Jan. 13
TEXAS:
The Texas death penalty is dying
The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP), a statewide
grassroots organization working to end the death penalty, recently published
its annual death penalty report, which illustrates that some Texans are
re-thinking their views on capital punishment. TCADP's findings reveal that
prosecutors and jurors are losing interest in sentencing defendants to die.
Given that Texas' death penalty has been plagued by inequity, inefficiency, and
inaccuracy, it makes sense that capital punishment is falling out of favor.
2016 marks the 2nd year in a row of Texas juries sentencing the fewest number
of people to death since 1976. Death sentences peaked at 48 in 1999, while
there has been a total of 3 this year. Executions in Texas have also steadily
declined to the lowest number in 20 years; last year, there were 7.
Harris and Dallas counties have traditionally been known for their high number
of death sentences. However, prosecutors in these counties have increasingly
elected not to pursue that punishment, and jurors have chosen alternative
sentences such as life without parole. Consequently, no one has been sentenced
to death in either county in 2 years.
Moreover, when Texas has executed people, it hasn't been pretty. Texas is
America's leading death penalty state, executing 538 individuals since 1982,
and the state has faced a number of controversies.
Rather than punishing only the worst of the worst, the death penalty has
disproportionately singled out poor, mentally handicapped, and minority
defendants. People who cannot afford a private attorney are at a of receiving a
death sentence in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a
U.S. non-profit national organization that provides information on the death
penalty. The TCADP report found that almost 1/2 of those executed in Texas over
the last 2 years had severe and mitigating impairments such as mental
disabilities. The report also found that 80% of those executed in Texas over
the last 5 years were people of color.
In October, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over the case of Duane Buck,
who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to die. He is languishing on
Texas' death row, in part, because of allegedly tainted testimony that Buck
presented a higher risk of future danger because he is African American. When
confronted by problems like these, capital punishment begins to look less like
a solution and more like an injustice.
There were 7 stays of execution in Texas in 2016 - one for a man named Charles
Flores. The primary evidence against Flores was a hypnotized eyewitness. Jeff
Wood also received a stay, and the case against him included testimony from a
discredited psychologist who did not bother to even interview the accused.
Another stay was issued for Robert Pruett, who was scheduled for execution
despite the existence of unexamined evidence, as well as conflicting DNA
evidence, from the crime scene.
Texas is no stranger to the high price of the death penalty. Costs of a single
death penalty trial run close to $3 million dollars, according to some studies,
and it is 'we the people' who pay. Jasper County, Texas, increased property
taxes by 7% to pay for 2 capital trials, while Kaufman County, Texas, is
expected to pay $500,000 for expert witnesses in a single capital trial. In
fact, it is only because Kaufman County is a part of the Capital Defense Fund
Program that they are not expected to pay an additional $1.3 million dollars.
We have poured millions into the death penalty, but the return on our
investment has been minimal at best. Texas has wrongly convicted and sentenced
at least 13 people. Others have been executed who might have been innocent.
Meanwhile, studies show the death penalty doesn't protect society, and many
murder victims' families say the complex and lengthy process doesn't offer them
the swift justice or closure that they seek. Some feel the system forces them
to constantly relive the murders of their loved ones as they endure ongoing
legal wrangling and incessant media attention.
Given the facts, it should not surprise anyone that Texans are losing faith in
the death penalty. We like solutions that work. Capital punishment does not
work, and that may be why Texas' death penalty is in a steep decline.
(source: Texas Tribune)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Sampson's 2nd sentence could renew NH execution issue
Twice sentenced to death in a federal court, carjacker and murderer Gary
Sampson will now have to wait to find out whether he will be executed in New
Hampshire.
Earlier this week, a federal court jury in Boston found Sampson, 57, guilty of
murder and sentenced him to death for his 2001 spree, in which he killed 2
people in Massachusetts and 1 New Hampshire.
A 2003 trial on the same charges - a trial in which the verdict was later
thrown out - also found Sampson guilty of capital murder. At the time, federal
Judge Mark Wolf ordered that Sampson be executed in New Hampshire, a ruling
that took Granite State officials by surprise.
"Of all other states, New Hampshire has a uniquely strong interest in the
punishment imposed on Sampson," Wolf wrote back then.Wolf later disqualified
himself from the 2nd Sampson trial, which took place in Boston over the past 7
weeks in front of federal Judge Leo Sorokin.
Although the latest jury issued the death penalty, Sorokin has yet to schedule
a sentencing hearing to announce details of the execution, including where it
will take place, said Christina Sterling, a spokesman for Massachusetts U.S.
Attorney Carmen Ortiz, whose office prosecuted Sampson.
"It's unclear whether or not it's going to be in New Hampshire or up to the
(federal) Bureau of Prisons," Sterling said.
Federal prosecutors can bring capital murder cases in any state, even states
that prohibit the death penalty. But executions cannot take place in those
states. In such cases, federal law allows a judge to select a death-penalty
state, such as New Hampshire, to carry out the execution.
Earlier this week, New Hampshire officials said the issue of Sampson's New
Hampshire execution went away when the verdict from the 2003 trial was thrown
out.
When Sampson was sentenced to death in early 2004, capital punishment in New
Hampshire amounted to a political issue, brought up occasionally in the
Legislature. It would be 4 years before Michael Addison was sentenced to death
for the 2006 killing of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs.
Even though Addison remains on death row - it's actually a cell in the maximum
security unit - the state still has no execution chamber, said Corrections
Department spokesman Jeffrey Lyons. Estimates to build one range as high as
$1.8 million.
"It's more than putting a bed out there," Lyons said about a death chamber. It
must be secure, and spaces must be available for family and media to witness
the execution, he said.
In his 2004 ruling, Wolf said he ordered Sampson's execution in New Hampshire
for 2 reasons: First, a New Hampshire execution would consolidate all appeals
to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston; 2nd, Wolf said he did not want
an execution reduced to an invisible, bureaucratic function.
"There is ... strong public interest in Sampson's execution being as accessible
as possible to the people most interested in it and impacted by it," Wolf said
at the time. "Sampson's execution in New Hampshire will serve that public
interest." One of Sampson's murders took place in New Hampshire. Sampson broke
into a cabin at Lake Winnipesaukee and strangled to death the caretaker,
Concord resident Robert "Eli" Whitney. Sampson pleaded guilty to that murder in
New Hampshire courts in 2004.
Because of that guilty plea, Sampson was not tried for Whitney's murder in the
Boston. Sterling said jurors did hear about the murder when considering the
death penalty.
New Hampshire law designates lethal injection as the preferred means of
execution. Lyons said the Corrections Department is working with the attorney
general on details, because some chemical manufacturers have refused to deliver
drugs for execution; others have stopped making them altogether.
As an alternative, state law also allows execution by hanging.
(source: unionleader.com)
PENNSYLVANIA:
9 jurors selected for death penalty trial in Easton
Attorneys are more than halfway to their goal of selecting the jurors and
alternates they need for the death penalty trial of Jeffrey Knoble.
So far 9 jurors have been selected for the trial of the 27-year-old
Riegelsville man. The attorneys need 3 more plus 4 alternates.
Knoble is charged with fatally shooting Andrew "Beep" White in March 2015 in
the former Quality Inn hotel in Easton.
First Deputy District Attorney Terence Houck and defense attorney Gavin Holihan
agreed on 2 jurors Thursday to add to the 7 selected earlier in the week.
They've questioned about 70 people so far.
Jury selection in a death penalty case can be lengthy because the attorneys
question each prospective juror individually to make sure each has no moral
aversion to sentencing a defendant to death.
Jeffrey Knoble is charged with killing Andrew "Beep" White at a Downtown Easton
hotel in 2015.
Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano hopes jury selection can wrap up by
Friday, allowing testimony to begin Tuesday, Jan. 17.
Jury selection resumes at 8:30 a.m. Friday.
(source: lehighvalleylive.com)
GEORGIA:
DA seeks death penalty for man accused of killing 2 Georgia deputies
A middle Georgia District Attorney said Thursday he will seek the death penalty
against Ralph Stanley Elrod Jr., accused of killing 2 Peach County deputies.
"Those who intentionally take the lives of law enforcement officers who are
peaceably and lawfully carrying out their sworn duty to protect the public
should expect to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and to face
the ultimate penalty," DA David Cooke said.
Earlier this week, a grand jury indicted Elrod on multiple charges, including
malice murder and felony murder, in the November deaths. Elrod, 57, allegedly
shot both Deputy Daryl Smallwood and Sgt. Patrick Sondron at close range while
the deputies were responding to a call regarding a dispute between neighbors.
Elrod appeared calm when the deputies confronted him, the GBI previous said.
But when the deputies told Elrod he would be arrested for threatening to shoot
a neighbor, Elrod pulled out a handgun from his waistband, GBI Special Agent in
Charge J.T. Ricketson said in November.
"The deputies were not on any kind of alert," Ricketson said. "It appears to us
that their guard was not up when they were confronting this guy."
Sondron, 41, a married father, died the same day at Medical Center of Peach
County. Smallwood, 39, died 2 days later. He was also married father.
Elrod has been jailed without bond since his arrest the day after the
shootings. The grand jury indicted him on 2 counts each of malice murder and
felony murder, 3 counts of aggravated assault on a peace officer and 2 counts
of aggravated assault.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
FLORIDA:
New Harvard report questions constitutionality of death sentence for Duval
inmates
A report released Thursday details how some Florida death row inmates suffer
from impairments sufficiently severe to make them ineligible for the death
penalty when they are resentenced as required by a court ruling.
Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project, which has previously studied the
use of the death penalty in Duval County and across Florida, released its
report focusing especially on the mental impairments of those on death row.
The Harvard report found that 1/3 of the cases are concentrated in 5 counties:
Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange, and Pinellas.
"A sizable majority of individuals on death row from these five Florida
counties suffer from crippling mental impairments, or are so young in age, that
they appear to be nearly indistinguishable from the categories of people whom
the Supreme Court has said it is unconstitutional to execute due to their
diminished culpability," said Rob Smith, director of the Fair Punishment
Project, in a statement.
The Florida Supreme Court recently ruled that a unanimous jury decision is
necessary before sentencing someone to death. Previously, the state imposed the
death sentence based on a judge's decision, even if only 7 of 12 jurors voted
for the death sentence. That law was later amended after a United States
Supreme Court decision to require 10 out of 12 votes, but even that law was
struck down.
Now all death row inmates who were sentenced since 2002 must be sentenced anew.
State Attorney Melissa Nelson has said she will require prosecutors get
approval to seek the death penalty from an internal review panel.
The study looked at the 48 death row inmates who come from the 5 counties.
Nearly 2/3 of them, the report said, "exhibit signs of serious mental illness
or intellectual impairment, endured devastatingly severe childhood trauma, or
were not old enough to legally purchase alcohol at the time the offense
occurred. ... What our research reveals, however, is that a substantial
majority of the individuals on death row from these 5 counties in Florida have
evidence of a similar level of impairment, which lessens their moral
culpability and makes the death penalty constitutionally inappropriate."
The report found:
--About 13 % of the inmates were 20 or younger when they committed the crimes,
and 27 % were 24 or younger.
--About 35 % had low IQ scores or some form of brain damage.
--At least 23 % suffered some known form of severe childhood or emotional
trauma.
The report details cases from Duval County, where inmates endured childhood sex
abuse, suffered brain trauma and had been hospitalized for psychiatric
disorders.
"These findings have raised a legitimate question as to whether Florida's
capital punishment scheme - even one with a unanimous jury requirement - is
capable of limiting application of the death penalty to the most culpable
offenders."
(source: jacksonville.com)
ALABAMA:
Death to judicial override
During my years as an editorial writer for The Birmingham News, I spent much of
that time opposed to the death penalty. The death penalty should be abolished;
clearly, innocent people have been killed by the State of Alabama. A number
have been released from death row after being exonerated at some point, barely
dodging the electric chair or, now, the needle.
Eventually, my colleagues and I wrote a week-long series telling readers why
The News was changing its position on the death penalty. We explained our
reason for transforming from a newspaper that supported the death penalty into
one that now strongly opposed it.
That series was a finalist (top 3) for a Pulitzer Prize in 2006.
There are many reasons I oppose the death penalty, including the belief that
the State should never take anything from a person it can't give back; the
death penalty is cruel, as demonstrated most recently by the botched execution
of Alabama inmate Ronald Bert Smith last month; and, pragmatically, it costs
the State more to execute an inmate (lengthy, necessary appeals are among the
highest costs) than it does to keep an inmate in prison for life.
No, I don't see Alabama dropping the death penalty anytime soon. But I must say
I was encouraged to read Alabama Political Reporter editor in chief Bill
Britt's story Monday, that a bill has been proposed for the upcoming
legislative session that will end the terrible practice of judicial override in
capital murder cases in Alabama.
That is at least one tiny step in the right direction toward keeping at least
some politics out of death penalty decisions.
As it stands now, a jury can recommend a life sentence in a capital murder
case, but a judge - an elected judge, at that - can overrule that decision.
True, a judge can also overrule a decision by a jury to sentence somebody to
death. But that decision, rarely, if ever, occurs.
Elected judges certainly don't want to be seen as soft on crime. There are some
judges who never overrule a jury's recommendation. But many have no qualms
about being the hanging judge.
Indeed, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, Britt reports, in 92 percent
of judicial overrides in Alabama, "elected judges have overruled jury verdicts
of life [in prison] to impose the death penalty."
In election years, some judges are particularly under pressure to override a
jury's recommendation for a life sentence because the judge (a politician,
after all) doesn't want to appear soft on crime.
The bill, sponsored by State Sen. Dick Brewbaker (R-Montgomery) in the Senate
and State Rep. Christopher England (D-Tuscaloosa) in the House, probably has a
long way to go.
However, considering recent decisions by the US Supreme Court, the days of
judicial override in Alabama are likely numbered.
"The US Supreme Court has made it pretty clear that they do not like it and
think this is a bad practice," Brewbaker said in his interview with APR's
Britt. "Now that Delaware and Florida have gotten rid of it, Alabama is the
only State that still practices it."
Brewbaker's and England's bills are long overdue. They're not enough, but in
Alabama, we take what we can get.
"It doesn't seem to make sense to me to wait until the Supreme Court strikes
down our death penalty statute just because we want to hold on to what arguably
is a bad practice anyway," Brewbaker said. "I think a lot of people, even if
they think judicial override is a good idea, realize that in the long run, it
will cost us the whole death penalty statute."
That would be fine with me, but unlikely to happen. Ironic, in a way, that it
would take a law to make application of Alabama's State killing machine more
fair to save it from its deserved abolition.
(source: American Political Reporter)
OHIO:
Groups call on Ohio governor to end executions
Kwame Ajamu was 17 years old when he was convicted of murder and sent to death
row.
"I had to grow up real fast because I'd been sentenced to die and now I'm in
this box that I can literally touch each wall with my hands and the ceiling,"
he said.
Ajumu, his brother, and a friend were all convicted in Cuyahoga County in 1975
of a robbery and murder based largely on the testimony of a 12-year-old
witness. Decades later, the witness recanted and all 3 men were released from
prison and exonerated.
42 years later, Ajamu is now an outspoken opponent of the death penalty and he
joined other death penalty opponents at the Ohio Statehouse Thursday to lobby
lawmakers.
"Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually - putting a man or a woman in a cell
having knowledge that they will be executed on a certain date does destroy that
individual totally," Ajamu said.
Death penalty opponents hope to convince state lawmakers to do away with
executions in favor of life sentences with no chance for parole. They point to
a state Supreme Court task force report that recommended dozens of changes in
the state's use of the death penalty.
Ohio plans to put condemned child killer Ronald Phillips to death next month
with a new 3-drug method similar to one the state used several years ago. It
plans to use the same method to put inmates to death in March and April. The
state has 4 additional executions scheduled this year but hasn't said what
drugs it will use.
A federal judge weighing whether Ohio's new execution method is constitutional
ordered the state this week to clear up whether its supply of 3 lethal
injection drugs is enough to carry out far more executions than it claimed 3
months ago.
The directive from Magistrate Judge Michael Merz comes after The Associated
Press reported inventory logs show Ohio has enough supplies of lethal injection
drugs for dozens of executions - more than the 3 it told Merz about last year.
Attorneys for the Ohio prisons system told Merz in October the state had enough
drugs to proceed with 3 executions this year. Until the AP report, it was
unclear how much of the 3 lethal drugs the state possessed and whether it had
enough for more executions. The judge set a Friday deadline for the response.
Abraham Bonowitz with Ohioans to Stop Executions says the state should, at a
minimum, put executions on hold.
"We would like the governor to say, 'I'm not going to sign any more death
warrants, we're not going to have any more executions, I will reprieve anyone
who comes along until we make sure the system is fair and accurate'."
Executions have been on hold in Ohio since January 2014, when Dennis McGuire
gasped and snorted during the 26 minutes it took him to die, the longest
execution since the state resumed putting prisoners to death in 1999. The state
used a 2-drug method with McGuire, starting with midazolam, its first use for
executions in the country.
Attorneys challenging Ohio's new 3-drug method say midazolam is unlikely to
relieve an inmate's pain. The drug, which is meant to sedate inmates, also was
used in a problematic 2014 execution in Arizona. But last year, the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld the use of midazolam in an Oklahoma case.
The state says the 3-drug method is similar to its past execution process,
which survived court challenges. State attorneys also say the Supreme Court
ruling last year makes clear the use of midazolam is allowable.
(source: Associated Press)
************************
Ohio death penalty opponents urge end to executions of mentally ill
Ohio death penalty opponents on Thursday urged Gov. John Kasich and state
lawmakers not to resume executions next month after 3 years of delays.
Recent legislative efforts to scrap the death penalty, backed by largely by
minority Democrats, have gone nowhere. But Ohioans to Stop Executions, the Ohio
Council of Churches, ACLU of Ohio and other advocates have hope lawmakers will
take the death penalty off the table for people suffering major mental illness.
Last year, Ohio senators failed to pass a bipartisan bill that would have
prohibited death sentences for persons with schizophrenia, schizoaffective
disorder, bipolar disorder, severe depression and delusional disorder at the
time the crime was committed. The bill's lead Republican sponsor, Bill Seitz,
is now in the House, and death penalty opponents hope he will champion the
legislation there.
"Persons with serious mental illness lack the culpability associated with death
sentences," Betsy Johnson, legislative and policy advisor for D.C.-based
Treatment Advocacy Center, said during a Thursday news conference at the
Statehouse.
The organizations had planned to protest the execution of Akron killer Ronald
Phillips, scheduled for Thursday. But Kasich postponed it until Feb. 15 after a
court magistrate said the state couldn't move forward with January executions
because of a pending U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision on a lawsuit
brought by more than 65 death-row inmates.
Phillips' execution date has been pushed back several times due to concerns
with changes to the state's lethal injection procedure.
Phillips was convicted in 1993 of raping and killing his girlfriend's
3-year-old daughter. Kasich previously declined to grant him clemency.
Rev. Rebecca Tollefson, executive director of the Ohio Council of Churches,
said thousands of Ohioans have sent postcards to Kasich urging him to "lead
Ohio in a direction of grace, mercy and hope" by indefinitely suspending future
executions.
"Ohio does not need to resume executions," Tollefson said. "We can hold
dangerous offenders accountable and protect ourselves from them without more
killing."
(source: cleveland.com)
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