[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, MD., ARK., WASH.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 30



USA:

Death watch


With its flaws becoming more and more apparent, no wonder the death
penalty is losing favor among many Americans.

It is the one punishment imposed by the legal system that once carried out
cannot be corrected with a turn of the key or an order from the
courthouse. When an execution has been conducted, the condemned person has
no more avenues of appeal.

A penalty like that must be flawless then, right? But consider: The use of
DNA evidence, a fairly recently development, has shown some people in
prison to be innocent. Some death row inmates have been exonerated. Most
such inmates of course are guilty of terrible crimes, but given that
wrongful convictions have occurred, it's not too much of a jump to
speculate that innocent people have been executed in this country.

Cases in North Carolina and other states -- where the constitutionality of
lethal injection as a method of killing someone convicted of a capital
crime has been challenged -- presumably will be settled by a Supreme Court
ruling on lethal injection protocols this summer. But the main focus of a
New York Times report carried in Wednesday's N&O was a shift in public
opinion on the death penalty.

Once it was an issue shamelessly exploited by politicians. A candidate for
statewide or national office who dared to announce firm opposition to the
death penalty could expect to see himself or herself portrayed in
opponents' commercials as someone ready to fling open the jailhouse doors,
a coddler of criminals with no sympathy for victims. There may be some of
that still, but it's clear that full-throated support for the death
penalty also might alienate a goodly number of voters who aren't quite so
sure that it's a really great idea for the state to kill people.

New Jersey, which had not executed anyone in over 40 years, recently
abolished its death penalty after a commission determined that the
punishment was not worth trying to retain. A couple of other states are
pondering similar action. Most of the remaining states with capital
punishment statutes have yet to reach that point, although there is a
reluctance on several counts about the death penalty. There even seems to
be a touch of hesitation now in Texas, where the legal system has been
pushed to accelerate the process from conviction to the death chamber and
where by far the most U.S. executions take place.

The questions and hesitations aren't just based on objections to the death
penalty on moral grounds, or on the premise that mistakes are made every
day in the judicial system but cannot afford to be made with the death
penalty. In addition to those concerns, some in the legal system believe
the long appeals process and the uncertain outcome of that process, often
with retrials and extensive publicity, cause the families of victims too
much pain. And the expense to the public typically is far greater than the
expense of locking someone up for life without parole.

If public support for the death penalty is waning, good. When the penalty
was in full-speed-ahead mode, the courts used to spend weeks, even months,
on the highest profile cases.

Now that life without parole is more often used, it has become acceptable
to some who once might have objected to it. And perhaps some people who
saw themselves as supporters of the death penalty have come around to
believing that it is a little too much like revenge instead of justice.
The latter is part of punishment. The former never should be.

(source:  News & Observer)




MARYLAND:

Social issues due for debate: Legislature not likely to resolve same-sex
marriage, death penalty


High-profile social issues such as overturning the death penalty and
either banning or allowing gay marriage will be back on the General
Assembly agenda in the session that begins Jan. 9, but legislative leaders
are doubtful any side can gain enough momentum to make a difference.

A bill to overturn the death penalty was defeated by 1 vote in the
Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee last year even though Gov. Martin
O'Malley testified on its behalf.

Since then, New Jersey has become the first state in 40 years to strike
capital punishment, and Mr. O'Malley and other opponents in the
legislature are hoping that gives renewed energy to their cause in the
upcoming session. Sen. Lisa Gladden, D-Baltimore, is planning to introduce
a bill that would replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without
the possibility of parole.

Currently, Maryland is under a de facto capital punishment moratorium.
Last December, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled the state's
lethal-injection protocol was improperly adopted because it did not
receive the proper public review.

Mr. O'Malley has been unwilling to submit new rules to reinstate the
practice until the General Assembly has another chance to consider a ban.

The governor's stance has irritated local prosecutors and relatives of
crime victims because it leaves the death penalty - and its availability
as a punishment - in limbo.

"The death penalty is on its way out," Mr. O'Malley said this month. "We
can protect the public effectively if we were to truly have life without
the possibility of parole, and that is the direction in which I would like
to see our state move."

The House generally is considered the more liberal of the 2 government
branches, and any success it has with a death penalty repeal would be
voided if the Senate has no movement, Mr. Busch said.

"Unless there's a change there, we don't know whether that would come
out," he said. "We'll wait and see the dynamics in the Senate on that."

(source:  Annapolis Capital)





ARKANSAS:

Satanist case may close death row


NEARLY 15 years ago, the brutal murder of 3 Arkansas Cub Scouts in an
alleged satanic rite sickened a nation and strengthened the hand of death
penalty champions across the United States.

Now the same ghastly crime may be the final nail in the coffin of capital
punishment in an America that is manifesting a crisis of conscience over
the morality of executions.

Over the next few weeks the grim saga of the so-called West Memphis Three,
teenagers who were convicted of slaughtering 3 small boys for kicks,
is expected to reach a conclusion as a new suspect is tested and fresh DNA
evidence is presented in the highest court in Arkansas.

Legal experts predict that the alleged ringleader, Damien Echols, who in
other more "efficient" states such as Texas would have been executed years
ago, could be freed from death row by spring.

Opponents of capital punishment are poised to adopt Echols, who has grown
from an angry youth into a charismatic Buddhist preacher, as a poster
child for a national moratorium on state-sponsored killing.

It is already happening: since September last year dozens of executions
have been postponed in the face of a legal challenge as to whether the
supposedly pain-free lethal injection amounts to "cruel and unusual
punishment." The US Supreme Court will hear evidence next month.

Even before the de facto moratorium, the number of state executions had
fallen to its lowest level for a decade. The federal government, which
used to hang or electrocute dozens of people each year, has not executed
anyone since Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber responsible for 168
deaths, who was dispatched with a lethal injection in 2001.

4 years ago George Ryan startled fellow law-and-order Republicans when,
on his retirement as governor of Illinois, he commuted all state death
sentences to life sentences. Ryan said DNA testing had shaken his faith by
suggesting that as many as 70 of the 1,099 Americans executed since
capital punishment was revived in 1976 may have been innocent.

Ryan started a trend. Earlier this month New Jersey became the first state
for 42 years to abolish the death penalty and neigh-bouring Maryland is
set to follow suit. Texas, a culture all of its own, carries out 60% of
all executions in the United States.

A clutch of opinion polls suggest that while most Americans still favour
the death penalty, many are expressing reservations about its inherent
unfairness. That doubt is at the heart of the case of the West Memphis
Three, which keeps throwing up fresh surprises and attracting the
attention of Hollywood stars and pop musicians.

The case dates back to a warm summer night in May 1993 when the bodies of
3 8-year-old boys  James Moore, Steven Branch and Christopher
Byers  were found in a creek near their home.

The quiet city of West Memphis went crazy with grief, with mobs pulling
suspicious strangers from cars. Locals started carrying Bibles to declare
themselves "normal."

At the murder scene police asked Jerry Driver, a born-again Christian
probation officer, if he had any suspects. He named Echols, a bipolar
18-year-old who, Driver believed, was a satanist because he wore a black
leather coat in all weathers and listened to "devil music" such as Pink
Floyd and Metallica.

With public pressure growing, police questioned Echolss friend Jessie
Misskelley, a retarded 17-year-old. During 14 hours of interrogation,
unprotected by parent or lawyer, the boy confessed that he, Echols and a
third friend, Jason Baldwin, had met the children in the woods by accident
and then stabbed and raped them for satanic purposes.

Lacking DNA evidence, weapons or a deeper motive, this statement was the
cornerstone of the prosecution  even as it emerged during the trial that
police had coached Misskelley with lurid details and the victims had not
been stabbed but beaten and had not been sexually assaulted.

The mutilations, which had inspired local newspaper stories of devil
worship, were caused by snapping turtles.

The jury, gripped by the devil curses found in Echolss diaries, which had
been lifted from the works of the author Stephen King, took an hour to
find all 3 guilty. Echols was sentenced to death and his 2 friends
to life imprisonment.

At first the distraught parents were relieved, but then the case started
falling to pieces  Driver was unmasked as a fraudster and a key witness
admitted that she had invented everything in a deal with police for a cash
reward.

The West Memphis Three case has since become a cause clbre.  2 films have
been made about it, Tom Waits, the rock star, and other music figures
contributed to a fundraising album and Winona Ryder, the Hollywood
actress, joined the campaign to free them.

Just before Christmas, Natalie Maines, outspoken leader of the Dixie
Chicks, the country band, addressed a 500-strong protest meeting in Little
Rock, Arkansas, demanding a fresh trial.

This now seems to be on the horizon. 6 weeks ago Echolss lawyer revealed
that new and independent DNA tests of the murder scene not only cleared
the trio but also pointed to a friend of the parents of one of the
victims, who had a brutal history. The man is now being "interviewed" by
West Memphis police and new hearings are "under consideration."

2 sets of bereaved parents recently declared that they feel betrayed by
police and lawyers and want an inquest.

"We can only thank God that Damien Echols has survived death row, said
John Mark Byers," stepfather of Chris Byers. "Otherwise, not only would we
have lost the chance of finding the truth but we, too, would have blood
on our hands. And that would have been unbearable."

(source:  The Sunday Times)




WASHINGTON:

Death penalty rare for women


If precedent is an indication, prosecutors may face an additional
challenge should they opt to seek the death penalty against Michele
Kristen Anderson, 29, charged in the killing of 6 of her relatives near
Carnation Christmas Eve:

No woman has been sentenced to die in Washington state. Of the 3,300
inmates on death row in the U.S. in the last complete count, only 49 were
women  less than 1.5 %.

"I think jurors, in general, would have a tougher time imposing the death
penalty on a woman," said Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Chris
Dickinson, who in 2003 unsuccessfully sought the death penalty against a
woman convicted of hiring a group of teens to kill her boss.

But seldom are women accused of being directly involved in acts as violent
as those that took place at the Anderson home near Carnation. Of the 6
people killed, court papers allege Anderson shot 2 - her brother, Scott
Anderson, and his wife, Erica  and also shot at her father, Wayne
Anderson.

Michele Anderson and her boyfriend, Joseph McEnroe, 29, also are charged
with killing Michele's mother, Judy Anderson, along with Scott and Erica
Anderson's children, Olivia, 5, and Nathan, 3.

Prosecutors will decide within 30 days whether to seek the death penalty
against Anderson and McEnroe, each of whom was charged Friday with six
counts of aggravated murder.

Both Anderson and McEnroe told detectives about the killings and said
Anderson had disagreements with her parents and brother, court papers say.

Family disputes are the most common motive behind multiple killings, said
criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University in Boston, who has
studied mass murders for 25 years.

Fox said women commit about 10 % of the killings in the United States,
but only 5 % of the multiple slayings.

He has not examined the Carnation case. But noting McEnroe's alleged
involvement, Fox said enlisting an accomplice can "embolden" someone
considering killing.

"Frequently people do things with the assistance of others they would
never go through with on their own."

Fox chaired a panel that studied the Capitol Hill case, in which loner
Kyle Huff killed 6 young people and then himself at a party in March
2006.

The use of guns in a killing is more common among men than women, Fox
said. "Men have more guns; they are more comfortable with guns," he said.
"Women prefer things like poison or fire, or even hiring someone else to
do it."

Holiday tension

Family disagreements can boil over in deadly fashion around holidays, when
relatives gather, Fox said. He said the nation's largest family mass
murder involved the killing of 14 people in Arkansas at Christmas 1987,
deaths for which Ronald Gene Simmons was executed in 1990.

In another mass killing at a holiday, an Ohio man, James Ruppert, erupted
in a rage during an Easter 1975 family gathering, shooting 11 members of
his family. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Since 1977, nearly 1,100 inmates have been executed in the U.S.; only 11
were women.

The most recent of those was Frances Elaine Newton, of Texas, executed by
lethal injection in September 2005. Prosecutors said that to collect
insurance money, she fatally shot her husband, 7-year-old son and
21-month-old daughter.

Washington state has executed 77 inmates  all men  since 1904. Officials
Friday could find only 2 instances in more than a quarter-century in
which Washington prosecutors even asked jurors to sentence a woman to
death.

The most recent was the Snohomish County case, in which jurors deliberated
about eight hours over 2 days before sentencing Barbara Opel to life in
prison without parole. Prosecutors said she had persuaded 5 teens,
including her 13-year-old daughter, to fatally beat Jerry Heimann of
Everett.

Deputy Prosecutor Dickinson said jurors, in deciding Opel's fate, were
allowed to consider her lack of a criminal record and whether, if given a
life sentence, she would be a danger to other inmates or prison staff.

"I think they didn't feel she was a great danger," Dickinson said. About
half of the jurors had favored sentencing Opel to die, but the death
sentence requires a unanimous vote.

Life without parole

In the earlier case in Southeastern Washington, jurors gave a sentence of
life in prison without parole to Susan Kroll, who hired two Idaho men to
shoot her husband in Asotin County in 1989.

Dickinson said, in general, he expects it would be more difficult to get a
death-penalty verdict against a woman, particularly one with children:
"That's a big emotional card the defense can play." Michele Anderson does
not have children.

In the Carnation case, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said Friday,
the magnitude of the crimes will prompt him to give "serious
consideration" to seeking the death penalty against both Anderson and
McEnroe. A spokesman would not comment on whether Anderson's gender may
play any role in the decision.

Death-penalty experts disagree over whether the small number of women
sentenced to die in the U.S. indicates a bias favoring women.

In a 2001 interview, Victor Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern
University who tracks death-penalty cases against women, said, "It's like
there's something more valuable about women's lives ... Women are also
treated differently when they're victims."

But Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center in Washington, D.C., said, "It could be a bias operating or it
could just be there are so few cases of women committing crimes like this.
It's a hard thing to prove one way or another."

(source:  Seattle Times)