December 7
TENNESSEE----execution
Tennessee Executes David Earl Miller for 1983 Murder----Miller is the 2nd
Tennessee prisoner to be put to death in Tennessee's electric chair in as many
months
Nearly 37 years after he was convicted of murdering Lee Standifer, a
21-year-old Knoxville woman he'd been dating, David Earl Miller has been
executed in the electric chair. Miller was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. on
Thursday, Dec. 6. His last words were "Beats being on death row."
Miller is the 2nd Tennessee prisoner to be killed by electrocution in as many
months. Edmund Zagorski was executed in the electric chair in November. After
going nearly a decade without an execution, Tennessee has now carried out 3 at
Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville this year. Miller, the
longest-serving prisoner on Tennessee's death row, had been awaiting death for
nearly 37 years.
The Scene offered Miller the chance to give a statement before his death, and
sent questions to him through his attorneys, but he declined.
The brutal murder for which Miller was sentenced to death took place on May 20,
1981. After the 2 had gone on a date, Miller killed Standifer — who was
intellectually disabled — by bludgeoning her with a fireplace poker before
stabbing her dead body numerous times. Prosecutors asserted at the trial that
the murder had taken place after Miller sexually assaulted Standifer. The
state’s medical examiner found evidence that sexual intercourse had taken
place, but Standifer’s body showed no signs of sexual assault. The court
determined that there was not enough evidence of sexual assault to put it
before the jury. Later, during Miller’s sentencing, a different judge allowed
prosecutors to present that charge to a jury, but the jury rejected it.
Gov. Bill Haslam announced just after noon on Thursday that he would not
intervene to stop the execution, despite a plea for clemency from Miller's
attorneys that detailed the condemned man's horrific history of mental illness
and childhood physical and sexual abuse. As a young boy, Miller was allegedly
raped by his mother on multiple occasions, and brutally beaten by his
stepfather. Miller's attorneys note that by age 10 he had attempted to kill
himself twice and was already drinking alcohol. Sexual abuse, mental illness
and addiction would be a theme throughout his life, up until the night he
killed Lee Standifer.
Miller had a daughter of his own, Stephanie Thoman, who was just 2 years old
when her father was sent to prison. She first remembers meeting him when she
was 12 and has maintained a relationship with him since.
“I think that he’s a kind person," she told the Scene earlier this week, when
asked to describe her 61-year-old father as he is today. "He’s quiet. He kind
of stays to himself. It’s hard to imagine him getting mad.”
Lee Standifer's 84-year-old mother, Helen, lives in Arizona now. She did not
make the trip to see the man who murdered her daughter put to death.
“I don’t see that it accomplishes anything at all," she told the Scene in an
interview. "It’s immaterial. It doesn’t bring my daughter back, it doesn’t
accomplish anything. Frankly, I don’t see any reason to be there.”
Miller becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
Tennessee and the 9th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in
2000.
Miller becomes the 23rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the
USA and the 1,488 overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17,
1977. The 23 executions equals the total of executions carried out in the USA
last year; there are executions scheduled in Texas (Dec. 11) and Florida (Dec.
13) next week.
(sources: Nashville Scene & Rick Halperin)
*****************
Tennessee executes another inmate by electric chair after supreme court
battle----David Earl Miller was the 2nd inmate in 5 weeks to reject the state’s
preferred method of execution
A convicted killer who spent more than 36 years on death row in Tennessee was
executed by electric chair on Thursday, the second time in five weeks that the
state used electrocution to carry out a death sentence.
Corrections officials say 61-year-old David Earl Miller was pronounced dead at
7.25 pm Thursday at a Nashville maximum-security prison.
Both Miller and Edmund Zagorski before him chose the electric chair over lethal
injection, a process proponents said would be painless and humane.
The execution came nearly 2 decades after the state adopted lethal injection as
its preferred method. But the inmates argued in court that Tennessee’s current
midazolam-based process causes a prolonged and torturous death. They pointed to
the August execution of Billy Ray Irick, which took about 20 minutes and during
which he coughed and huffed before turning a dark purple.
Their case was thrown out, largely because a judge said they failed to prove a
more humane alternative was available. Zagorski was executed 1 November.
Earlier Thursday evening, the US supreme court rejected Miller’s final appeals.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the majority ruling, as she did when the
high court denied Zagorski’s petition for a stay.
“Such madness should not continue. Respectfully, I dissent,” Sotomayor wrote in
the Miller opinion.
Governor Bill Haslam declined Thursday to intervene.
Moments before the execution, Miller was asked if he wanted to say anything,
but his reply was not understandable. He was asked again and his attorney
clarified that he was saying: “Beats being on death row.”
Wearing a cream-colored jumpsuit, Miller was dripping with water from the
sponges that were applied to his head. Before the shroud was placed over
Miller’s head, he faced the media witnesses and looked down. 2 jolts of
electricity were administered, causing his muscles to clench. Blinds were
lowered and he was pronounced dead minutes later.
In recent decades, states have moved away from the electric chair, and no state
now uses electrocution as its main execution method, said Robert Dunham. Dunham
is the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which
doesn’t take a stand on the death penalty but is critical of its application.
Georgia and Nebraska courts both have ruled the electric chair
unconstitutional, and about two decades ago it looked as though the supreme
court would weigh in on the issue. It agreed to hear a case out of Florida
after a series of botched executions there. But Florida adopted lethal
injection, and the case was dropped.
Dunham said he wasn’t aware of any state other than Tennessee where inmates
were choosing electrocution over lethal injection.
In Tennessee, inmates whose crimes were committed before 1999 can chose
electrocution over lethal injection.
Prior to Zagorski’s execution, the builder of Tennessee’s electric chair had
warned that it could malfunction, but Zagorski’s and Miller’s executions
appeared to be carried out without incident. Miller’s death was only the 3rd
time Tennessee had put an inmate to death in the electric chair since 1960.
The courts said Miller couldn’t challenge the constitutionality of the electric
chair because he chose it, even though his attorneys argued the choice was
coerced by the threat of something even worse.
The day after Zagorski’s execution, Miller and 3 other Tennessee death row
inmates filed another lawsuit in a US district court in Nashville arguing that
the state’s lethal injection and electrocution protocols violated the
constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit said a firing
squad was a less painful alternative.
But the Sixth US circuit court of appeals ruled against the inmates on 28
November and said a firing squad was an outmoded method of execution.
Miller was convicted of killing 23-year-old Lee Standifer in 1981 in Knoxville.
Standifer was a mentally handicapped woman who had been on a date with Miller
the night she was repeatedly beaten, stabbed and dragged into some woods.
Miller spent 36 years on Tennessee’s death row, the longest of any inmate.
(source: The Guardian)
*****************
Barber spent a year cutting the hair of death row inmates
A former Tennessee Department of Correction barber remembers cutting the hair
of death row inmates.
Reggie Williams, 41, used to serve time for aggravated robbery and was placed
at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in 2001.
"They are people too. They're completely restrained. They would come out.
They're shackled at the hands, shackled at the feet, shackled at the waist. I
believe we should take care of each other. It's the way God would want it," he
said.
Williams said each Sunday for a year, he would have a list of inmates who
wanted a haircut. He believes he cut the hair of David Earl Miller --- now 61
--- who was convicted of killing a mentally ill woman in 1981. Miller is
expected to be executed by electrocution.
"I'm pretty sure if he got a haircut, I was there, I cut his hair," Williams
said.
Williams said he never judged the men because he too had trouble with the law.
At 19, he was convicted of aggravated robbery and served 11 years. He spent 2
non-consecutive years at Riverbend.
"Their situation might be very severe but I didn't look at it as I was
different from them. I was there because of some of the decisions and choices I
made that got me in trouble so," he said.
Due to of good behavior, Williams eventually earned his cosmetology license
behind bars.
"And then I came out, and I worked as a barber and I saved money and invested
in a business so here we are," he said while cutting a client's hair.
He runs the Headquarters Barber and Beauty Salon on Old Hickory Blvd in
Madison. Williams who was fortunate turned his own life around also mentors and
encourages teens to stay on the right path.
(source: newschannel5.com)
NEBRASKA:
Appeal seeks to overturn Nikko Jenkins' death sentence on grounds of severe
mental illness
The Nebraska Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday that condemned killer Nikko
Jenkins' convictions should be overturned because of his severe mental illness.
Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley said the lower court erred when ruling
that Jenkins was competent to stand trial, competent to defend himself at trial
and able to plead no contest to the charges against him.
The three-judge panel that subsequently sentenced Jenkins to death ignored his
lifelong history of serious mental illness and the "debilitating effects" of
being held for years in solitary confinement, Riley said.
"This whole case should be reversed," Riley told the high court. "If you don't,
the death penalty should be reversed."
But Solicitor General James D. Smith defended Jenkins' death sentence and his
convictions on four counts of 1st-degree murder and related firearms charges.
He argued that the state high court should defer to the judge who heard the
evidence and interacted with Jenkins during a tumultuous three years of court
proceedings.
"We have more evidence of Mr. Jenkins trying to fake, trying to malinger,
trying control things to avoid the consequences of his actions," Smith said.
Jenkins, now 32, shot and killed four people over 10 days in 2013. His victims
were: Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz on Aug. 11, Curtis Bradford on Aug.
19 and Andrea Kruger on Aug. 21.
The first deaths occurred 12 days after Jenkins was released from prison. He
had spent more than 1/2 of his 10 1/2-year prison sentence in solitary
confinement.
Thursday's oral arguments were part of the 1st appeal of Jenkins' convictions
and sentence.
Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation filed a
friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness,
National Disability Rights Network and nine mental health professionals. In the
brief, they argued that long-term solitary confinement should be considered as
a mitigating factor in death penalty cases.
The victims
Juan Uribe-Pena, 26, and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz, 29, were shot to death on Aug. 11,
2013, in Spring Lake Park after Jenkins’ sister, Erica Jenkins, lured them
there on the pretense that they would party. Curtis Bradford, 22, was shot to
death outside a house near 18th and Clark Streets on Aug. 19. Bradford had
agreed to commit a robbery with Jenkins and Erica Jenkins. Bradford was found
wearing a hoodie and gloves. Andrea Kruger, 33, was pulled from her SUV and
shot near 168th and Fort Streets on Aug. 21. She had gotten off work at a bar
before 2 a.m. and was on her way home after stopping at a McDonald’s
drive-thru.
Nikko Jenkins slashed his throat in April, almost fatally, prompting several
questions — not the least of which is how does he keep getting access to items
to mutilate himself?
(source: Omaha World-Herald
CALIFORNIA:
California inmate lawyers want more use of life-saving drug
A pair of suspected fatal overdoses this week on the nation's largest death row
is adding urgency to an effort to allow California prison guards and even
inmates to carry a drug that can save the lives of those who overdose on
opioids.
Starting next month, all sergeants working the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift
statewide will carry naloxone, the state corrections department said Thursday
in a decision that predates the most recent deaths. Sergeants are generally the
first responders in housing units overnight when medical workers aren't as
readily available, said Lt. Sam Robinson, a spokesman at San Quentin State
Prison.
Attorneys representing inmates want even broader distribution of the
overdose-reversing drug. They requested earlier this year that correctional
officers and inmates also carry the inhalers, said Steven Fama of the nonprofit
Prison Law Office.
40 California inmates died of drug overdoses last year, according to statistics
provided to The Associated Press on Thursday in advance of their publication.
That's double the number of drug-related deaths in 2014 and 2015, and the death
toll continues to rise "at a very significant rate," according to an annual
death review for the federal receiver who controls prison medical care under a
long-running lawsuit. California's long-term drug overdose rate is more than 3
times the nationwide prison rate.
Prison nurses in California began carrying naloxone in 2016. It can reverse
respiratory failures from opioid overdoses. It is routinely administered when
any inmate is found unconscious, no matter the cause, because there are no
adverse side-effects, said Liz Gransee, a spokeswoman for the federal receiver.
She and corrections officials could not immediately comment on the request to
expand its availability.
Anyone can now easily obtain naloxone at a drug store after undergoing brief
training in how to administer the inhaler, Fama said, so he said even inmates
should be trained in its use.
Autopsies are set Friday for Joseph Perez Jr. and Herminio Serna, who died
while awaiting execution at San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco.
But the Marin County coroner's office said toxicology results could take weeks.
In the meantime, prison officials are investigating how contraband may have
been brought into death row and are increasing education to inmates on the
dangers of abusing illicit drugs.
"Warning! Please be advised that contraband being circulated now is causing
death and serious medical harm," the prison's chief medical officer said in a
memo being distributed by hand to all San Quentin inmates, starting with those
on death row.
California officials have spent millions of dollars system-wide, with limited
success, to stem the smuggling of contraband by inmates, visitors and
employees. They blamed smuggled Fentanyl for killing 1 inmate and sickening 11
others at another Northern California prison in April.
"It's obviously extremely difficult to stop because you're talking about grains
of Fentanyl that can be lethal," Fama said.
Prison officials blamed "acute drug toxicity" for the deaths of condemned
inmates Emilio Avalos in November 2017 and Joe Henry Abbott in January. They
are the most recent since overdoses were blamed for killing 2 condemned inmates
in 2005.
Aside from drugs, officials are still investigating how an inmate on the highly
secure death row obtained the weapon used to kill 30-year-old Jonathan Fajardo
in October.
California has not executed anyone since 2006. Since 1978, when California
reinstated capital punishment, 79 condemned inmates have died from natural
causes. Another 25 have killed themselves and 15 have been executed.
Officials said 2 condemned multiple murderers apparently committed suicide
within hours of each other last month, but the official cause of their deaths
also is awaiting autopsy results.
(source: Associated Press)
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