[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, NEB., MD., VA., TENN., N.C.

[Rick Halperin]

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.

Charlton in Phoenix was let go for "repeated instances of insubordination,
actions taken contrary to instructions, and actions taken that were
clearly unauthorized.''

The documents also include a chain of e-mails from August 2006 in which
Charlton was trying to get to Gonzales to persuade him that the death
penalty was inappropriate for the case without the body.

On Aug. 16, Michael Elston in the deputy attorney general's office told
him: "The AG has denied your invitation to speak further about the case.
Please file the notice.''

Later that day, Charlton's office advised the federal court in Phoenix
that it would seek death for Jose Rios Rico in the 2003 drug murder of
Angela Pinkerton.

It was the 2nd time that Charlton had tangled with superiors in Justice
over whether to seek the death penalty.

Charlton also did not want to execute a Navajo, deferring to a
long-standing informal policy based on the tribe's opposition to the death
penalty. But Justice officials ordered him to seek a death sentence in the
slaying of 2 women in a carjacking.

In the Rios Rico case, the dispute centered over the Justice Department's
refusal to look for Pinkerton's body, according to people familiar with
the matter. Informants, who apparently were granted plea deals in the
case, had tipped federal prosecutors that her body was buried in a Waste
Management Inc. landfill in Mobile, Ariz. It would cost $500,000 to $1
million to find it, however.

Federal prosecutors "told us they knew where she was buried,'' said
Annette Grzybowski, Pinkerton's sister.

But she said Washington officials would not approve the expenditure.

"I was extremely upset,'' Grzybowski said. "It all took too long. It's
been 4 years and we still haven't had a trial.''

(source: Charleston Daily Mail)






NEBRASKA:

Death penalty debate continues in Legislature


State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha said Tuesday he wants to block the
execution of Carey Dean Moore with legislation that would restrict, though
not repeal, the death penalty.

In an angry floor speech, Chambers said he disapproved of published
comments by legislative leaders that the Legislature is not the proper
forum to decide Moore's fate.

"(Preventing Moore's execution) is my only reason for participating in
what the Judiciary Committee is doing," he said. "I will not temporize."

Nevertheless, when Judiciary Committee Chairman Brad Ashford unveiled the
1st draft of the proposal, it contained no retroactivity clause to make it
automatically apply to Moore's case or those of any of the 9 other men on
death row. The plan would not allow a convicted murderer to be a candidate
for the death penalty unless a jury finds, beyond a reasonable doubt, that
"the offender poses a present and substantial risk to the lives of others
that cannot reasonably and effectively be controlled by institutional
security measures."

A public hearing on the proposal is set for 1:30 p.m. Friday.

The Judiciary Committee approved the new approach last week - after
Chambers' effort to repeal the death penalty fell one vote short on
first-round debate and after the State Supreme Court set Moore's May 8
execution date. The Attorney General's Office and Moore both had requested
a date in early May.

Ashford said the only way the proposal could affect Moore's case is if it
became law before May 8 and Moore used it as grounds to go to court.

However, before his execution date was set by the Supreme Court last week,
Moore submitted a document to the court saying he wanted to die and
wouldn't file more appeals.

"To me, Carey Dean Moore has his own life in his own hands - and that's
his decision to make," said Ashford.

Speaker Mike Flood issued a memorandum to lawmakers Tuesday morning that
said he did not intend to allow the proposal, offered as an amendment to
Legislative Bill 377, to be debated before it had a public hearing to
allow supporters, opponents and others to comment upon it.

In an interview, he said he expects the proposal to be advanced from the
Judiciary Committee and to be debated by the full Legislature within 3
weeks. Flood, a death penalty supporter, said he opposes the amendment but
would not let his opinion affect its scheduling.

Ashford said the amendment's intent is to restrict the death penalty to
only the "worst of the worst." If it were in place, he predicted that
Nebraska would have seen only 5 to 10 people sentenced to death since
1976, instead of 34. Only 3 people have been executed.

Ashford said the proposal would not be a backdoor repeal of the death
penalty.

"The death penalty would still be assessed, that's my opinion," he said.

(source: Omaha World-Herald)






MARYLAND:

Death penalty repeal halted in Maryland


MARYLAND isn't shutting the door on its death row--yet. The state Senates
Judicial Proceedings Committee blocked legislation to repeal the death
penalty by a single vote earlier this month. Maryland had a chance to
become the first state to abolish the death penalty since the
reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. With mounting doubts about
lethal injection halting executions from California to Florida,
legislators are considering repeal bills more seriously than ever before.

Momentum toward abolition in Maryland began to pick up in December, when
the state Court of Appeals, considering the case of Vernon Evans, ruled
that Marylands lethal injection protocols were introduced without the
public review required by law. The decision produced a de facto moratorium
on executions.

Activists launched a comprehensive campaign to push for repeal: organizing
demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns and panel discussions that
included death row exonerees, murder victims family members, along with
call-ins from death-row prisoners.

When the newly elected Gov. Martin O'Malley came out strongly for
abolition, victory finally seemed to be within reach. But the repeal bill
was never even debated on the Senate floor--the Judicial Proceedings
Committees vote stopped it.

According to the Baltimore Sun, state Sen. Alex Mooney, the most promising
of the potential swing votes on the committee, declared that "a full and
absolute repeal of the death penalty under all circumstances is not in the
best interest for the common good of Marylands citizens."

One might wonder which of Marylands citizens Mooney was referring to.
Certainly not the African-American men on death row, who a
state-commissioned study found were many times more likely to get a death
sentence because of their race and the jurisdiction they were tried in.
Certainly not people like death row exoneree Kirk Bloodsworth, who would
have been executed if not for the discovery of DNA evidence proving his
innocence. Certainly not murder victims or their families, since states
(like Maryland) that practice capital punishment actually have higher
murder rates than those that don't.

Mooney can only be speaking for the class of citizens who benefit from a
"justice" system that places a higher priority on locking people up than
rehabilitating them. By pinning the blame for society's problems onto the
exploited and oppressed rather than the exploiters and oppressors, the
criminal justice system tries to keep working-class communities paralyzed
with fear--and validate public policy that sacrifices social services like
education and welfare in favor of building more prisons and saturating
city streets with cops.

The death penalty is the ultimate emblem of this ideology, scapegoating
individuals who we supposedly have no choice but to kill in cold blood if
we wish to be safe and free. The racism, class bias and ineffectiveness of
the death penalty are endemic to the system as a whole.

This is why judges and lawmakers are currently focusing on procedural
problems with lethal injection. If they were to abolish the death penalty
based on the overwhelming evidence of racism and class bias, the whole
criminal justice system could then be called into question.

But the system has begun to crumble under the weight of its own
contradictions. As the facts about the barbarism of lethal injection and
the fallibility of sentencing are exposed, pressure to change it is
growing throughout society.

This dynamic could lead to a better chance at abolition in Maryland during
next years legislative session. Abolitionists sent an early signal that
they won't give up with a demonstration outside the Supermax prison in
Baltimore--home of Maryland's death row--on March 24.

With a moratorium still in place and the level of public discussion
rising, abolitionists are in an advantageous position to build the
movement to shut down Maryland's death row once and for all.

(source: World Socialist)




VIRGINIA:

Former Death-Row Inmate Would Get $1.9 Million----If Court Approves, Va.
Will Compensate Wrongfully Convicted Man Who Came Within Days of Execution


Virginia officials have agreed to pay $1.9 million to a man who spent 17
years in prison -- including more than nine on death row -- for a rape and
murder he did not commit, officials said yesterday.

If the settlement is approved by the court, it will bring an end to years
of legal battles that arose from one of the nation's most troubling
instances of a wrongful conviction. Earl Washington Jr., a farmworker who
is mildly mentally retarded, once came within days of execution. He was
exonerated in 2000 by DNA tests.

Washington, 46, has since married and lives in Virginia Beach. He earns a
modest salary working as a maintenance man.

"This will give Earl protection, security and comfort, and it's just about
time for that," Robert T. Hall, one of Washington's attorneys, said
yesterday. Washington declined to comment.

Washington's conviction in the 1982 rape and murder of 19-year-old Rebecca
Williams, a young mother from Culpeper, was largely the result of a false
confession in which he got several key details wrong. Last year, a federal
jury in Charlottesville ruled that a now-deceased Virginia State Police
investigator fabricated parts of that confession. The jury awarded
Washington $2.5 million.

The proposed $1.9 million settlement calls for the court to dismiss the
verdict against the estate of investigator Curtis Reese Wilmore, who died
in 1994, according to court papers. It also would mean that all appeals in
the case, including one by Wilmore's estate, would be dropped. The state
funded the defense against Washington's lawsuit because Wilmore was a
state employee when he interrogated Washington.

"All litigation arising out of the wrongful conviction and near execution
of Earl Washington would come to an end," Hall said.

Last year, Kenneth M. Tinsley, 61, was charged with Williams's rape and
murder. Tinsley, who is serving a life sentence for an unrelated rape, is
awaiting trial.

Washington's case has had a significant impact on Virginia's criminal
justice system. His story inspired a 2001 law allowing inmates who claim
innocence to seek DNA testing at any time, loosening what was then the
toughest rule in the nation on new evidence. It also led to a review of
some cases analyzed in Virginia's DNA laboratory.

In 1994, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D) commuted Washington's sentence to
life in prison after forensic tests cast doubt on his guilt. 6 years
later, then-Gov. James S. Gilmore III pardoned him after more advanced
testing failed to connect Washington to the crime and revealed the
presence of a convicted rapist's DNA at the scene.

According to court papers, the office of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D),
Washington's legal team, Wilmore's attorneys and court mediators reached
the agreement March 6. Kevin Hall, Kaine's spokesman, confirmed that all
sides reached an agreement but said he could not comment further because
it has not been finalized by the court.

William G. Broaddus, an attorney for Wilmore's estate, said the Wilmore
family is pleased that the jury's finding would be dismissed.

Robert Hall said the payment would be managed by trustees who would invest
the money and arrange for regular payments to Washington that would
supplement his income. Some of the funds also would cover attorney's fees,
Hall said.

(source: Washington Post)






TENNESSEE:

Court denies request to cancel execution of death row inmate


The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected a motion from a death row inmate
seeking to stop his lethal injection.

The execution of Philip Workman is set for one week after the governor's
moratorium on executions is due to expire.

Workman has been on death row since 1982 for the slaying of Memphis Police
Lieutenant Ronald Oliver after a robbery at a fast-food restaurant in
1981.

After the court in January set Workman's execution for May 9th, Governor
Bredesen issued an execution moratorium until May 2nd to rework the
state's outdated and ambiguous procedures for lethal injection.

Workman, who has no pending appeals on the state level, has had numerous
stays and twice been within hours of execution when courts stepped in to
spare his life.

(source: WMC TV News)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Death Penalty Appeals Bill Would Expand Pool of Cases Review


The state Supreme Court should look at capital murder cases in which a
killer receives either the death penalty or life in prison when it
examines whether the sentences are consistent, a House committee said
Tuesday.

The legislation, approved on a party-line vote of 9-5, would expand the
pool of cases justices would be obligated to look at when performing
what's called a proportionality review. That's when the court compares a
case on appeal with other cases with similar crimes and situations and
determines whether a death penalty was merited for the defendant.

The law now only requires justices to review cases in which the jury
recommended a death sentence. The measure would require justices to
examine capital trials in which jurors recommended life behind bars.

The change would help rein in "an aberrant jury," said Rep. Rick Glazier,
D-Cumberland, a bill co-sponsor.

Republican members of the House judiciary panel said the bill was too
broadly focused or would create additional work to justices already
struggling to hear all the appeals brought to them.

The bill, which now goes to the full House for consideration, is just "one
more way to clog up the system" and prevent the executions of people
lawfully convicted of murder, said Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake.

(source:  Associated Press)