. 1 execution approaches, his last hope could rest with Gov. Mike Easley, who must decide whether to grant clemency to a hitman prosecutors insist was competent to stand trial for the murder of 26-year-old Ellen Munford. While the state Supreme Court agreed, others are equally convinced LeGrande is mentally ill and must be spared a death sentence. LeGrande, now 47, was hired by co-worker, Tommy Munford and promised $6,500 of a $50,000 insurance payoff to kill Munford's wife in 1993. LeGrande waited for hours outside Ellen Munford's home in Stanly County - giving her husband time to take his children to the beach and secure an alibi - before shooting her twice in the back. 4 months
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, MO., OHIO, FLA., MISS., WIS.
Oct. 29 USA: Teaching children the ways of forgiveness Halloween is coming. I could only hope that Tinkerbells, hobos, ghosts, pirates, Raggedy Andys, dachshunds wrapped up in hot dog buns, golden retrievers in clown hats and ruffs would be the only ones on the prowl for treats. But there's also sure to be a gory assortment of masks dripping blood, fake wounds, and popped-out eyeballs crossing our paths. For a preview, just walk into Party City! Psychologists tell us that Halloween is our annual chance to trot out an alter ego, to try on an exotic or far-out identity, to safely express what would be considered crazy or unacceptable any other time of year. I can see why a 4-year-old would want to be a Disney princess, but what's the appeal of slipping into the skin of Freddy Kruger? I used to serve as on-call chaplain in a regional trauma center. In those two years, I saw enough blood for a lifetime. The bloody footprints on the floor were real, not painted. I saw severed limbs that were flesh, not plastic, and raw wounds that couldn't be washed away at the end of the evening. The victim of an axe attack died; he didn't rise up the next morning with a hangover as his only handicap. Blood and guts was an occupational reality, not a recreational pastime. In contrast to the make-believe mayhem we're bracing for, I've recently heard and read about real-life horrors. In an evening of conversation about the current moratorium on the death penalty, the mother of a murder victim and an exonerated death row inmate spoke about their living nightmares. Juan Melendez spent 17 years, eight months and one day on Florida's death row before being exonerated and released. Someone discovered the taped confession of the real murderer buried in the state's evidence file. Vicki Schieber is the mother of Shannon, a victim of the Philly Center City rapist. Both of these people are on the trail, telling their stories, not to live in the past but to change the present and future for others. We heard Melendez speak of his death row existence in a cell infested with rats, and of the despair of other inmates who chose to end their lives rather than live without hope. He described dreams that fended off despair: visions of swimming like a dolphin in the sea, keeping alive the hope of regained freedom, and a dream visit by his grandfather, who loved him dearly, and whom he later learned died around the time of the dream. Melendez is a spokesman for institutional change. He was the 99th person exonerated for a crime that resulted in a death sentence. He also is a living lesson that forgiving the people who shackle us with undeserved chains liberates us from self-imposed fetters. Melendez doesn't need to play-act violence on Halloween. He's experienced it first-hand; he's survived and overcome it. One of the most poignant parts of Vicki Schieber's story is how the Philadelphia prosecutor berated her and her family for not insisting on the death penalty when the trial of Shannon's killer entered the penalty phase. The Schieber family explained that doing so would contradict any lesson they had ever taught their children. Vicki makes it sound simple: If you don't hold onto your values when it's difficult, were they ever really yours? When someone speaks out against the death penalty, people often retort, You'd feel different if you'd lost someone you love. Mrs. Schieber has. Yet she says that an eye for an eye, a life for a life, isn't balm for her pain. She says it wouldn't make her feel any better for another mother (the murderer's) to lose a child. In the face of much opposition, she and her family refused to answer personal violence with state-sponsored violence. Another bloodbath on our hearts these days is the one that occurred in an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa. The Amish belong to a branch of Christianity known as the peace churches. They do not serve as combatants in war; they do not use weapons of any kind. They would say, like Gandhi, that they would sooner die themselves than kill another human being. The killer killed himself, so the question of the death penalty is moot. The depth of Amish faith and ability to forgive, though, is shown in their loving care of the killer's widow and children. They will share the monies raised to help the families of victims; the Amish recognize that those poor people are victims, too. There's another American, a woman named Mother Antonia, who has lived amid the violence within the walls of La Mesa Prison in Tijuana, Mexico, for the past 30 years. Her presence has helped to quell erupting violence and to prevent much harm. Her pained gaze and prophetic words have helped open the eyes of perpetrators (both inmates and guards) to the enormity of their sin and to turn hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. In speaking to the wife of an official who barely survived an assassination attempt, as written in The Prison Angel by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, Mother
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA----NCADP November Execution Alert
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Please forward and cross-post this message widely. -- Four Inmates scheduled for execution in November Four inmates are scheduled to be executed in November. The first execution is scheduled for Nov. 1, with three final executions scheduled to occur throughout the month. Those scheduled to be executed include one man whose trial ignored several mitigating factors in the sentencing phase, and another man whose sentence relies upon contradictory eyewitness testimony. Donell Jackson, who maintains his innocence, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on Nov 1. Charles Nealy is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 18 by the state of Texas, despite the fact that two witnesses admitted influence on their testimony of identifying Nealy as the killer. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! --- Do Not Execute Donell Jackson! While Jackson testified that he killed Stubblefield, several mitigating factors exist. Jackson had a record of juvenile delinquency, and he ultimately dropped out of school due to excessive absence. Two experts testified during the sentencing phase of the trial that Jackson has a learning disability, which may contribute to his lack of education. Furthermore, all of Jacksons appeals have been denied, including a request for a state-funded polygraph test. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that he stop the execution of Donell Jackson! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/ ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5673 --- Do Not Execute Charles Nealy! The state of Texas should punish Nealy for his involvement in the murder of Jiten Bhakta. However, since no one could correctly identify him as the man with the shotgun without confusing him with the other man or being told by the police that Nealy was present, this should not be a capital punishment case. The influence of outside factors in two mens testimonies and the confusion of the thirds does not make a sound case for the state against Nealy. Executing Nealy will not prevent any future crime that a life in prison cannot prevent, and his case demonstrates that people are put on death row without being absolutely positive of their role in a murder. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that Charles Nealy's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5683 --- See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html November 1: Donell Jackson,TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5673 November 8: Willie Shannon, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5680 November 9: John Schmitt, VA http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5681 November 16: Charles Nealy TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5683
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, VA., WIS., KY., ALA.
Oct. 22 USA: Wronged rightHabeas corpus safeguards freedom of individuals It is Latin for you have the body. To prisoners within the American legal system, a writ of habeas corpus means that it must be proven in court that they are being held justly. The actual right of habeas corpus is not stated in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, whose authors presumably believed it to be such a fundamental concept that it wasn't necessary to codify. The only mention in the Constitution relates to when habeas corpus can be taken away from judges. In a section limiting the powers of Congress (Art. I, Sec. 9), the Constitution states: The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in causes of rebellion or invasion of the public safety may require it. In the 1969 decision Harris v. Nelson, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote that the writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action. On Oct. 17 that basic American right, which was carried over from British law, was obscured by a bill President Bush signed into law, what he called a vital tool for the war on terror. The bill denies terror suspects the writ of habeas corpus and furthers the interrogation techniques used to glean information from them. What if someone who is deemed an enemy combatant is just an unfortunate person who has the same name and perhaps even resembles an actual terrorist? Is it fair that this person cannot demand that the courts produce evidence that there is a just reason for his incarceration? Isn't that precisely what the Supreme Court was warning about in 1969? Yes, the war on terror is different from past wars in that there is no one discernable state called al-Qaida. At the same time, our Constitution must not be allowed to be molded to the needs of the administration in power. We've gotten through several wars, including 2 worldwide conflicts, without the need to eliminate this right. True, Abraham Lincoln suspended the right during the Civil War -- a decision roundly criticized then and down through history. Lincoln's argument was that people opposed to the Union endangered public safety, and he said regular civilian courts were inadequate during a rebellion. The only solution, he said, was to suspend the writ and lock up the troublemakers until the war ended. We're not in the midst of a rebellion, however, and heaven help the nation if that standard is ever applied to anti-war demonstrators. Habeas corpus has saved many innocent lives from execution, when death row inmates were given a second chance in court to have new evidence such as DNA reviewed. Although some argue that federal use slows up the court system, incurring needless costs, for any innocent life saved that is not too great a price. Shame on Congress and shame on the president for allowing the Great Writ to be unwritten. (source: Editorial, (N.Y.) Press Sun-Bulletin) *** Reconsidering the Death Penalty For as long as I can remember I have opposed the death penalty and have opposed it under all circumstances. Let's take a stroll down amnesia lane. In the mid-1980s, there were more than a dozen police officers killed in the line of duty in Canada. This prompted calls for the restoration of the death penalty in Canada which had been formally abolished in 1976 (the same year it was restored in the United States). I remember being the only person in my seventh grade class that was willing to speak out against the death penalty during a class debate we had on the issue. More than twenty years after that debate I still remember being mocked by both my classmates and my teacher for the position that I took. I must admit that I felt some vindication when Canada's House of Commons ultimately voted against restoring the death penalty in June 1987. There are compelling reasons to oppose the death penalty incompetent or inadequate legal representation for the accused, police and prosecutorial misconduct and poor management of forensic evidence. In other words, what if the wrong person has been convicted? Ask most Canadians about David Milgaard, Guy Paul Morin and Donald Marshall, Jr and they will tell you about three men convicted for murders they did not commit. Indeed, the Government of Canada is close to completing a public inquiry into the wrongful conviction of Milgaard. There are also compelling philosophical reasons to oppose the death penalty. There is the most basic consideration that the killing of another human being is wrong and immoral. Even if one human being takes the life of another what gives the state the right to execute any human being, no matter how vile their acts? I have long believed that when the state executes someone that they are no better than the person who committed the murder. Then there is also the argument that death is the easy way out. One certainly hears the sentiment that death is too good
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA-----NCADP October Execution Alert
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty --- Seven Inmates scheduled for execution in October Seven inmates are scheduled to be executed in October. The first execution is scheduled for Oct. 18, with three final executions scheduled to occur on Oct. 25. Those scheduled to be executed include one man whose trial depended upon testimony from an unreliable man and another who suffers from alcoholism and possible post traumatic stress disorder from his service in Vietnam. Michael Johnson, who maintains his innocence, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on Oct. 19. Arthur Rutherford is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 18 by the state of Florida, despite the fact that his counsel failed to present his mental and psychological problems during his trial. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! --- Do Not Execute Michael Johnson! Michael Johnson maintains that his accomplice, David Vest, is responsible for the murder of Jeff Wetterman. Vest confessed to the crime, yet the prosecutor withheld this information from the defense counsel. The prosecutor then called Vest as a witness, who stated under oath that Johnson killed Wetterman. In return, Vest received a lighter prison sentence for his confession. The state illegally withheld this confession, and also allowed Vest to commit perjury by making two different statements under oath. This demonstrates that death row inmates often do not receive effective counsel. One judge even acknowledged the troubling record of the State's inconsistent pretrial and trial strategy with respect to the two codefendents. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that he stop the execution of Michael Johnson! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/ organizationsORG/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5277 - Do Not Execute Arthur Rutherford! Convicted of killing a woman for money, Rutherford's counsel decided not to present evidence on his mental state to the jury. Rutherford suffers from what has been diagnosed as an anxiety disorder similar to post traumatic stress disorder. Also, he endured abuse during his childhood and is an alcoholic. While the defense had reason not to present this evidence during the trial, it should at least have come up during the sentencing phase as mitigating factors. His psychological state could have affected his judgment the day of the murder. Arthur Rutherford's counsel failed him, and the state of Florida should not execute him. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Jeb Bush requesting that Arthur Rutherfords execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_ KEY=1741 --- See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html October 18: Arthur Rutherford, FL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1741 October 19: Michael Johnson, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5277 October 24: Jeffrey Lundgren, OH http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5278 October 25: Gregory Summers, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5306 October 25: Donnie Johnson, TN http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=224 October 25: Danny Rolling, FL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5279 October 26: Larry Hutcherson, AL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5454
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, WIS., N. DAK., IDAHO
Oct. 3 USA: EXECUTIONS: Inmates oppose injected death Prison documents final hours before Ohio's condemned die From California to Maryland, lawyers for death row inmates have mounted challenges to the use of lethal injection in virtually every state with capital punishment. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel effectively put a temporary halt to executions in California as he considers the legal challenge from death row inmate Michael Morales, who in February was hours from receiving a fatal dose of drugs when he was given a reprieve. Morales and other challengers claim lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Constitution. Other states have held hearings to examine lethal-injection issues, but the California case is expected to be the most thorough inquiry to ever unfold in a courtroom. California now has 658 death row inmates, more than any state. Today, 37 of the 38 states with the death penalty use lethal injection. The result has been a series of legal challenges that rely on the same central argument: that the combination of three drugs used to kill an inmate could mask a painful death, creating a risk of cruel and unusual punishment. Nebraska allows executions only by electric chair. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Missouri halted executions until that state revises its method. South Dakota has halted executions until state officials change the lethal-injection practices. Whatever Fogel decides, he is unlikely to have the last word in the case because his ruling is expected to be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Legal experts say the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never outlawed a method of execution, eventually will have to weigh in. (source: San Jose Mercury News) WISCONSIN: We know enough about death penalty Should the death penalty be enacted in the state of Wisconsin for cases involving a person who is convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, if the conviction is supported by DNA evidence? This is the question on the ballot for Nov. 7. In the past couple of months, I have been asked to speak several times as a lawyer and a minister about this issue. Here is what we know about the death penalty: We know that the death penalty is constitutional. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty as it was then administered by states. In 1976, after states implemented legislative changes, the court reinstated the death penalty. We know the death penalty is currently legal in 39 states. [my notethe death penalty is legal in 38 states] We know the death penalty is administered in a variety of ways including lethal injection, the electric chair, the gas chamber, firing squad and hanging. We know that in 1853 Wisconsin outlawed the death penalty. We know the death penalty is ineffective in deterring crime. Studies comparing regions of the country have found that the South, in which most executions occur, has the highest murder rate. As a group, states that have the death penalty have a 42 % higher murder rate than states that do not. We know the death penalty is unpredictable. It varies from state to state, county to county, judge to judge, jury to jury, black to white and rich to poor. We know the death penalty is profoundly racist. The majority of people currently on death row are either black or Hispanic. Also, in a process called black victim discounting, people are three times more likely to be sentenced to death for killing a white person than for killing a black person. We know the death penalty is not justified by traditional legal standards. The law allows the taking of a life in self-defense or defense of another when no other option is available. Since life without parole is an option, the self-defense justification does not apply to the deliberate decision of a state to choose death over the available option of life in prison. We know the death penalty is contrary to Christian traditions. The Bible, of course, is used on both sides of this debate. But I think it is most helpful to look at God's own mercy toward three high-profile murders: Cain (Genesis 4:8-17), Moses (Exodus 2:11-15) and David (1 Samuel 11:1-21). Also, given Jesus' love for the poor and oppressed, it is hard to believe that he would abandon those on death row. We know that the death penalty kills innocent people. Since 1973, over 115 innocent people in 25 states have been released from death row. I think most people know all this. They know that the death penalty is ineffective, racist and unpredictable, and kills innocent people. But many people still support the death penalty because they think some crimes are so terrible that the people who commit them deserve to die and that we can fix the problems in the system. They believe that we are smart enough to find a system that ensures we will be safer, that will be predictable, that will eliminate the current racist imbalance, and that will guarantee that
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---USA, N.Y., N. MEX., FLA., WIS.
Sept. 27 USA: Roberts and Alito Stay in the Cert Pool As they enter their 2nd term, the Supreme Court's two newest justices have decided, at least temporarily, to stick with the Court's clerk-pooling arrangement, despite concerns that it gives law clerks too much power. In brief interviews in recent weeks, both Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. said they will stay in the cert pool, as it is called, for the current term. Roberts said he will participate on a year-to-year basis, and Alito said the same; both indicated they are still weighing the issues that have been raised. But Alito said that during his first term it was apparent to him that certiorari petitions need to be read closely to determine if they are worth granting -- suggesting some need for pooling the workload. The arrangement, devised in 1972, radically changed what happens when a petition for review or certiorari comes in to the Court. Instead of being reviewed separately by nine clerks and/or nine justices, it is scrutinized for the pool, presumably in greater depth, by one clerk, who then writes a memo for all the justices in the pool. The pool drew little criticism when only 4 or 5 justices participated. But ever since the late Thurgood Marshall left the Court, in 1991, Justice John Paul Stevens has been the only justice outside the pool, preferring to have his clerks take a separate look at petitions, partly as a backstop for the pool. In a 1997 speech when he was in private practice, Roberts said he found the pool disquieting in that it made clerks a bit too significant in determining the Court's docket. During his confirmation hearings in January, Alito said he was aware of the issue surrounding the pool. He added: We cannot delegate our judicial responsibility. But ... we need to find ways, and we do find ways, of obtaining assistance from clerks and staff, employees, so that we can deal with the large caseload that we have. In their new book on the Court's clerks, Sorcerers' Apprentices, authors Artemus Ward and David Weiden chart the history and impact of the pool. At the same time the pool has increased the power of clerks in the gatekeeping function, they say, it has made clerks less candid and more timid in their recommendations. The pool writers are going to be less candid than they would be with their own justice, says Ward in an interview. It has a chilling effect. The book also asserts that since the pool was created, the number of separate concurring and dissenting opinions issued by the justices exploded. In other words, by lightening the load of petitions each clerk has to read, the pool frees the clerks to write more opinions for their justices. By the authors' estimate, each clerk in 1970 reviewed an average of 634 petitions, while in 2000 that number was down to 271. This is something they know they will have to face sooner or later, says Ward. They may be just leaving well enough alone until Justice Stevens leaves. Then the question will be whether his successor joins the pool. (source: Legal Times) NEW YORK: Brothers in armsBill Babbitt, David Kaczynski to speak out about capital punishment There are many parallels between the lives of Bill Babbitt and David Kaczynski, some mundane, some extraordinary. For example, both have wives named Linda. Both are committed activists who are opposed to the death penalty. Both had brothers who stood trial for murder. But the penalty meted out by the state for their brothers differed greatly. May 4, 1999, the State of California executed Bill Babbitt's brother, Manny, an African-American Vietnam war veteran who was mentally handicapped, as a punishment for the murder of Leah Schendel, who died of a heart attack when Manny Babbitt assaulted her. By contrast, David Kaczynski's brother, Ted, was among the most infamous criminals in recent memory. The so-called Unabomber was never executed, but was instead sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Kaczynski and Babbitt will appear together Monday, Oct. 2, at Hopps Memorial CME Church, 1110 S. State St., Syracuse for a program entitled The Death Penalty: Up Close and Personal. The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. Les Ulm of the Syracuse Chapter of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty helped organize the event. He hopes that seeing Babbitt and Kaczynski together on stage will help emphasize the racial and class dimensions many activists see in the application of the death penalty. The point we want to make is that the death penalty is fatally flawed, Ulm said. No amount of fine tuning will eliminate the discrimination aspect of the law. Prejudice and poverty always play a role. 42 % of the 3,500 people on death row in the U.S. are black and roughly 34 percent of all those executed since 1977 were black. The friendship between Babbitt and Kaczynski emerged from the clemency campaign for Manny Babbitt. Bill called me and said that he thought I might be
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, PENN., TENN.
Sept. 24 USA: States have executed 11 women since '84 38 states and the U.S. government have the death penalty. No woman has been executed by th federal government in almost 53 years, but state executions have become more common, especially in the South. 11 women have been put to death by six states since 1984. The most recent was Frances E. Newton, 40, in Texas. She was convicted of shooting her husband and two children, a 7-year-old son and 21-month-old daughter, to collect life insurance policies. The state executed her Sept. 14, 2005, more than 18 years after the killings. The other women put to death in recent times: - Aileen Wuornos, 46, by Florida on Oct. 9, 2002. Believed to be one of the country's few female serial killers, she murdered six men. - Lynda Lyon Block, 54, by Alabama on May 10, 2002. Convicted in the 1994 murder of a police sergeant. Her common-law husband also was executed for the killing. - Lois N. Smith, 61, by Oklahoma on Dec. 4, 2001. Convicted in the stabbing death of her son's former girlfriend. - Marilyn Plantz, 40, by Oklahoma on May 1, 2001. Convicted of hiring 2 18-year-olds to murder her husband with baseball bats. One of the men also was executed. The other received a life sentence. - Wanda J. Allen, 41, by Oklahoma on Jan. 11, 2001. She was executed for the shooting death of her female lover. Ms. Allen previously had served 4 years in prison for manslaughter in the shooting death of another woman. - Christina Riggs, 28, by Arkansas on May 2, 2000. Convicted of smothering her 2 children, ages 2 and 5. - Betty L. Beets, 62, by Texas on Feb. 24, 2000. Convicted of shooting and killing her fifth husband to collect insurance and pension benefits. - Judy Buenoano, 54, by Florida on March 30, 1998. She received the death sentence for murdering her husband. She also had convictions for drowning her paraplegic son and blowing up her fiance's car. - Karla F. Tucker, 38, by Texas on Feb. 3, 1998. Convicted of murdering 2 people with a pickax. - Velma Barfield, 52, by North Carolina on Nov. 2, 1984. Convicted of poisoning her fiance. Pennsylvania last executed a woman in 1946. She was Corrine Sykes, 22, a Philadelphia maid convicted in the stabbing death of the wealthy woman who employed her. In Ohio, the state where Donna Moonda faces federal charges, a woman was last put to death in 1954. She was Betty Butler, convicted on a state charge of murdering her female lover. (source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) THE NEW TERMA Quiet Bombshell in the Legal World; A single high court decision puts mandatory sentencing laws in limbo. VIRTUALLY every American knows about Miranda, the famous U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring police officers to inform suspects of their rights. But not even many lawyers know about Blakely vs. Washington. Yet this Supreme Court ruling in 2004 took its place alongside Miranda and others - including Gideon vs. Wainwright (which required states to provide a lawyer to indigent felony defendants) and Terry vs. Ohio (which allowed police to stop and frisk subjects without probable cause) - as a precedent that would change the course of American criminal justice. Although the decision had its roots in a dry and abstract legal question, the case itself centered on a horrific crime. Ralph Blakely Jr., a rancher from the state of Washington, had kidnapped his estranged wife at knifepoint, bound her with duct tape and stuffed her into a box in his pickup truck. At sentencing, the trial judge concluded that Blakely had acted with deliberate cruelty - an aggravating factor expressly legislated under Washington's sentencing statute - and, as a result, sentenced Blakely to 90 months in prison instead of the standard 53 months. But the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the sentence, saying that the 6th Amendment right to a jury trial prohibited judges from increasing criminal sentences on the basis of facts that had not been decided by a jury or confessed to by the defendant. Because a jury had not determined beyond a reasonable doubt that Blakely acted with deliberate cruelty, the judge could not rely on that fact to increase the sentence. That may not sound like an enormous decision, but it proved revolutionary. Overnight, sentencing rules across the country were thrown into turmoil. Dozens of sentences - maybe hundreds - were called into question. If the decision were applied retroactively, how many felons might challenge their sentences? As many predicted when the Blakely ruling was handed down, the next shoe to drop involved the federal sentencing guidelines for criminal trials - a massively complex and controversial structure created in the 1980s. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that this vast system of rules also violated the decision in Blakely. The result, for the last two years, has been a state of suspended animation for federal sentencing. Although the justices didn't wipe the federal sentencing guidelines off
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, WASH.
Sept. 8 USA: 'Proofs': In Death, Bodies Speak Volumes A body of evidence is not always a metaphor. Sometimes a body is the evidence. Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body is a small, quirky exhibit mounted by the National Library of Medicine (on the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health) for the delectation of fans of TV's CSI and Bones (and those longer-standing admirers of Sherlock Holmes, P.D. James, etc.) who have heard the siren call of secrets untimely interred. In a honeycomb of photo blowups, film clips and corporeal fragments, along with a leavening dose of kitsch, the exhibit shows how the evolution of various medical specialties aids in the pursuit of justice as well as knowledge. It is, one might say, a true meeting of hearts -- in formaldehyde -- and minds. The displays range from the affectionate (a counter of Holmesiana, true-crime comics and kids' fingerprint kits) to the grotesque (coffin- and skull-shaped poison bottles), from the meticulous (three shoe-box-size scale re-creations of crime scenes) to the macabre (the life cycle of the fly as indicator of time of death). The implements used in Abraham Lincoln's autopsy are here, along with a lineup of skulls exposing fatal injuries that looks goofily like a Halloween novelty. A dead body tells no tales, goes the old saw, except, as a late-19th-century professor of medical jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh put it, those it whispers to the quick ear of the scientific expert. Authoritative forensic texts appeared in France as early as 1621 (the example here is a 1657 edition with woodcut illustrations) and in Germany a century later. The exhibit title comes from the charge made by the judges to an English jury in 1781: You are not to expect visible proofs in a work of darkness. You are to collect the truth from circumstances, and little collateral facts, which taken singly afford no proof, yet put together, so tally with, and confirm each other, that they are as strong and convincing evidence, as facts that appear in the broad face of the day. By the end of the 17th century, reports of notorious murder cases in England were being printed as popular pamphlets complete with the testimony of medical examiners and consultants. (The need for accurate anatomical data also created a new and gruesome character, the body snatcher, who haunted burial grounds for fresh corpses that then could be sold to doctors and teaching hospitals -- and who became a fixture in 19th-century literature.) And with the desire to improve the judicial system, newly emerging scientific and medical procedures were increasingly exploited to legal ends. Entomology, spectrometry, chemistry, pathology, ballistics, dentistry, photography, radiology, computer modeling and digital imaging are among disciplines that take their bows here. But it was not quick with the dead. The recognition of fingerprints, traces of toxins in hair and digestive organs, records of the damage inflicted on bone by gunshots near or far, all had to battle their way from the laboratory to the courtroom. And even now, computer simulations have not made corpses unnecessary: At the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center, made famous in Mary Roach's book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers as the body farm, donated bodies are exposed to extraordinary stresses in the name of science. (They are also treated with the greatest respect and gratitude.) Their importance, however, is unquestioned. The discussion of DNA testing pays tribute to the case of ex-Marine Kirk Bloodsworth, whose death-row conviction was overturned in 1993 through the efforts of former Montgomery County public defender Robert Morin and the Innocence Project. Films of mass-grave exhumations point out that the work of anthropologist Clyde Snow and his army of Argentine students in the 1980s led to the murder convictions of 6 of the 9 former junta members who disappeared an estimated 20,000 citizens. There are only a few specimens that might shiver the squeamish, including the fly maggots (and the description of their work) and a trio of suspended hearts. The stiffest moments, so to speak, are the clips from how-to autopsy films, but these are discreetly recessed into the projector and equipped with a quick stop button so those with weaker stomachs need not see similar organs excised. (Although there are odd and intriguing bits of information that emerge; for instance, it's easier to cut through the ribs of young people than older ones because of the greater calcification.) Among the lighter-hearted exhibits are a fingerprint recorder that you can use on yourself (a much more modern version than the box set) and the 3 nutshell studies, as the miniature crime scenes came to be called, part of a group of 19 assembled by the heiress to the International Harvester fortune and still in the possession of the Baltimore medical examiner's office. A cautionary note: Since the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, OHIO
Sept. 2 USA: A Millionaire Club of High Court Justices On a Supreme Court dominated by seeming millionaires, the only woman justice and the only bachelor appear to be the wealthiest of its 9 members. In the justices' financial disclosure forms for 2005, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reported assets valued at between $6.4 million and $28 million, while Justice David Souter listed assets worth between $5.6 million and $26.3 million. But they are not alone in the Court's millionaire club. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy reported assets with a maximum possible value of less than $1 million. The 2005 forms of 8 of the justices were made public in June, but Justice Antonin Scalia received an extension on the filing deadline for undisclosed reasons. With the recent release of Scalia's form, it is now possible to rank the justices in order of assets reported, not including homes. The justices' holdings are reported in ranges of value, making precise totals impossible to calculate. For example, the estimate of Souter's wealth could be inflated by the fact that his investment in the Chittenden Corp., a Vermont bank holding company, is listed in a category that ranges from $5,000,001 to $25 million. Several of Ginsburg's assets are in the $1,000,001 to $5 million range, including her husband's salary as counsel to Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver Jacobson. Martin Ginsburg, a tax expert, is also a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. In descending order, here are the ranges for the other justices' asset totals, calculated by adding the lowest possible amounts and then the highest: Stephen Breyer: $4,125,080-$15,440,000 John Roberts Jr.: $2,235,063-$5,860,000 John Paul Stevens: $1,590,018-$3,480,000 Antonin Scalia: $700,019-$1,595,000 Samuel Alito Jr.: $665,025-$1,740,000 Clarence Thomas: $150,006-$410,000 Anthony Kennedy: $65,005-$195,000 As they often do, the financial disclosure forms also bear statistical witness to some of the controversies, life changes, and oddities justices faced in the past year. Scalia reported reimbursements for several trips to New York City, including one to serve as grand marshal for the Columbus Day parade and another to address journalists and others at the invitation of media giant Time Warner. When Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons, at the last minute, declared the talk off the record, sharp-elbowed New York journalists revolted and found creative ways to report what Scalia said, anyway. Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove wrote about what Scalia might have said, including a pronouncement that he was trying to get out and about more. My kids have been working on me to get out and do more public appearances, Grove quoted Scalia as saying. They think it makes it harder to demonize you -- and I agree. That campaign, still in progress, produced 24 reimbursed trips in 2005. Another of Scalia's trips, reimbursed by the Federalist Society, is described blandly as: Sept. 28-Oct. 1 - Denver, CO, Lectures/Transportation, Food, and Lodging. It was the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Bachelor Gulch, to be precise, and the trip coincided with the swearing-in of Roberts as chief justice back in Washington. That coincidence gave ABC News the fodder to report, with video, that Scalia was playing tennis when Roberts was being sworn in. Speaking of Roberts, his form indicates that one of the chores he attended to before he was sworn in as chief justice was selling some of his stock holdings. In the week before he joined the Supreme Court, he shed relatively small amounts of stock in Agilent, AstraZeneca, and Coca-Cola, among others. But he retained larger holdings in Time Warner, Dell, and Microsoft. Roberts' decisions may reflect a problem that judges face when they sell securities to avoid conflicts of interest: They have to pay capital-gains taxes on the sale. High-level executive branch employees who sell stocks for that reason are allowed to defer their gains by investing in replacement property within 60 days. A bill that would grant the same deferral to judges has passed the House of Representatives and is pending before the Senate. Stevens' form evokes the memory of a happier day, Sept. 14, when he threw out the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game, wearing a Cubs jersey bearing his name. His form notes that he was provided a box suite seating 12 [and] food. (source: Legal Times) OHIO: No evidence was hidden in Noling case, state says The Ohio attorney general's office has asked a federal judge to deny a death-row convict's plea to move his appeal to state court based on claims that prosecutors withheld evidence. State lawyers contend, in a motion filed this week in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, that evidence wasn't concealed in the death penalty case of Tyrone Noling, and that recent news reports raising questions about his guilt were a rehash of decade-old issues and facts already tried. Noling was convicted and sentenced to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, ALA., VA., OKLA., CALIF., S. DAK.
August 30 USA: 4 scheduled to be executed in September 4 death row inmates are scheduled to be executed in September. The 1st execution is scheduled for September 12th, with 2 the following week and 1 in the final week of the month. Those scheduled for execution include 1 man who suffers from severe depression among other mental illnesses and another who faced police beatings until he signed a confession. Daryl Holton, who is scheduled to be executed by the state of Tennessee, suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and severe depression. Farley Matchett claims he killed in self-defense but was beaten by police until he confessed to the crime, is scheduled to be executed by Texas on September 12th. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! Do Not Execute Daryl Holton! Daryl Holton suffers from several mental illnesses, including severe depression. Several mental health experts testified at his trial that he has symptoms for other illnesses, such as schizoid personality disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his service in the military during the First Gulf War. One psychologist even stated that the act of murdering his children may have been directly related to his depression. Holton has stopped the appeals process, which is consistent with the actions of a person who suffers from severe depression and other mental illnesses. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Phil Bredesen requesting that he stop the execution of Daryl Holton! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5107t= Do Not Execute Farley Matchett! Convicted for killing a man during a dispute about money, Matchett maintains he was defending himself, and he confessed to the crime only because of police brutality he endured while in custody. Furthermore, his counsel may few objections during the trial, and allowed him to be incarcerated for 19 months prior to any trial ever beginning. His counsel also only called two witnesses during the punishment part of the trial and did not follow proper mitigation steps in order to defend his client properly. The case of Farley Matchett demonstrates the use of the death penalty against the poor who cannot afford proper counsel. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that Farley Matchett's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5105 See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html September 12: Farley Matchett, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5105 September 19: Daryl Holton, TN http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5107 September 20: Clarence Hill, FL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5111 September 25: Pedro Sosa, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5109 (source: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty) *** The Death Penalty In high school, we had to participate in a debate about the death penalty. I was assigned to argue against the death penalty. Some of the things I came across were astonishing and combined with my own personal beliefs, I see no reason for it in any case, anywhere. Here's why: It costs more to execute someone than it does to keep them incarcerated for life. So, by executing criminals we are hurting the economy. Each year, a number of innocent people are put to death. Criminal cases require juries to find people guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for this reason. But our system is not foolproof and innocent people get killed. As has been said, It's better to let 1,000 guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished Since there is no guarantee, we should not be willing to take the risk. Murder is a crime. So, to execute a murderer is to commit murder. It's that simple. If we are going to allow certain people to commit murder, then why not allow vigilantes to roam wild? There's no justification for it. If you want to go the religious/moral angle, to murder is a sin and a moral wrong. Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. This is from the famous biblical story of an adultress who was about to be stoned to death by a group of men because her crime back then was punishable in this fashion. Jesus said these words to the group of men and no one threw a stone. If Jesus, the supposed son of God would not allow this, I doubt he'd be in favor of the death penalty. Continuing on in this vein, one of the Ten Commandments reads, Thou shalt not kill. There is no
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA----New scholarship on the conditions that lead to abolition in 1972
Re: a new law review article on the conditions that preceded Furman in 1972. The article is by Corinna Lain (Univesity of Richmond Law) was published to SSRN Furman Fundamentals and is scheduled to be published in the Washington Law Review, _http://ssrn.com/abstract=926401_ (http://ssrn.com/abstract=926401) For the first time in a long time, the Supreme Court's most important death penalty decisions all have gone the defendant's way. Is the Court's newfound willingness to protect capital defendants here to stay? Or is it a passing fancy that will dissipate in less hospitable times? At first glance, history allows for optimism. Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 landmark that invalidated the death penalty, provides a seemingly perfect example of the Court's ability and inclination to protect capital defendants when no one else will. Furman looks countermajoritarian, scholars have claimed it was countermajoritarian, and even the Justices saw themselves as playing a heroic, countermajoritarian role in the case. But the lessons of Furman are not what they seem. Rather than proving the Supreme Court's ability to withstand majoritarian influences, Furman teaches the opposite - that even in its more countermajoritarian moments, the Court never strays far from dominant public opinion, tending instead to reflect the social and political movements of its time. This Article examines the historical context of Furman v. Georgia and its 1976 counterpart, Gregg v. Georgia, to highlight a fundamental flaw in the Supreme Court's role as protector of minority rights: its inherently limited inclination and ability to render countermajoritarian change. In theory, the Court might protect unpopular minorities, but in practice it is unlikely to do so unless a substantial (and growing) segment of society supports that protection. Even then, Furman reminds us that the Court's help may do more harm than good. If the past truly is a prologue, Furman portends that the Court's current interest in restricting the death penalty will not last forever. Like the fair-weather friend, the Court's protection will likely be there in good times but gone when needed the most. (see: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926401)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
August 18 USA: On the Trail of Former Death Row Inmates Joan Cheever, author of Back from the Dead, followed former death row inmates who were released when the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972. see: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5662491 see:_http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5662491 NPR: Tales from the Underworld: _On the Trail of Former Death Row Inmates Related NPR Stories June 13, 2006Justices Open Door for Death Row Challenges June 12, 2006High Court Allows Lethal-Injection Challenges Jan. 17, 2006California Executes Oldest Death Row Inmate Jan. 11, 2006High Court Hears DNA Appeal from Death Row Dec. 12, 2005Road to Redemption Difficult on Death Row (source: NPR) *** Back From The Dead What would happen if the United States abolished the death penalty and emptied its Death Rows? If the killers were released from prison? What would they do with their 2nd chance to live? Would they kill again? Back From The Dead is the story of 589 former death row inmates who, through a lottery of fate, were given a 2nd chance at life in 1972 when the death penalty was abolished; it returned to the United States 4 years later. During the years she represented Walter Williams on Texas Death Row, Cheever always wondered what would happen if his death sentence was reversed and he was eventually released from prison. Would he have killed again? 2 years after Williams' execution, Cheever was determined to find the answer. Leaving her young family and comfortable life in suburbia, she traveled across the U.S. and into the lives and homes of former death row inmates, armed only with a tape recorder, notepad, a cell phone that didnt always work, and a lot of faith. In Back from the Dead, Cheever describes her own journey and reveals these tales of 2nd chances: of tragedy and failure, racism and injustice, and redemption and rehabilitation. see: http://www.backfromthedeadusa.com/ (source: Joan Cheever)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA----NCADP August Execution Alert
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty August 2006 As Many As 11 Executions Scheduled this month 11 people are scheduled to be executed in the month of August. There will be at least 1 execution per week, and 3 on the 3rd and 5th weeks. Among those scheduled for execution are a South Dakota person who would be the first person put to death in that state since 1947 and an Ohio man who is arguably severely mentally ill and possibly suffers from mental retardation. Elijah Page, who has dropped his appeals, is set to be executed in South Dakota on Aug. 28. Darrell Ferguson, who is mentally ill and borderline mentally retarded, is set to be executed by the state of Ohio on August 8th. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! - Do Not Execute Elijah Page! Page was a product of a drug ridden and disturbed household. Page was repeatedly beaten and sexually abused; his mother often would allow drug dealers to molest Page in exchange for drugs and his step-father once used him as a human shield in a drug-related shoot out. Warren Johnson, the judge who presided over Page's punishment trial, stated, Most parents treated their pets better than your parents treated you. This will be South Dakota's first execution since 1947 and its first execution since the re-instatement of the death penalty in the state in 1979. Page has become a volunteer on death row by refusing to submit further appeals. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Mike Rounds requesting that he stop the execution of Elijah Page! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4745 - Do Not Execute Darrell Ferguson! Prior to his trial, Ferguson waived his right to a jury, pled guilty to all charges, and waived his right to presentation of any mitigating evidence. This alone is indicative of someone with poor mental health. Aditionally, medical records show that he had been receiving treatment over several years for ADHD and other psychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder. Ferguson engaged in activities frequently associated with brain damage, including a long history of substance abuse. His medical records provide reasons to believe that he may have brain dysfunction, but results of any neuropsychological testing were never presented to a jury. Ferguson has an IQ of 77, was enrolled in special education, and demonstrated significant elevations on the Mania, Antisocial Features, and Aggression scales through personality testing. He has also been hospitalized due to suicide attempts. Ferguson had been prescribed a mood stabilizing drug, an antidepressant drug, a drug used to decrease agitation, and a drug used to control aggressive behavior. However, he had refused to take them for the two and a half months leading up to the time of the murders. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Bob Taft requesting that Darrell Ferguson's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4739 -- See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html August 3: William Wyatt Jr., TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4738 August 8: Darrell Ferguson, OH http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4739 August 11: David Dawson, MT http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4740 August 15: Stephen Hugueley, TN no alert available. August 17: Richard Hinojosa, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4741 August 18: Samuel Flippen, NC http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4742 August 22: James Malicoat, OK http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4743 August 24: Justin Chaz Fuller, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4744 August 28: Elijah Page, SD http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4745 August 29: Eric Patton, OK http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4746 August 31: Derrick Frazier, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4779
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, TENN., OHIO, N.C., UTAH
July 4 USA: Why Europe Doesn't 'Get' America In December 2005 the 1,000th prisoner was executed in the USA since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Of the 6 men currently on military death row in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the leading candidate for execution is Dwight Loving. Having been convicted of killing 2 taxi-drivers and with all appeals failing, Loving's only hope of clemency appears to be the president's office. But President George W Bush is the former governor of Texas - a state that has executed more than 3 times as many prisoners on Death Row as its nearest 'rival.' The portents do not look good for Dwight Loving. But why, at the very time that almost all other Western nations have abolished capital punishment - indeed, it is a pre-condition of EU membership - is America actively bucking the prevailing Western trend? The chief reason is without doubt that America is simply more democratic than its European neighbours. Unlike much of Europe, American governance still ensures that the 'representation of the will of its people' still counts for something. Polls in the US reveal that national support for the death penalty remains consistently high at around 70%, a view confirmed by a May Gallup Poll. The poll highlighted cross-party priorities on a number of key moral policy issues with the strongest agreement between the parties coming on the use of the death penalty. Republicans (82%) and Democrats (63%) concur on the 'moral acceptability' of its use. Not a finding that Europeans might expect from a nation it often sees as the '50-50 (Left v Right) nation.' But this goes to the heart of its misunderstanding. As John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge's definitive assessment of the American 'soul' in makes clear, America has always been an inherently 'conservative' nation. Thus the difference between the two representative US political parties is more a reflection of a difference in the degree of 'conservatism' than the classic Left v Right European model. Whatever view one may take about the use of capital punishment and its widespread adoption in the 38 US states which have reinstated it since 1976, there can be no doubt that it has broad public mandate. In stark contrast, as Joshua Marshall observed (30 June 2000) in The New Republic, There is barely a country in Europe where the death penalty was abolished in response to public opinion rather than in spite of it. In other words, if these countries' political cultures are morally superior to America's, it's because they're less democratic. The UK is a prime example of what Marshall is talking about. Even though we Brits, as a nation, have never been quite as pro-death penalty as our American cousins, polls here too consistently reveal 50-55% support. Thus, in the UK at least, even though the people 'have spoken' consistently on the issue not one of the 3 major parties represents the will of the people. But representative democracy is only one key aspect of the American story. Up to half of the US population claim to attend church regularly on Sunday. It is fair to say that America is truly the last bastion of what used to be called Christendom. Now the liberal mind may baulk at the assertion that the death penalty is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. But when the Roman governor enquired of Jesus whether he realized that he, Pilate, had the authority to crucify him he offered Jesus a golden opportunity to pronounce on the morality of the subject once and for all. But Jesus chose merely to confirm that authority, being concerned only to remind Pilate from whom (God the Father) that authority derived. The EU technocrats responsible for drafting the EU Constitution specifically have made a point of obfuscating the formative role of its Judeo-Christian worldview in the development of Western civilisation and values. But where the EU has chosen the path of historic amnesia and writing off remembrance of its formative Judeo-Christian heritage in its (thus far discredited) constitution, the American founding fathers chose to write the 'remembrance' into theirs. So if America chooses to lethally inject Dwight Loving, or any of its convicted murderers, then the moral reassurance that it is doing the right thing remains rooted in the belief that it is authorised to do so by the will of the people and 'under God.' GK Chesterton once wrote that America is a nation with the soul of a church. Whatever our personal therein lies the secret to understanding the psyche of the American people - Republican and Democrat. (source: American Thinker -- Peter C Glover is the British author of The Politics of Faith; Essays on the morality of key current affairs and writer on the moral dimension of news, politics and culture) * No Bad Executions?Justice Scalia should study these death penalty cases. IN HIS INTEMPERATE concurrence to a decision on capital punishment last week, Justice Antonin
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, OHIO, US MIL.
June 22 USA: Executing the Mentally Ill and the Mentally Retarded: 3 Key Recent Cases from Texas and Virginia Show How States Can Evade the Supreme Court's Death Penalty Rulings Since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on the death penalty in 1976, Texas and Virginia have led the country in executions; Texas has executed 366 defendants; Virginia, 95. Both states' death penalty verdicts have been subject to a high level of scrutiny in the past few years, by both state and federal courts. Over the past 2 months, three especially troubling cases played out in these 2 states; 2 are from Virginia, and one from Texas. The defendants whose lives hung in the balance were mentally ill or retarded and, in 1 case, both. In spite of Supreme Court decisions that should have limited the men's punishment to life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors in both states were dead-set on seeing the men die. In this article, I will explain the current status of the law on executing mentally ill and retarded persons, and argue that in states like Texas and Virginia, the Supreme Court's mandate that these classes of persons be spared the ultimate penalty has been reduced to mere wishful thinking. The only good news here, as I will explain, is a conscientious decision by Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine to reexamine one of these cases. The Legal Standard for Not-Guilty-By-Reason-of-Insanity The 1968 Supreme Court decision of Ford v. Wainwright was unequivocal: The Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of a prisoner who is, by the applicable legal standard, insane. Before considering the standard when execution is at issue, it's useful first to consider the related, but distinct, standard to find a criminal defendant not guilty by reason of insanity - of which readers may be more likely to be aware. For a jury to find a defendant not guilty by reason of insanity, it generally must find that, by reason of mental defect or illness, the defendant did not appreciate the wrongfulness of the criminal conduct, and thus should not be held culpable under the law. At the minimum, to meet this standard, a person must be diagnosed or diagnosable with a mental disorder, personality disorder, or mental retardation, pursuant to the criteria set out in the current edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the standard psychiatric diagnostic handbook in the United States. Typically, at trial, a battle of experts is waged -- as prosecutor and defense psychologists give their varying opinions of the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime. Then jurors must decide who and what to believe - and apply the legal standard. As I wrote in a column explaining the 2002 verdict in the case of child killer Andrea Yates, the legal standard, especially in states like Texas, where Yates was prosecuted, and Virginia, often does not protect even very sick people from being found culpable. That's often because the law does not recognize that people suffering from delusions or psychosis can know what they are doing, but not know that it is wrong. Yates, for instance knew she was killing her children, but thought she was saving them by doing so. She was suffering from depression with delusional episodes. The Legal Standard for Not-Constitutional-to-Execute-Due-to-Insanity As I mentioned above, the standard in the execution context - though related - is different. As Justice Powell explained in his concurring opinion in Ford, to be spared execution on grounds of insanity, defendants must be unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it. (Emphasis added.) On this issue, too, a battle of experts is waged -- and the bottom line remains that even a diagnosis of severe mental illness does not, by law, render one incompetent to be executed. If a jury finds that a defendant's single point of clarity in an otherwise hopelessly deranged mind is that he knows the state wants to kill him to punish him for his crime, then that is enough to send him to his death. That brings us to the three recent Texas and Virginia cases. The Case of Virginia's Daryl Atkins The case of Daryl Atkins made it all the way to the Supreme Court - to little effect. In 2002, the Court held, in Atkins's case, that it was a violation of the Eighth Amendment to execute persons suffering from mental retardation - as defined by each state's law. Most states have adopted laws that mirror the DSM criteria: To suffer from mental retardation, a person must have an IQ below 70 and evidence of maladaptive functioning in everyday life. In addition, because the DSM defines mental retardation as a developmental disorder, it must have arisen during childhood --either as a congenital defect or as the result of trauma. Though the Court accepted Atkins's Eighth Amendment argument, it did not spare his life. Instead, it
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
June 22 USA: see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/AMR510942006ENGLISH/$File/AMR5109406.pdf
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, TENN.
June 18 USA: No death penalty for sex offenders A Oklahoma's governor, Brad Henry, a Democrat, signed a bill this month that would allow jurors to sentence to death repeat sex offenders for crimes against children younger than 14. The day before, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, signed a bill that would allow capital punishment for repeat offenders guilty of sex crimes against children younger than 11. Sanford announced that the bill would be an incredibly powerful deterrent to offenders that have been released. I could not disagree more -- and I support the death penalty, and believe that men (and women) who repeatedly rape or molest children deserve harsh punishment and long, hard time in the big house. Michael Rushford of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., captured my thoughts exactly when he said: It's like this. If you get a death sentence for raping a little girl, and you get a death sentence for a raping a little girl and killing a little girl, and the only witness to the crime is the little girl, why not kill them all? These bills are likely to eat up a lot of tax dollars on appeals -- then lose, as the U.S. Supreme Court seems predisposed to overturn the new legislation. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, no one has been executed in America for a crime that did not involve murder. In 1977, the court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute a man for the crime of raping an adult woman -- and this rape occurred as the rapist escaped from a Georgia prison, where he was serving time for murder, rape, kidnapping and aggravated assault. The Big Bench ruled that a sentence of death is grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment for the crime of rape and is therefore forbidden by the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment. It is a fine principle of American jurisprudence that the state does not mete out a punishment greater than the crime. Since 1976, 5 states have passed laws to allow execution for sex crimes against children, but according to The Associated Press, only one inmate has been sentenced to death -- he raped an 8-year-old girl in Louisiana -- and his case is pending on appeal. Rushford noted the many judges who would oppose the death penalty, even for an unrepentant multiple murderer like Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed in December. Ergo, even more judges will look at the death penalty for sex offenders and are going to step up to say, 'This is over the line.' And: If I were an opponent of the death penalty, I would probably support the Oklahoma law. I called Lance Lindsey of Death Penalty Focus, which opposes capital punishment. Lindsey told me he opposes the law, too: Essentially, I'm against the government killing prisoners. Here are two additional reasons other states should not follow Oklahoma. First, the hint of child abuse can spawn a witch-hunt atmosphere in the courts. Authorities have been known to coax young children to accuse innocent adults, and prosecutors have charged child-care providers based on testimony that was hard to believe when cooler heads prevailed. Witness the infamous McMartin preschool case in 1983. Second, America's laws should not send a message that the victims of sexual assaults have been harmed irrevocably, as murder victims are. No victim survives murder. Rape presents horrific trauma -- however, over time, most victims, even child victims, can overcome the pain and sense of violation. I don't want laws that tell child victims they have experienced something as damaging as murder. They've been hurt enough. (source: Opinion, Debra Saunders, Townhall.com) TENNESSEEre: impending execution Motions filed to stay Reid execution 2 motions to stay convicted killer Paul Reid's June 28 execution were filed Friday by Reid's attorneys, at the request of his sister Linda Martiniano. In one motion, Reid's defenders contend he suffers a neurological disorder that has left Reid with a chronic, schizophrenia-like psychosis. The 2nd motion claims Reid has persistent delusions about government controlling his life and the legal process. Reid received death sentences for murder convictions in the 1997 slayings of 2 Clarksville Baskin-Robbins employees, and also for the killings of 5 Nashville fast food workers. The execution is set for the Clarksville slayings. Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge John Gasaway ruled Tuesday that Reid is not eligible for a mental competency hearing, which means the June 28 execution date will stand. Friday's motions to put off the execution were also filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court. (source: The Leaf-Chronicle)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, TENN., CALIF., VA., ARK.
June 13 USA: Prisoners Gain in Suit Attacking Lethal Injection The Supreme Court opened the door Monday for death-row inmates to challenge the way most states carry out executions by lethal injection. In its unanimous opinion, the court expressed no view on the constitutionality either of lethal injection in general or of the specific procedures and combination of chemicals that a Florida inmate, Clarence E. Hill, and numerous others around the country have recently challenged in federal court. The justices addressed themselves solely to the procedural route that such lawsuits must take, and chose the route that is by far the more inmate-friendly from the two options that the case presented. Nonetheless, it was the tight focus of the case, an appeal by Mr. Hill of a ruling by the federal appeals court in Atlanta, that probably enabled the justices to maintain their unanimity. It remains to be seen how they would rule on the underlying constitutional question of whether the disputed lethal injection method violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Just three weeks ago the court turned down, without comment, a case from Tennessee, Abdur'Rahman v. Bredesen, that presented that issue directly. The justices have also permitted several executions to be carried out by lethal injection, without intervening, while the Florida case was pending. Federal courts around the country have begun wrestling with the issue, which opponents of the death penalty have brought to the fore in recent months on the basis of a report last year in a British medical journal, The Lancet. The focus of concern is 2 of the 3 chemicals that make up the lethal cocktail used by most states. One is sodium pentothal, an anesthetic, which Mr. Hill argues in his lawsuit is insufficient to make the procedure painless. The 2nd is pancuronium bromide, which causes muscle paralysis but does not block pain or interfere with consciousness. Studies indicate that while inmates who receive this drug look calm and peaceful as the third chemical, potassium chloride, is administered to stop the heart, they can actually feel intense pain without being able to express themselves. Mr. Hill's suit maintains that Florida's procedure for administering these 3 drugs presents a foreseeable risk of gratuitous and unnecessary pain. Having been convicted in 1983 of killing a police officer, Mr. Hill had long since run through the ordinary appeals process by the time he filed his suit in state court last December, with his execution set for Jan. 24. After the Florida courts threw the case out, and with the clock running, he turned to federal court with an equally poor result. He was strapped to a gurney, intravenous lines to administer the chemicals already inserted, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy issued a stay nearly 5 months ago. The case was filed under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era law usually referred to as Section 1983, for its placement in the compilation of federal statutes. Section 1983 permits suits against government officials for violation of rights guaranteed by the Constitution or federal laws. The lower federal courts dismissed the suit, however, on the ground that the only way for an inmate to challenge the method by which he is to be executed is through a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. While such a petition, like a Section 1983 case, can raise constitutional issues, there is a major problem: both Congress and the Supreme Court have placed high hurdles in the path of inmates seeking habeas corpus. For example, it is almost impossible for an inmate who has filed an initial habeas corpus petition to receive permission to file another one, and Mr. Hill had filed one years earlier. Declaring that his Section 1983 suit was the equivalent of a new habeas corpus petition, the lower courts declared that it was barred. In his opinion for the Supreme Court on Monday, Justice Kennedy said this analysis was mistaken. He said that while a habeas corpus petition was the only way to challenge the constitutionality of a sentence, Mr. Hill was challenging not his lethal injection sentence as a general matter, but only the way in which the sentence was to be carried out. Justice Kennedy noted that if Mr. Hill eventually won his case, Florida would not be barred from executing him by lethal injection but would simply have to use a different protocol. Mr. Hill is now entitled to pursue his Section 1983 suit in the Federal District Court in Tallahassee, where he filed it in January. When the case, Hill v. McDonough, No. 05-8794, was argued in April, there was considerable debate over whether Mr. Hill should be required to demonstrate his sincerity by specifying a method acceptable to him. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was among the justices who appeared to endorse such a requirement. But the justices evidently decided to set that argument aside for now, for the sake of unanimity.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news------USA, TEXAS, TENN.
June 12 USA: Supreme Court Rules Death Row Inmates Can Challenge Lethal Injection The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that the nation's death row inmates can file last-minute challenges to lethal injection after they've exhausted their regular appeals. The court's ruling leaves unanswered, however, broader questions about the chemicals used in lethal injections around the country and whether they cause excruciating pain. The ruling sets the stage for a nationwide legal battle over that subject, with the country's 3,300 death row inmates armed with a new tool to contest how they are put to death. Justices have never ruled on the constitutionality of a specific type of execution. A constitutional showdown over lethal injection might be the next big death penalty case. The winner in Monday's decision was Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill, who was strapped to a gurney with lines running into his arms to deliver the drugs when the Supreme Court in January intervened and blocked the execution. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court, said that while Hill and other inmates can file special appeals, they will not be always entitled to delays in their executions. Both the state and the victims of crime have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a sentence, he wrote. Hill, convicted of killing a police officer, had run out of regular appeals so he went to court using a civil rights law claiming that his constitutional rights would be violated by Florida's lethal injection drug protocol. The court's decision renews his bid to have Florida change its chemical combination. The decision is setback for Florida and other states that will have to defend more last-minute filings from inmates. More than 2 dozen states had filed arguments at the court seeking the opposite outcome. They said dragged-out appeals jeopardize justice for victims' families. Lethal injection is the main method used by every state that has capital punishment except Nebraska. Nebraska still has the electric chair, although that, too, is being contested. Kennedy said that Hill is not claiming that he cannot be executed, only that he should not be forced into a painful execution. Hill's challenge appears to leave the state free to use an alternative lethal injection procedure, Kennedy wrote. (source: Fox News) Justices Open Door to Lethal Shot Claims The Supreme Court opened the door Monday to constitutional challenges to lethal injection, the method used by most states and the federal government to execute death row inmates. In an unanimous decision, the court allowed those condemned to die to make last-minute claims that the chemicals used are too painful - and therefore amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment. The court's ruling leaves unanswered broader questions about the chemicals used in lethal injections around the country and whether they cause excruciating pain. In a 2nd death penalty case, the court ruled 5-3 that a Tennessee death-row inmate can use DNA evidence to attempt to show his innocence 20 years after he was convicted of murdering a neighbor. The lethal injection ruling sets the stage for a nationwide legal battle over that subject, with the country's 3,300 death row inmates armed with a new tool to contest how they are put to death. Justices have never ruled on the constitutionality of a specific type of execution. A constitutional showdown over lethal injection might be the next big death penalty case. The winner in Monday's decision was Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill, who was strapped to a gurney with lines running into his arms to deliver the drugs when the Supreme Court in January intervened and blocked the execution. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court, said that while Hill and other inmates can file special appeals, they will not be always entitled to delays in their executions. Both the state and the victims of crime have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a sentence, he wrote. Hill, convicted of killing a police officer, had run out of regular appeals so he went to court using a civil rights law claiming that his constitutional rights would be violated by Florida's lethal injection drug protocol. The court's decision renews his bid to have Florida change its chemical combination. The decision is setback for Florida and other states that will have to defend more last-minute filings from inmates. More than two dozen states had filed arguments at the court seeking the opposite outcome. They said dragged-out appeals jeopardize justice for victims' families. Lethal injection is the main method used by every state that has capital punishment except Nebraska. Nebraska still has the electric chair, although that, too, is being contested. Kennedy said that Hill is not claiming that he cannot be executed, only that he should not be forced into a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, VA., TENN., N.C.
June 4 USA: REVIEWDoes legal system fail the nations mentally ill? Crazy by Pete Earley, Putnam, $25.95 Every cry for social change begins with a personal tragedy. Pete Earleys began when his son Mike, a graduate student, became psychotic. In a Virginia emergency room, a doctor explained that while Mike was clearly insane, he was an adult, and not an imminent danger to himself or others. Since he refused to take medication, there was nothing they could do. Two days later, Mike broke into a strangers house, went upstairs and took a bubble bath. It required five police officers and an attack dog to subdue him. But even being charged with two felonies and nearly being shot was not sufficient proof that he was dangerous, or in danger. His father, picking up the broad hints of the police, falsely claimed his son had threatened to kill him. That got Mike in for a two-day observation at the same hospital where he had been refused admittance. Even then, his fathers worries were only beginning. 'How long does it take antipsychotic medicines to work?' Earley asked a nurse. The nurse seemed surprised. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but just because your son is being admitted into the hospital, doesn't mean hes going to be treated there.' Thus begins a nightmare of interlocking Catch-22s, of well-meaning, dedicated people working at cross-purposes, of a legal system that, in short, is more insane than the psychotics it processes. Pete Earley is an investigative journalist, and in Crazy he presents a gripping, disturbing, firsthand account of mentally ill people who have stumbled into our criminal justice system. Earley builds a compelling case that Americas legal system is distorted by its deference to the irrational wishes of people incapable of understanding their own best interests. But it's the individual stories that really bring the sick system to life. Homeless and mentally ill for decades, Alice Ann Collyer of Miami accused an elderly woman of stealing her thoughts and pushed her. The woman was not injured, but assaulting an elderly person in Florida is a felony. The victim signed a complaint only when told Collyer might be hospitalized and helped. But this was Collyers third pushing incident, and under the states 3 strikes law, the minimum penalty was 5 years imprisonment. Before she could be brought to trial, she had to be found mentally competent. Thus began an odyssey that had lasted 1,151 days by the time Earley met her, during which Collyer was shuttled back and forth between the state mental hospital and jail. Because she had not been convicted of a crime, the mental hospital could not treat her. Its job is to hold inmates until they can be judged competent, by training them to answer questions such as: Do you know where you are? Do you know what you are being charged with? After months of this, the hospital sends the inmates back to jail. The job of the jail is to hold the prisoners until they can be seen by a judge. The judge requires exams by three psychiatrists, and that takes three or so months more. Jails are never pleasant, but the psychiatric cell block is a hellhole. The psychotic patients, for their own protection, are held in bare cells and most are kept naked. Many don't even have blankets to cover themselves. Of course, the jail is not allowed to treat them against their will. After all this, many inmates, including Alice Ann Collyer, are incompetent again, and cannot be tried. So back they go to the mental hospital. Everyone involved is frustrated. Everyone wonders why these people are not being helped. And everyone knows that they would be far better off simply being treated, at a fraction of the cost of their incarceration. But the law is the law, and must be obeyed. In Mike's own, far less tragic story, problem follows problem. The only real villains in this book are the couple whose home he broke into. Frightened and vindictive, they insist that Mike be found guilty of at least 1 felony, which would kill his chances of a career and a normal life. This despite pleas from the defense attorney, the prosecutors, and even the investigating police detective that a proposed plea bargain to 2 misdemeanors will actually double Mikes punishment (to 2 years of probation) and be more effective in forcing him into treatment. The true story of how this plays out is tense and dramatic. Pete Earley avoids assigning blame to political ideologies, but there is plenty to go around. Liberals can be faulted for defending the mentally ill persons right to live untreated in squalor, conservatives for a reluctance to spend money on treatment. Mike recovers sufficiently to finish graduate school, but by then his father has seen so many psychotics cycle in and out of sanity, and talked to so many parents of young people shot to death by police during psychotic episodes, that he knows he has a lifetime of profound worry ahead. The best he can do is announce that Florida has finally passed a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA Press Release Regarding AMA Resolution on Lethal Injection
PRESS RELEASE from Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (www.CUADP.org) on behalf of Doctors Freedman, Groner and Halpern For Immediate Release - June 4, 2006 Physician Ethicists Call on the American Medical Association to Launch a National Educational Campaign on the Ethical Guidelines for Physician Involvement in Executions. Contact: Jonathan I. Groner MD, Associate Professor of Surgery, The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health 614-722-3919 office, 614-204-1824 cell, mailto:gronerj at chi.osu.edugronerj at chi.osu.edu (PRODUCERS - Reps Available for Talk Shows) The following statement is attributable to these individuals: * Alfred M. Freedman MD, 212-348-8661, Professor and Chairman Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry, New York Medical College, and past president of the American Psychiatric Association * Jonathan I. Groner MD, 614-204-1824, Associate Professor of Surgery at the Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health * Abraham L. Halpern MD, 914-698-2136, Professor emeritus of psychiatry, New York Medical College. and past president of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law In advance of the upcoming American Medical Association House of Delegates meeting in Chicago, which begins on June 10, Dr.s Freedman, Groner, and Halpern have issued the following statement: A total of six lethal injection executions are scheduled this month in Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia, and a physician will be in the death chamber at each execution. In fact, in the last 3 years, 99% of executions were carried out by lethal injection, and it is likely that a physician was present at most, if not all, of these executions. For over a decade, the AMAs ethics guidelines have forbidden physician participation in lethal injection. However, these guidelines have never been properly publicized, and only a small minority of physicians are even aware of their existence. Therefore, we call on the AMA house of delegates to support a resolution to launch a national educational campaign on the ethical guidelines for physician involvement in executions. The proposed resolution: SUBJECT: Ethics and Physician Participation in Legal Executions Whereas, there is widespread participation by physicians in legally authorized executions, notwithstanding the Code of Medical Ethics, specifically, CEJA Opinion 2.06; and Whereas, there is a lack of knowledge by physicians of the Code of Medical Ethics, in regard to physician participation in executions; and Whereas, in many instances the unethical participation of physicians in executions is the result of lack of knowledge and awareness of ethical standards for physicians taking part in executions; therefore, be it RESOLVED, that our American Medical Association launch a campaign of education, in collaboration with State and County Medical Societies, concerning actions allowed and disallowed by the Code of Medical Ethics in connection with physician involvement in executions. Background information: Like many other execution methods, lethal injection was designed with physician input. However, unlike other methods, lethal injection was intended to mimic a medical procedure: the intravenous induction of general anesthesia. For over a decade, The AMA has published a well-articulated position against physician participation against capital punishment in its Code of Medical Ethics. However, this position has never been publicized. In fact, a 2001 study showed that only 3% of doctors surveyed were even aware of these guidelines. The AMA guidelines forbid physicians from monitoring vital signs, meaning that a physician cannot pronounce death (since pronouncing death involves examining for the presence or absence of vital signs). The guidelines also forbid physicians from making recommendations on how an execution should be performed: Physician participation in an execution includes, but is not limited to, the following actions: prescribing or administering tranquilizers and other psychotropic agents and medications that are part of the execution procedure; monitoring vital signs on site or remotely (including monitoring electrocardiograms); attending or observing an execution as a physician; and rendering of technical advice regarding execution. With regard to lethal injection, the AMA guidelines state: In the case where the method of execution is lethal injection, the following actions by the physician would also constitute physician participation in execution: selecting injection sites; starting intravenous lines as a port for a lethal injection device; prescribing, preparing, administering, or supervising injection drugs or their doses or types; inspecting, testing, or maintaining lethal injection devices; and consulting with or supervising lethal injection personnel. Recently, litigation by death row inmates has sought to establish that lethal injection is cruel and unusual (and therefore
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, OKLA., S.C., PENN., WIS., OHIO
June 1 USA: 2 in 3 Favor Death Penalty for Convicted MurderersPublic divided over death penalty or life imprisonment as better punishment Gallup's latest update on support for the death penalty finds most Americans continue to support the execution of convicted murderers. When given an explicit choice between the death penalty and life imprisonment with no possibility of parole, however, Americans divide evenly as to which is the better penalty for murder. Even though Americans believe innocent people have been executed in the last 5 years and doubt that the death penalty deters people from committing murder, most Americans believe it is applied fairly in this country and say it should be used more often. Basic Support for the Death Penalty 65 % of Americans say they favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, according to a Gallup Poll conducted May 5-7, 2006. This level of support is similar to what Gallup has found over the past 3 years. Since 2000, roughly 2 in 3 Americans have favored the death penalty, with 2 slightly higher 70% readings in May 2003 and October 2002. The current level of support is on par with what Gallup measured in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just after the death penalty was reinstated in this country. Support was higher from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s -- consistently above 70% and reaching a high of 80% in September 1994. More Americans have favored than opposed the death penalty each time this question has been asked since 1936, with just one exception. In a May 1966 Gallup poll, the public opposed the death penalty by a 47% to 42% margin. That reading came as the country was debating the legality of the death penalty. The 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia voided all state death penalty statutes. No executions took place in the United States from 1968 to 1976. In 1976 the Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that newly written state statutes that addressed the Court's early concerns were constitutional. Although in principle roughly 2/3 of Americans are supportive of the death penalty, they divide evenly in their preference of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole versus the death penalty as the better punishment in murder cases. Given these explicit alternatives, 47% prefer the death penalty and 48% life imprisonment. Americans have typically shown a slight preference for the death penalty on this measure -- usually just above 50%. In general, Republicans are more likely to support the death penalty than Democrats, and men are more likely to support it than women. A majority of all these groups say they favor the death penalty for those convicted of murder (84% of Republicans, 63% of independents, and 52% of Democrats; 69% of men and 61% of women). However, when given the choice of the death penalty or life imprisonment, Republicans choose the death penalty by a 64% to 31% margin, while Democrats choose life imprisonment by a 63% to 31% margin. A majority of men believe the death penalty is the better punishment for murder (56% to 39%), while a majority of women disagree and believe life imprisonment is the better option (55% to 39%). The Death Penalty in America In addition to gauging basic public support for the death penalty, Gallup routinely asks questions designed to assess the way Americans feel about some of the specific controversies associated with the death penalty. The public clearly recognizes some of the problems with the use of capital punishment in this country, but on balance still views it positively. For example, a majority of Americans, 63%, agree with critics of the death penalty that innocent people have been executed under the death penalty in recent years. Only 27% believe this has not happened in the past 5 years. In 2 previous measurements, at least 59% of Americans said they think that people have been executed for crimes they did not commit. Additionally, Americans dispute the notion, espoused by some death penalty proponents, that it deters people from committing murder. Just 34% believe it does, while 64% believe it does not. Americans' attitudes on this have changed dramatically over time -- in the 1980s and early 1990s, most Americans believed the death penalty did act as a deterrent to murder. Previous Gallup polls have shown Americans support the death penalty because they believe it provides justice (an eye for an eye) and revenge, not because of its practical effect in deterring future murders. Despite recognizing that innocent people may have been executed, most Americans still say the death penalty is applied fairly in this country. 60 % say so in the most recent poll, conducted May 8-11, and a majority has held this view since Gallup first asked about it in 2000. Only about 1 in 5 Americans believe the death penalty is imposed too often. That sentiment has been consistent over the past 6 years. Americans are much more likely to believe that the death penalty is not imposed often
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news------USA------NCADP June Execution Alert
6 Executions Scheduled in June During the first and final weeks of June, six people are scheduled to be executed, half of whom are in Texas. Two cases this month highlight issues of severe mental illness. The first is Percy Walton, scheduled to be executed by the state of Virginia on June 8th. Walton has been diagnosed with severe chronic schizophrenia and is unable to comprehend his impending execution. The second is Paul Dennis Reid, scheduled to be executed by the state of Tennessee on June 28th. The TN Supreme Court has conceded Reid's mental illness and incompetence, yet the execution is still set to take place. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT! Do Not Execute Percy Walton! Throughout his appeals, Walton's attorneys have argued that he was not competent to plead guilty to the murders, and that his pleas were not knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. While awaiting trial, Walton expressed his belief that he could not be seen if he had his eyes closed. He also told his relatives he was Jesus Christ and that he was a millionaire. He told others he looked forward to his execution because then he would be able to return to life immediately and resurrect his dead family members. In 1999, a psychiatrist, a neuropsychologist and a neurologist assessed Walton's mental health for his appeals and found that he suffers from severe chronic schizophrenia. Today Walton is a shell of a human being, severely mentally ill and cognitively impaired and completely unaware that he faces imminent execution. ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Tim Kaine requesting that he stop the execution of Percey Walton! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3864 - Do Not Execute Paul Reid! Questions regarding Reid's competency to be executed lie at the heart of his case. Reid has a history of mental illness, but no court has found him to be mentally incompetent despite the evidence of such illness staring them in the face. Notably, in a reply to the state's opposition to Reid's motion for a stay of execution in October of 2005 the Tennessee Supreme Court stated: All forensic mental health evaluators who have examined Mr. Reid within the last several years have found him to be severely mentally ill and incompetent with regard to making legal decisions. Moreover, in a footnote to this statement, the Court noted that Reid is operating under a psychotic belief that he is being tortured by scientific technology and that the only way to escape the torture is to succumb to execution. How can a court that recognizes the reality of Reid's mental illness and incompetency allow Reid's execution to move forward? The Tennessee Supreme Court goes on to acknowledge the importance of competency, stating that it is a fundamental right, and that therefore Reid is entitled to the proper protection when the state proposes to take drastic action against him. If this was a worthy reason to grant a stay in October, what has changed since then to allow the execution to proceed? ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Phil Bredesen and asking that Paul Reid's execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3867 See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html June 1: John Boltz, OK http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3862 June 6: Timothy Titsworth, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3863 June 8: Percy Walton, VA http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3864 June 20: Lamont Reese, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3865 June 27: Angel Resendiz, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3866 June 28: Paul Reid, TN http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3867 (source: NCADP)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, MD.
May 30 USA: Challenge to lethal injections could mean delayed executions Capital punishment in the US is facing unprecedented legal challenges after years of revelations about inaccurate convictions and racial and class inequalities in the way the system is administered, legal experts say. Lethal injection, the method used in 38 out of 39 states that have the death penalty, is the latest subject of lawsuits across the country after medical studies showed the drugs used in the procedure might inflict severe and unnecessary pain before death. The Supreme Court is considering a challenge to lethal injections in a Florida case testing whether inmates can try to stop their execution at the last moment. Several justices criticised the method at a hearing in April. Justice Anthony Kennedy said states had at least a minimal obligation to use the most humane method possible, and Justice John Paul Stevens said the cocktail of drugs used by Florida would have been prohibited for putting down cats and dogs. That case will be decided within weeks, and could give inmates a new way to make eve-of-execution challenges that could significantly delay their execution and could force states to adopt more humane procedures. Several justices appeared to have been swayed by a highly critical study published last year in the British medical journal The Lancet. Researchers found that the 3-drug cocktail used for executions could, if given at too low a dose, leave the subject conscious and in pain during the execution, but unable to express their pain due to the paralytic effect of the drugs. Last week, the justices refused to hear a direct challenge to the lethal injection procedure from Tennessee, but that may only act as an invitation to the states to resolve the issue themselves. One federal appeals court judge spoke recently of a dysfunctional patchwork of stays and executions in capital cases, and said the legal limbo was intolerable. In Texas, a state with one of the highest execution rates, there is upheaval in the courts over lethal injection. A Texas appeals court recently lifted the stay of execution it granted days earlier to an inmate challenging the lethal injection procedure, while a North Carolina court allowed such an execution to go forward using a brain wave monitor to see if the inmate was conscious. A California court is also addressing that state's drug protocol. Some see the lethal injection question as only the latest in a system rife with problems. According to Eric Freedman, constitutional law professor at Hofstra University School of Law, competency of counsel is at the heart of the issue. If you have a competent lawyer, you almost never get the death penalty. Prof Freedman represented Earl Washington, a mentally disabled black man charged in 1982 with the rape and murder of a white woman, who came within days of execution in Virginia before DNA evidence proved his innocence. A flurry of US Supreme Court decisions in recent years has already gone some way towards reining in the practical administration of capital punishment. The court has issued rulings involving the competency of counsel, racial bias by juries and post-conviction challenges. Other recent rulings abolished the death penalty for juveniles and the mentally disabled. The type of case the Supreme Court is accepting signals its willingness to police the administration of the death penalty while maintaining the practice, according to attorneys and advocates involved. The courts are not about to abolish the death penalty, but to reform it to try and correct and prevent mistakes that have been made, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. R. Neal Walker, director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans concludes: We are currently witnessing an unprecedented critique of the administration of capital punishment in the United States. Prof Freedman goes even further: My prediction is that the more scrutiny that is given to the actual workings of the death penalty . . . the more its flaws will become visible. Death sentences are at their lowest level since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977. At the same time, however, overall support for the death penalty remains consistent, with 65 % of respondents to a March poll favouring execution for persons convicted of murder, according to the Pew Research Center. (source: Financial Times) Justices' Heaviest Lifting Is AheadAs the Supreme Court term ends, weighty issues will test Roberts' consensus-finding skills. WASHINGTON - As the Supreme Court heads into the final month of its term, the new chief justice has shown a knack for finding ways to decide cases on narrow issues that have led to unanimous rulings. But June is rarely the time for harmony and unanimity at the high court. The justices tend to put off the most difficult cases to the end of the term, and this one is no different.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, ILL.
May 30 USA: Jury finds Muhammad guilty in sniper trial John Allen Muhammad was convicted of 6 of the Washington-area sniper killings Tuesday after the prosecution's star witness, Muhammad's young protege, portrayed him as the mastermind of an audacious terror scheme in which phase 2 would have been bombings against children. Muhammad, 45, is already under a death sentence in Virginia for a killing there. The most he can get for the 6 murders committed in Maryland is life in prison without parole. The jury took slightly more than 4 hours to convict him after a 4-week trial in which he acted as his own attorney. As the verdict was read, Muhammad stood grim-faced, his arms folded across chest. He was led out of the courtroom, pausing to ask the judge, Your honor, may I speak? The judge answered, No, sir, and Muhammad was taken away. 10 people in all were killed and 3 were wounded in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., in the string of shootings that gripped the metropolitan area with fear. The trial marked the 1st time Lee Boyd Malvo testified against the man prosecutors say was his mentor and manipulator. And Muhammad's cross-examination of Malvo marked one of the most dramatic moments. During 2 days of testimony last week, Malvo, 21, gave the 1st inside account of the shootings and described Muhammad's elaborate plans for a reign of terror. According to Malvo, Muhammad had a 2-phase plan - 6 shootings a day for a month, followed by a wave of bombings of schools, school buses and children's hospitals. Malvo said that when he asked Muhammad why, the older man replied: For the sheer terror of it - the worst thing you can do to people is aim at their children. Muhammad hoped to extort $10 million from authorities and use the money to set up a school in Canada to teach homeless children how to use guns and explosives and use violence to shut down other cities, Malvo said. One of the attorneys who helped Muhammad with his defense said he was disappointed but not surprised by the verdict. Muhammad was blocked from presenting evidence he thought proved he was framed. When you give the jury only one side of the story, you can't expect them to do anything other than what they have done, said attorney Jai Bonner. Juror Scott Stearns, the White House correspondent for Voice of America, said Malvo's testimony was particularly compelling. He noted that Muhammad frequently ended his questioning of witnesses by asking if they had eyewitness knowledge of his guilt. That question was glaringly absent from Muhammad's cross-examination of Malvo, he said. Muhammad was occasionally able to point out small inconsistencies in the testimony of prosecution witnesses, but did not successfully discredit the case the government built against him, Stearns said. Maryland prosecutors said they needed to put Muhammad on trial as insurance in case his conviction in Virginia was overturned. Some of the victims' families had also sought a second trial, seeking an explanation for the random attacks on people as they went shopping, gassed up their cars and mowed lawns near the nation's capital. After the verdict, Vijay Walekar, brother of sniper victim Premkumar Walekar, said, I wish they had the death penalty. Walekar said of Muhammad: He stands up and denies everything up there. It was hard for us to take it. Malvo's testimony came after he agreed to plead guilty in the Maryland killings. He gave detailed descriptions of each shooting, even pointing out parking spaces where the sniper team's car was parked. Aside from Malvo's testimony, Muhammad's second trial followed much of the same blueprint as his first, with prosecutors telling jurors that Muhammad and Malvo roamed the area in a beat-up Chevrolet Caprice, firing .223-caliber bullets through a hole bored in its trunk. The jury heard a torrent of evidence that linked Muhammad to the shootings - fingerprints, DNA evidence, and ballistics tests that connected the bullets used in the shootings to the Bushmaster rifle found in the car when Muhammad and Malvo were arrested. Acting as his own lawyer, Muhammad claimed he and Malvo were simply roaming the Washington region looking for his children who had been taken away from him in a custody battle with his ex-wife. He implied that authorities framed him by planting evidence. In an often testy 4-hour cross-examination, Muhammad continued to refer to Malvo as his son even though the younger man tried to show during his testimony that he was no longer under the sway of his 1-time father figure. Malvo, who received no leniency in return for his testimony, told jurors he wanted to face the man who he said trained him to be a killer and coerced him to join his murderous schemes. Malvo called Muhammad a coward and, at one point, glared at Muhammad, saying: You took me into your house and you made me a monster. Malvo told jurors that he shot three of the 13 sniper victims, while Muhammad pulled the trigger on the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
May 22 USA: US top court won't decide lethal injection challenge The Supreme Court on Monday declined to decide if a drug combination used to execute convicted murderers violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The justices refused to hear the appeal by a death row inmate who said one of the drugs may inflict inhumane pain and that 30 states, including his state of Tennessee, have banned that drug's use for the euthanasia of animals. The high court at the end of April heard arguments in a similar case from Florida on whether death row inmates can bring a last-minute challenge to the lethal injection method under a federal civil rights law. A decision is expected by the end of June, but the Florida case does not address the same constitutional issues. (source: Reuters) * Big FishIt's time to put the al-Qaida ringleaders on trial. 4 1/2 years after Sept. 11, we are still struggling to decide whether this War on Terror should be fought in courts, on a battlefield, or in some black hole in between. The government uses courts to prosecute low-level terrorists: the guys who trained at camps in Afghanistan, or played paintball in the Virginia woods. But it uses the rules of war, modified for its own convenience, to indefinitely hold the ringleaders either at Guantanamo or at so-called black sites around the world. Those black sites were appealing precisely because the government intended to hold no trials. There was never a plan for what would happen next. For years now, the government has been holding key plotters and participants in the attacks of 9/11. People from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - considered by the 9/11 Commission to be the principal architect of the attacks - to Ramzi Bin al-Scheib, the alleged paymaster. People like Abu Zubaida, one of Osama Bin Laden's chief recruiters, and Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man alleged to be the real 20th hijacker. These men, and other big fish like them, have been held for interrogation that may have amounted to torture - be it Mohammed's alleged water-boarding, or sexual degradation and sleep deprivation. They long ago exhausted their intelligence value. And now, if the government is finished with them, we the people should get a crack at them. Americans are entitled to their Nuremburg. It's time for these men to be put on trial. It's time for us to see their faces, hear their sick stories, and to expose their twisted logic. Bringing such men to justice may not heal the wounds of 9/11. But knowing that they were tried and held to account may help us move on. There are three main arguments against trying the real ringleaders of the 9/11 attacks. The 1st is something of a truism among legal commentators and scholars: These men cannot be tried because they were tortured, which immunizes any confessions, and evidence stemming from those confessions, from being used in court. The 2nd argument is strategic: We cannot try these criminals in open court because it would mean divulging critical intelligence information that could threaten national security. The 3rd argument is one of optics: We cannot try these men because it would lead to the disclosure of their torture or not-quite-torture. And that would look bad. The problem with the legal argument - and, to be fair, it's a point that I have made myself - is that it's a cop-out. Claiming that torture evidence could taint future prosecutions was, initially, a very good argument against abusing captives. But, years after the torture has happened, it's somehow morphed into an argument against holding open criminal trials. The government still has a legal and constitutional burden to afford its prisoners some due process. That doesn't end because it decided to torture them. The other problem with this legal argument is that it minimizes the glorious reality of federal conspiracy law - a doctrine so flexible as to allow for convictions based on even the flimsiest connection between the defendant and the crime. If criminal conspiracy law allows for a Zacarias Moussaoui to be nearly executed for not disclosing details he did not know about 9/11 (to people who would not have listened anyhow), imagine what prosecutors can achieve with the great heaps of untainted evidence against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Even if we were to exclude any confessions tainted by torture, and whatever secondary evidence that may stem from those confessions, we might still have ample evidence to convict most of these ringleaders under federal conspiracy law. The 9/11 Commission Report is damning in its detail, and prosecutors could certainly start there. Other intelligence information, plus untainted evidence from al-Qaida sources, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew Ramzi Yousef - now serving a life sentence for the 1st WTC bombing - may well offer sufficient connection between these men and the crime. At the very least, it's time we start to figure that out. Which leads to the 2nd
