[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
August 19 SINGAPORE: Notes from inside death row in Singapore I was sentenced to death on May 2, 2017. The judge said that even though my involvement was just as a courier, he has no any other choice because the DPP of Singapore did not want to issue the certificate of co-operation. I saw my family break down with my very own eyes, they couldn’t believe what was happening. At that moment, the lowest point of my life, I mustered the strength to stay strong for my family and consoled them by saying, “I can still appeal, there is hope.” It hurts to see our loved one in this sort of situation. Words can’t describe the burden which I had placed in their hearts. All my family ever did was love me for who I am and be there for me and all I have given them is burden and pain that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. This realisation hurts more than the sentence could ever itself. I was transferred from B2 TO A1 SHU (Special Housing Unit), the death row. Once I arrived here, the first thing the officer did was to shave my head bald and give me a white T-shirt and shorts to wear. They then led me to cell No. 26 and told me that I have to remain in this cell for 2 more months at least, before they can transfer me to different cell which has a TV. I was given soap, brush, a small white towel, toothpaste and a bucket. I stumbled into the cell and my mind was just blank, I hadn’t recovered yet at that point. Everything happened so fast that I couldn’t collect my thoughts. The cell was quite creepy and I felt unsettled, to say the very least. It wasn’t even 5 minutes yet but I already felt alone. I guess that is the point of this place. It’s a very a dark and gloomy place and you can almost see all the sadness, disappointment and loneliness the place bears. It feels like it could even devour you alive. For someone who’s not on this side of the bar, like the officers or counsellors, they probably don’t really understand how we death row inmates feel; some of them think they do understand or that they know but I beg to differ. In here you are only for yourself and only God is your solace if you are a religious person. If you’re not a believer, it’s going to take an immense amount of mental strength and fortitude to find the light of hope in this darkness. The next day, I was informed that the state will provide a lawyer to do my appeal if I can’t afford one, and if the appeal doesn’t go in my favour, then I can send a petition of clemency and if that too doesn’t go well, then I would be hanged, an estimate of 14-15 months. Great! Could any news make me feel "better" than this one? I don’t think so. It makes me feel so much "better" until I can’t sleep at night. To think what lies ahead for us (death row inmates) is not something encouraging to do, for you will be torn apart in the war between hope and reality. For the first 2 weeks, I was locked down in cell No. 26 with no access to the one-hour yard time. This meant that I stayed inside the cell 24/7, for 2 weeks, with the lights turned on the whole time 24/7. It was very hot and I couldn’t sleep, if you use the floor mat given, you would feel hotter, so I just slept on the floor with the lights on. Most of the time I slept not because I wanted to, but because my eyes were too tired to be open any longer. I would wake every 1 or 2 hours after I had fallen asleep. I don’t know why they would give this form of psychological torture to someone who is already sentenced to death, who is already suffering mentally and emotionally. I don’t know what joy they take in watching their fellow human being been treated in such a way. Reminds me of the stories I’ve read of the Nazi concentration camps, although the prisoners there would have suffered far, far worse than I have. After 1 week, I got access to newspapers, but still no yard time. Only after 2 weeks was I allowed to go to the yard. I was allowed to keep books which were taken from the yard library. The food is better than before and there are slices of bread available every evening that you can take as much as you can eat. The food menu is mostly chicken, egg, sardine, some vegetables, fish and sometimes anchovies. The menu rotates every day. The cell is consisted of a toilet and a big iron bar door with four iron rods in between for the air to come in. The cell is just 6 or 7 normal footsteps in length and in width. Each cell has a CCTV that runs 24/7 at the top corner of the ceiling where the toilet is. It is not something new, I was living my life for the past five years like this. Doesn’t matter if you’re taking bath or a dump, there were always people watching you. Even in B2, as a remand, you would have to strip and get naked five days a week whenever we entered the yard. There will be two officers at the yard’s gate entrance to see your bare body and genitalia twice — in and out — and you
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., FLA., OHIO, CALIF., ORE.
August 19 NORTH CAROLINA: 6 death row prisoners in North Carolina to get their day in court In 2002, Quintel Augustine went on trial accused of murdering a Fayetteville police officer — a notorious case that forced prosecutors to pick a jury in Brunswick County, 90 miles away. Augustine was 25 but had already served two terms in prison. The officer, Roy Gene Turner Jr., was a 5-year veteran of the Fayetteville force, who left behind a fiancee and a 6-month-old child. But another distinction has kept this case in disputeever since: Augustine was black, and the officer, like every member of the jury that handed down the death penalty, was white. Court filings argue that Cumberland County prosecutors improperly used race as a primary factor in choosing Augustine's jurors. In one case, a potential juror was described in handwritten notes as a "black wino," and then rejected. Notes for a white juror, who was accepted, read "drinks--country boy--OK." Next week, the N.C., Supreme Court will consider whether Augustine and 3 others on death row should have their sentences reduced to life in prison. This reprieve had already been granted to all 4 of them under the state's Racial Justice Act, which let prisoners seek relief when they could show racial prejudice in jury selection. But their death sentences were restored when the legislature repealed the law in 2013. 2 more death row defendants will argue that their cases were tainted by the same racial bias the courts have already found with the other four defendants, and they are requesting a hearing to present that evidence. Their advocates argue the Supreme Court has the chance to restore a tool created to root out widespread prejudice in the legal system dating back more than a century. Death row debate In 2009, when the Racial Justice Act was passed, the minority population in North Carolina had reached 34 percent, according to the nonprofit Center for Death Penalty Litigation. But of the 142 prisoners on death row, nearly 1/2 were convicted by juries with no minority representation. A 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Batson v. Kentucky, forbid prosecutors from rejecting jurors on the basis of race alone. But researchers at Michigan State University found in a 2012 study of North Carolina death-penalty trials that black jurors were 2.5 times more likely to be struck. Critics of the law called it so broad that it created a loophole for any defendant given capital punishment. When he signed its repeal in 2013, Gov. Pat McCrory said, “Nearly every person on death row, regardless of race, has appealed their death sentence under the Racial Justice Act,” according to the Associated Press. But its defenders at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation cite “a mountain” of evidence that already shows decades of bias, and overturning the law serves as a means for ignoring it. “Whether you look at it from a legal perspective or a common-sense perspective, it doesn’t make much sense to say we’re going to create this mechanism to see if there’s racial bias, we’re going to find all this evidence and then we’re going to repeal the law,” said David Weiss, attorney with the center. Only four people had sentences reduced under the act before its repeal: Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters, Marcus Robinson and Augustine — all of them convicted of murder in Cumberland County. The other two seeking the same chance: Andrew Ramseur and Rayford Burke, both from Iredell County. Their attorneys come from the center, the ACLU, the NAACP, the state appellate defender’s office and private practice. N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein’s office will handle the case for the state. A spokeswoman for Stein’s office declined to comment on active litigation. Black jurors rejected In Ramseur’s case, a black 21-year-old defendant got the death sentence from an all-white jury. All of the qualified black jurors were rejected, his attorney Daniel Shatz wrote in a 2016 brief. During his 2010 trial in Statesville, four rows of courtroom seats were cordoned off with crime-scene tape, forcing his family to sit in the back, Shatz wrote. Racially charged comments appeared on a local newspaper website, including “He should be hanging from the nearest traffic light as a warning to the rest.” The court declined to change the trial location or allow a Racial Justice Act review. Walters, one of the few women on the state’s death row, was sentenced to death in 2000 for her part in a series of gang-related murders in Fayetteville. During her trial, prosecutors rejected 10 out of 14 qualified black jurors and 4 of 27 whites, wrote center attorney Shelagh Kenney in her brief. One black woman was struck, Kenney wrote, because her brother had been convicted on an unrelated gun charge. The woman told prosecutors that she and her brother were not close and his criminal record would not affect her jury service. At the same
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS
August 19 TEXASimpending execution The Role Of Scientific Forensic Evidence Questioned In Pending Texas Execution Larry Swearingen is scheduled to be executed Wednesday by the State of Texas. It was 19 years ago that Swearingen was convicted of the abduction, rape and murder of Melissa Trotter. This is the sixth time that Swearingen had a date with death in the Texas prison system. But lingering questions about his guilt have caused the courts to repeatedly step in. “My name is Larry Ray Swearingen, I’m on death row — scheduled to be murdered August 21st for a crime I did not commit,” said Swearingen in an interview at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. “You have faulty forensic sciences that are upholding this conviction, and now they want to murder me to make sure the conviction doesn’t come undone.” After 2 decades on death row, Swearingen was pudgy, bald and his skin was a pasty white. In all that time, he never stopped insisting on his complete innocence. “No, I didn’t not take Melissa’s life. We were friends in the end. We’re friends now. We will always be friends,” Swearingen said. But the police and prosecutors who worked to convict Swearingen of capital murder and who are working now to have him executed contend that was a lie — one of Swearingen’s many lies. “There is no other perpetrator out there. There's no other bogeyman. There's no other serial killer that killed Melissa Trotter. It's Larry Swearingen,” said Kelly Blackburn with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office. “There is a mountain of evidence that connects Larry Swearingen to the death of Melissa Trotter that he was convicted on — besides science.” Forensic science is central to solving murders. Prosecutors rely on it every day. But in the Melissa Trotter case, some of the forensic science appeared to contradict the prosecution. However, Blackburn said there was a wealth of circumstantial evidence in the case that pointed directly at Swearingen. “Larry Swearingen wasn't connected to this case through DNA or through science,” Blackburn said. “He was connected to this case and was convicted on evidence that put him at the scene that on a mountain of circumstantial evidence that put him in Melissa Trotter together ?— what happened before, during and after her murder. So that's why he was convicted.” Swearingen admitted if someone only listened to the prosecutors’ narrative, he sounded guilty. But he said they consistently used junk science to pin a murder on him while dismissing legitimate forensic science that proved it was impossible for him to be Melissa Trotter’s killer. “I was in jail on trumped up charges. It was determined that Melissa Trotter died at the time I was incarcerated in the Montgomery County jail,” Swearingen said. Melissa Trooter, 19, went missing on Dec. 8, 1998, in Willis, Texas, north of Houston. She was an outgoing college student last seen alive at the student center at Lone Star College Montgomery County campus. Swearingen at that time was a 27-year-old electrician. He was driving a stolen red pick-up truck and had a history of problems with the law. “I was a screw up. I was a violent screw up. 2 plus 2 and you get the wrong conclusion. 'Hey, he’s done these things before. Look over here; yeah we have a good suspect here,' ” Swearingen said. Swearingen immediately became the suspect in the Melissa Trotter missing persons case. They had been seen together at the college the day she went missing. Three days after her disappearance, Swearingen was arrested on outstanding traffic warrants. He’s been behind bars ever since. While being questioned by investigators in 1998, he told them he didn’t know Melissa Trotter and had never spoken to her. “I don’t even know the girl. Up until that point I didn’t even know that the girl existed.” Swearingen told officers. “Then why would she have your pager number?” an officer asked. “She asked me if there was a way to get hold of my sister," Swearingen responded. “When I walked up to the marina she asked me, ‘aren’t you Becky’s brother?’ And I said yes.” “You ain't never talked to her before?” an officer asked. Swearingen responded, “No, never.” On Jan, 2 1999 — 25 days after her disappearance — hunters found the body of Melissa Trotter in a remote location in the Sam Houston National Forest. She was partially clothed. Investigators determined she had been strangled with a leg segment cut from a pair of pantyhose. It was now a murder investigation. And the evidence against Swearingen was piling up. Police searched his truck and found strands of Melissa Trotter’s hair. Swearingen now admits she had been in his truck many times. “We were dating. We were friends with benefits. We went out and had a good time. I enjoyed being with her, and she enjoyed being with me,” he said. “What we did or didn’t do is nobody’s business. There has to be some chivalry in the
