[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
June 3 CHINA: The 'living dead': prisoners executed for their organs then sold to foreigners for transplants An organ transplant can be the difference between life and death for many people. For those in need of one, the wait for a call from hospital to say a match is available is an excruciating one. Sometimes life outruns them before the call comes. And so a booming black market for human organs has emerged in several countries including India and Pakistan. Researchers say China is home to the most rampant illegal organ trade in the world and is the number one destination for 'transplant tourism'. The practice sees desperate people - from countries where waiting lists are longer than their life expectancy or costs are exorbitant - travel overseas to buy an organ and have lifesaving surgery. But there's a major catch: Researchers say the donor organs are often sourced illegally from prisoners executed for their religious, political or cultural beliefs, who have not consented to any of it. Many of China's prisoners have testified to having been subjected to medical testing consistent with organ transplant screening but without explanation while behind bars. 'They called these people the living dead. You just haven't died yet, but you're gone," one organ transplant recipient said. The man, who didn't want to be identified, told PBS News Hour he had end-stage kidney disease 11 years ago until he travelled to China and paid $10,000 for a transplant. Within 1 week, he received a new kidney. He said he would have died before he reached the top of the waiting list for a new kidney in Canada, where he lives with his family. "I went there dead. I came back alive." CHINA CONDEMNS PRACTICE BUT STILL HAPPENING In 2005, Chinese officials admitted they harvested organs from prisoners and promised to reform the practice. In the years that followed, several doctors were arrested for allegedly carrying out illegal organ transplants at private clinics, according to local authorities and state media. Acting on a tip-off, police in Bazhou city in the northern province of Hebei arrested 3 doctors as they prepared to remove a kidney from a man, a local Communist Party official and police told AFP in 2011. In 2013, director of the China Organ Donation Committee, Dr Huang Jiefu, told medical journal The Lancet that more than 90 % of transplant organs were still sourced from executed prisoners. China announced the following year that it would end the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners and move to a voluntary donation-based system. But according to several reports, the controversial practice is far from abolished, and there is evidence it still continues. Former political prisoners told news.com.au the severe human rights atrocities, including the torture and abuse of Falun Gong practitioners, was still taking place in China. They also claim the prisoners are subjected to medical testing, with some killed for their organs. THOUSANDS OF MYSTERIOUS HUMAN ORGANS ON OFFER Recently published research by author Ethan Gutmann, former Canadian politician David Kilgour and lawyer David Matas claims China is performing 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants a year. They say this dwarfs the Communist regime's estimates of about 10,000 and that it cannot be explained by China's fledgling program for voluntary organ donors. "The (Communist Party) says the total number of legal transplants is about 10,000 per year. But we can easily surpass the official Chinese figure just by looking at the 2 or 3 biggest hospitals," Mr Matas said. "That increased discrepancy leads us to conclude that there has been a far larger slaughter of practitioners of Falun Gong for their organs than we had originally estimated." The investigators claim many of the organs are taken from prisoners of conscience, mainly the persecuted Falun Gong religious minority, but also Uyghurs, Tibetans and "House Christians" who congregate secretly in worshippers' homes. The damning report accuses the Chinese government of continuing to carry out mass killings of innocent people in order to obtain their organs for transplants. "We interviewed Falun Gong who got out of prison, got out of China, systematically blood-tested, organ-examined, not for their health - they were being tortured - and only the types of examinations relevant to transplantation," Mr Matas said. News.com.au last year interviewed about half a dozen Chinese refugees who had been imprisoned in China for their spiritual beliefs. They all reported having been subjected to torture and medical testing while in prison. AUSTRALIANS 'COMING BACK WITH LIVERS FROM PRISONERS' Demand for transplants far exceeds supply in China, a country of more than 1.3 billion, which has opened the door to the illegal sale of human organs. Researchers estimate that as many as 1.5 million victims have had their organs
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, NEB., MINN., CALIF., USA
June 3 OHIO: Sheriff reopens 2009 investigation into death of Bogle suspect's girlfriend Sandusky County Sheriff Chris Hilton said Friday he has reopened an investigation into the 2009 death of a girlfriend of Daniel Myers, who in a separate case was arrested and charged this week in the murder of Heather Bogle. Leigh Ann Sluder, 37, who was living in the same trailer park as Myers, was found dead in her mobile home at Emerald Estates in Green Creek Township on Feb. 28, 2009. Myers called the sheriff's office that night and said Sluder had shot herself and that he had found her dead in the bedroom. Sluder's death was ruled a suicide. Bogle family 'thrilled' with arrest; judge denies bond for murder suspect A Sandusky County Sheriff's report, obtained Friday by The News-Messenger through a public records request, revealed that Sluder had been found on her bed with a gunshot wound through her chest and a rifle lying on the bed beside her. The report states that Myers told deputies Sluder suffered from mild depression. On Thursday Myers, 48, was arrested in Bogle's April 2015 slaying. He was charged with felony counts of aggravated murder - which could result in the death penalty - kidnapping, aggravated robbery and tampering with evidence. During Myers' initial court appearance in Sandusky County Court #1 in Clyde, Judge John Kolesar denied bond, deeming Myers a threat to the community. Myers is being held in the Sandusky County Jail and has a hearing scheduled for Thursday. According to Sandusky County Clerk of Courts' records, Myers previously had been arrested on separate occasions for child endangerment, domestic violence and assault. The domestic violence charge against Myers was dismissed in 2001. He pleaded no contest to an assault charge in May 2004 and served jail time from September through November 2004, according to court records. Bogle, a 28-year-old single mother, was murdered in April 2015. She had been shot twice in the back. Myers, Sluder and Bogle all worked at the Whirlpool plant in Clyde, Sandusky County's largest employer. (source: The News-Messenger) NEBRASKA: Judge gives death row inmate Lotter's attorneys new deadline A federal judge has given attorneys for an inmate on Nebraska's death row 6 months more to represent him but pressed them during a phone conference Friday about moving forward with whatever their next step will be. John Lotter, who was convicted in the killing that inspired the 1999 movie "Boys Don't Cry," could be the 1st of the 11 men now on death row in the state to be executed, once he has exhausted his appeals. In February, Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf denied Lotter's latest federal petition challenging his murder conviction, likening it to a hail Mary pass. His attorneys, Rebecca Woodman and Jessica Sutton of the Death Penalty Litigation Clinic in Kansas City, Missouri, had asked Kopf to stay the case so they could raise issues over the state's method for determining death sentences in state court. Kopf refused and denied Lotter's habeas petition, in part because the attorneys hadn't gotten permission from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to file it, as required. Lotter is appealing the order and also has a case pending in state court. On Friday, Kopf asked Woodman if the next step was an application for clemency. Woodman called clemency a fail-safe in the criminal justice system for those under a sentence of death and said it usually isn't sought until all other remedies have been exhausted and the state has sought a death warrant. Kopf asked how long this was going to go on, pointing out the attorneys were appointed in 2014. "I realize there have been intervening events," the judge said, alluding to Nebraska lawmakers voting in 2015 to repeal the death penalty, only to have it later reinstated by voters. "But I've got to move this matter along." Woodman said she believes other remedies remain available to Lotter. "This is not specifically a clemency issue. It's a legal issue," she said. When Kopf sought elaboration, Sutton, her co-counsel, mentioned cases raised in April in Arkansas, where 4 executions were stayed. Kopf said he didn't doubt that once an execution date is set - and the method of execution understood - that there may be subsequent actions that they may wish to challenge. "The drug protocol and on and on," he said. Kopf asked James Smith, solicitor general of the Nebraska Attorney General's office, if the state presently was in a position to execute Lotter. "Does it have the wherewithal to do that, the drugs or whatever it is you need?" the judge asked. Smith said the state could not proceed with the execution because to get an execution warrant it has to certify to the Nebraska Supreme Court that there are no proceedings pending in any court. "Procedurally we could not pursue a warrant while those cases are
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., DEL., GA., FLA., ALA.
June 3 TEXAS: Is the death penalty dying in Dallas County? The crimes were heinous but Dallas County jurors couldn't condemn the convicted killers. A college student killed 3 people at a drug house in a premeditated robbery. A former special education teacher and U.S. Army veteran killed his girlfriend, her teenage daughter, his estranged wife, her adult daughter and severely wounded 4 children in a 2-city rampage. But neither killer received the death penalty, a punishment reserved for the "worst of the worst." Statewide, juries have declined death sentences in nearly 1/2 of the cases presented to them in the past 2 years. So, what does it take to win a death penalty sentence? "You gotta be perfect probably these days," said Edwin King, a special prosecutor in one of the Dallas County cases. Jurors couldn't agree to the death sentence in the 2 recent capital murder trials. They were the first Dallas County cases in which the state sought the death penalty since 2014. The Dallas County District Attorney's office is planning to seek death for Antonio Cochran, the man accused of kidnapping and killing 18-year-old Zoe Hastings in 2015 while she was on her way to a pharmacy to return a rental movie. The decision to seek the death penalty is based on the the severity of the crime, criminal background and what the victim's family wants, said Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson. "Our office only seeks the death penalty in the most heinous and serious of crimes," Johnson said. The death penalty case against Cochran is the 1st filed since Johnson took office in January. Prosecutors in the case may face an uphill battle. National support for the death penalty has drastically declined in recent years. Fewer than 1/2 of the population supports capital punishment, according to the Pew Research Center. "Even in Texas, the death penalty is dying," said Jason Redick of the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty. In the 15 death penalty cases tried in Texas since 2015, jurors have sent only eight men to death row. Death sentences peaked in the 1990s. Between 2007 and 2013, Dallas County led the state in defendants sent to death row. During that time, the county sentenced 12 people to death. Executions in Texas are also declining because of legal reforms that give prisoners more chances to have their sentences reviewed. Jurors are only selected after they agree that they can give the ultimate punishment. Even so, they appear to be split on the issue in recent years. "We know these aren't folks who are anti-death penalty folks," Redick said. "At one point, they said they could hand out a death sentence." Capital punishment has been controversial for years. There have been botched executions. People sitting on death row have been exonerated. And critics point to the disproportionate number of minorities sentenced to death. Pursuing the death penalty can cost taxpayers millions. For many small counties, the price is too high. Seeking the death penalty in Montague County would've eaten up nearly 1/10 of the yearly budget when Tim Cole was district attorney there. He is now a law professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas and tracks death penalty cases in the state. His opinion of capital punishment has shifted over time. "It is time for the death penalty to go away," he said. "My primary concern with it is we don't seem to get it perfectly. ... The execution of one innocent person isn't worth it to me." He said the decision to pursue the punishment is too subjective. It's left to each county's district attorney, and there are no standard guidelines to determine when the lethal injection would be appropriate. And in 2005, Texas passed a bill creating an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole for anyone convicted of capital murder. The new punishment put an end to a time when the worst killers might have once been released into society. Cole believes the automatic sentence is a factor in the death penalty decline. Prosecutors may seek the punishment less often knowing the defendant will die in prison. Also, jurors who say they support the death penalty may have a tough time when faced with an actual decision. "When you see the person, when you hear their history, their background, sometimes they were abused as children themselves, sometimes they're mentally ill ... it's a different thing," he said. "Now you have a face." Jurors aren't simply asked to answer "yes" or "no" when considering the death penalty. They must unanimously agree that the defendant poses a continuing threat to society and that there are no reasons to save that person's life. Those issues posed a problem for the 2 recent Dallas County cases. In the case of Justin Smith, the college student who killed 3 people in a drug house, more than a dozen people vouched for him. They believed he was once a good man. He
