Dec. 13 MISSISSIPPI----impending execution Death penalty----Nixon earned his ultimate sentence Humane? -- The state injecting into John B. Nixon's veins a lethal dose of the sedative sodium thiopental, leading to a deep sleep, is more humane than the last moments of terror and bullet to the brain Nixon gave Virginia Tucker. Barring some last-minute stay, convicted murderer John B. Nixon Sr. will keep his appointment with death at 6 p.m. Wednesday, a well-earned and long delayed punishment. Every time there is an execution in Mississippi, there are protests about capital punishment. But, make no mistake, as long as the United States has the death penalty, Nixon has earned it. Virginia Tucker tried to bargain with Nixon, hired by her ex-husband to kill her, at her Brandon home on Jan. 2, 1985. But to no avail. Nixon put a pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. The state injecting into Nixon's veins a lethal dose of the sedative sodium thiopental, leading to a deep sleep, is more humane than the last moments of terror and bullet to the brain Nixon gave Tucker. And he's had 2 decades of life to bargain with the executioner, living to the ripe age of 77. Had she lived, Tucker would be 65. There are others for whom juries have also decided death is earned: last week, regarding Earnest Lee Hargon's Yazoo County murders of his cousin Michael Hargon, wife Rebecca, and strangling to death their little boy, James Patrick, 4. How lenient can the law be with such behavior? Where is the compassion in watching a 4-year-old die? Headlines today trumpet the rehabilitation on death row of California's Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the notorious Crips gang. Rehabilitation is good, and he's had 26 years to do good works, living to the mellow age of 51. But it doesn't help the 4 people he shot to death in 1979. According to USA Today, Americans are turning away from the death penalty, preferring life without parole. Life is precious. Maybe it takes a death penalty to teach some - like Nixon, Hargon, Williams - that lesson. (source: Opinion, Jackson Clarion-Ledger) NEW JERSEY: Prosecutor to Codey: Abolish death penalty----Senate to vote on moratorium The state Senate on Thursday is scheduled to vote on a bill that calls for a one-year moratorium on the death penalty while a study of its application takes place. Meanwhile, Ocean County Prosecutor Thomas F. Kelaher has written a letter to acting Gov. Codey supporting the abolition of the death penalty and replacing it with life in prison with no parole for murderers. Kelaher said he wrote to Codey in hope that the lame-duck Legislature would pass a bill calling for replacing the death penalty with life in prison without parole. However, Jim Manion, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats, said Codey opposes abolishing the death penalty for now in favor of imposing a moratorium while the matter is studied. A bill that would do just that - call for a study and impose a moratorium on the death penalty for a year, beginning in January - is scheduled for a vote in the full Senate Thursday, Manion confirmed. If the Senate passes the bill, it would still need approval in the Assembly. The moratorium bill, whose sponsors include Sen. Andrew R. Ciesla, R-Brick, is supported by New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a statewide organization with some 10,000 members, according to its director, Celeste Fitzgerald. The organization contacted Kelaher to help its cause to abolish the death penalty, and the prosecutor responded recently by writing to Codey. In his letter, Kelaher noted that there have been no executions in the 23 years since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty. "The history of nonapplication of the law has been a cruel hoax on the families of the victims and the citizens of this state," Kelaher wrote to Codey. "We in the law enforcement community have expended enormous resources on pursuing the application of our death penalty law," he wrote. "Years of appeal, countless delays, continuous hearings and millions of dollars later, the condemned are invariably moved to the general prison population. The strain on prosecution budgets is enormous, and the cost in human terms is incalculable." "The limited resources of our budgets should, in my judgment, be focused on the more immediate task of investigating, arresting, trying and convicting the miscreants who prey on law-abiding citizens throughout our state," Kelaher wrote. Since the death penalty was reinstated in New Jersey in 1982, there have been 197 capital trials resulting in 60 death sentences, according to Fitzgerald. Of those death sentences, 50 have been reversed on appeal, she said. Those who have had their death sentences reversed include Robert O. Marshall, 65, the former Toms River insurance salesman convicted in 1986 of hiring a hit man to kill his wife, Maria P. Marshall, 42, during a faked robbery at a staged breakdown of the couple's car at the Oyster Creek picnic area on the Garden State Parkway in Lacey on Sept. 7, 1984. The state Attorney General's Office has said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the reversal. Otherwise, the prosecution would have to retry the death-penalty phase of Marshall's case if it hopes to execute him. But Kelaher, in a telephone interview, questioned the efficiency of that, saying that could lead to another round of appeals. (source: Asbury Park Press) OHIO: Parole hearings postponed in wake of judge's concerns The Ohio Parole Board is postponing hearings for inmates convicted of aggravated murder in response to a judge's concerns that the prisoners are not eligible for release, a spokeswoman said Monday. The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction also is reviewing whether parole was appropriate for three people who already have been released, spokeswoman Andrea Dean said. The state began sending letters Monday to inmates convicted of aggravated murder informing them that their hearings have been delayed while their eligibility is reviewed, said JoEllen Lyons, another prisons spokeswoman. She did not know the total number of inmates affected. The Ohio public defender's office, whose lawsuit led to the judge's ruling, said the hearings should continue. In 2004, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David Cain ruled the state had used improper tactics to hold some inmates longer than sentenced. Inmates convicted before 1996, when the state replaced open sentences with set prison terms, deserved fair reconsideration for parole and a reason if denied, Cain ruled. However, those convicted of aggravated murder serve open sentences whether the crimes occurred before or after the law took effect and weren't covered by the ruling, Cain said in a Nov. 30 letter to Attorney General Jim Petro's office, which represented the Ohio Adult Parole Authority in the case before Cain. Cain criticized the parole authority for maintaining a Web site that he said included the names of inmates ineligible for hearings under his ruling. The information has since been removed from the Web site and the board has postponed hearings involving aggravated murder convictions until it decides what to do. "We are reviewing the process so we can carry out the instructions of the court in an appropriate manner," Dean said. (source: Cleveland Plain Dealer) KENTUCKY: Wife of former teen death row inmate pleads guilty to theft The wife of a man whose death sentence was commuted pleaded guilty to stealing crime-scene photographs and other documents from his court file. Eileen Cano Stanford, who married Kevin Stanford after he was sentenced to death for the 1981 rape and murder of gas-station attendant Baerbel Poore, pleaded guilty Monday to a pair of misdemeanors, theft and obstructing governmental operations. Eileen Stanford, 60, who lives in Kuttawa, a few miles from the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville where her husband is housed, was sentenced to four months in jail and fined $500. Jefferson Circuit Judge Ann Shake also barred Stanford from having any further contact with her husband's court record or any court archives. Kevin Stanford was convicted, along with a co-defendant, of the January 1981 rape and murder Poore. Stanford, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to death, a judgement Gov. Paul Patton commuted to life in prison in 2003. Eileen Stanford stood accused of stealing about 10 photographs, Poore's driver's license and an affidavit for a search warrant on Nov. 24, 2004, from Stanford's file in the Jefferson Circuit Court archives in the old county jail. "It strikes at the integrity of public records," said Harry Rothgerber, first assistant commonwealth's attorney. "You shouldn't be able to go into archives and steal records." Rothgerber said a clerk familiar with the file noticed that the photos and other materials were missing and reported the theft. The documents have since been recovered, Rothgerber said. In court, Eileen Stanford did say why she took the records. Rothgerber said she apparently wanted to hinder the prosecution should her husband's case go back to court on appeal. Eileen Stanford's lawyer, Donald Heavrin, said Stanford accidentally took the materials as she was rushing to leave as the office closed on Thanksgiving eve. Heavrin said Eileen Stanford mistook photo paper she brought to the archives with the pictures. Eileen Stanford was indicted on charges of tampering with physical evidence and tampering with public records, both felonies. Heavrin said he advised her to plead guilty to avoid a felony conviction. (source: Associated Press) USA: Dateline Producer Begs For Death Penalty Waiver To Crack 3 Murder Cases Dateline NBC producer Shane Bishop has offered the governors of Texas and Florida a deal: "Waive the death penalty for a murder suspect, and he'll help solve 3 murder cases in their states," the Austin American-Statesman reports. Bishop sent the letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Nov. 29. It "offers to help solve the cold cases if the governors would 'guarantee not to pursue the death penalty' against an Arkansas convict serving life without parole for murder." Apparently Ronning told Bishop that he committed seven murders, but a written no-death penalty guarantee is necessary to get Ronning to discuss the case. "Why am I writing you to beg you take up this effort? Because it's the right thing to do," Bishop wrote. "But I am certain Dateline NBC would give substantial coverage to the solving of these three cold case murders tied to a serial killer, and the essential roles played by the Governors of Texas and Florida." Bishop has been a Dateline producer for 12 years. An NBC spokesperson said Bishop wrote the letter on his own, not on behalf of Dateline... "This is making the rounds at NBC," an insider says. "People are saying Corvo was on the line at Dateline. Does this push him over the edge?" (source: Media Bistro)
