[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., CALIF., USA
Sept. 20 NEBRASKA: Confusion could affect death penalty vote Nebraskans for the Death Penalty will soon launch a multi-media effort to inform voters about potentially confusing language on the Nov. 8 general election ballot. Bob Evnen, an attorney and co-founder of Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, told a gathering of the Sarpy County Pachyderm Club Thursday that voters wishing to retain the death penalty must mark the "repeal" oval on the ballot. The confusion arises because voters will be asked whether they wish to retain or repeal the Nebraska Legislature's 2015 decision to abolish capital punishment. A vote to "retain," he said, will confirm the Legislature's decision to abolish. A vote to "repeal" will undo that vote and reinstate the death penalty. Evnen told the gathering of Sarpy County Republicans he is confident voters will overrule the Legislature. Surveys continue to show that Nebraskans support the death penalty by a 2 to 1 margin, he said. Evnen made his comments in the meeting room of the Shadow Lake Hy-Vee where he described capital punishment as a moral and practical good. "Capital punishment is an act of moral accountability for the most heinous crimes committed by the most depraved killers," he said. "We don't do it very much in our state. We sentence people to death only in a very limited number of cases, a limited number of crimes, and that is as it should be. But that doesn't mean you get rid of it." Evnen said it is difficult to end up on Nebraska's death row, and outlined the brutal nature of murders committed by those who have landed there. He dismissed concerns about wrongful conviction, asserting that death penalty opponents must reach back to the 19th century to find a Nebraska death row inmate who might credibly be considered innocent of a capital crime. Nebraska's death penalty law requires a complex weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, he said, which means only the most heinous crimes are likely to be eligible. Law enforcement officials are overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty, Evnen said, in part because they believe capital punishment exercises a deterrent effect on criminals who understand that murdering a police officer could result in a death sentence. He also dismissed concerns about the cost of keeping the death penalty. He said studies showing high costs, such as a recent study by Creighton University economics professor Ernie Goss, are not credible and fail to show the other side of the ledger. The Goss study, which showed the death penalty costing Nebraska taxpayers $14 million a year, was a composite of statistics from other states, Evnen said, and bears no relation to actual costs in Nebraska. He said the study also failed to account for cost savings incurred when expensive trials are avoided after suspects plead guilty to 1st-degree murder in exchange for a promise that prosecutors will not seek the death penalty. (source: Papillion Times) CALIFORNIA: Sentenced to die? Depends on the county in California As California voters weigh 2 ballot measures this fall to either abolish the death penalty or institute changes that aim to expedite what can be a decades-long process, they do so against the backdrop of its rapid decline across the state and an increasing disparity in where capital punishment is actually employed. Since 2011, California has imposed the death penalty 78 times, including 5 so far this year. That's down from 112 in the 5 prior years, between 2006 and 2010 . A Bee analysis of death row records shows that the verdicts come from just 14 of California's 58 counties, compared to 25 between 2006 and 2010. Only 8 counties have issued more than one death sentence since 2011. In many counties, prosecutors now so rarely seek the death penalty that the policy is effectively in disuse. The list includes some major population centers like Santa Clara County, a liberal stronghold with more than 1.9 million residents, where a jury last sentenced someone to die in 2010. The 4 counties with the highest homicide rate in recent years - Monterey, San Joaquin, Merced and Tulare - are a politically diverse bunch on the Central Coast and in the Central Valley that have not sent anyone to death row in at least 7 years. The 2nd-most populous county in California last imposed the death penalty 6 years ago. Encompassing about 3.3 million people, San Diego County is also the biggest in the state with no death sentences since 2011. It's an unexpected turn for the traditionally moderate area with a Republican district attorney, which in the 5 prior years accounted for 5 new death row inmates. Public Defender Henry Coker takes pride in that fact. Since assuming the role in 2009, he said he has been particularly aggressive about pursuing resolutions to death penalty cases before they go to trial. Though he would have once saved the best
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., CALIF., USA
Aug. 15 NEBRASKA: New poll suggests more Nebraskans favor death penalty A new poll suggests more Nebraskans favor the death penalty. The survey, paid for by Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, polled about 600 people, and officials said the margin is significant. "The poll shows that Nebraskans continue to support the death penalty for the worst of the worst among us," State Treasurer Don Stenberg said. Officials said people who are for the death penalty outnumber those who oppose it by about a 2-1 ratio, and that 58 % of people polled would repeal LB 268 passed by lawmakers in 2015. About 30 % would keep the bill, which would do away with the death penalty, officials said. After state lawmakers passed the bill, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty launched a petition campaign, collecting 166,000 signatures from people who agreed the issue should be left up to voters. The survey, conducted by a Florida-based polling company, states it polled Republicans, Democrats and independents with bipartisan support for the death penalty. "The people who oppose the death penalty are doing their best to convince Nebraskans that if you favor the death penalty, you're in the minority," Stenberg said. "That you're not thinking right. I think what this poll shows is that Nebraskans continue to understand what the death penalty is about and why we need it. "A group that's against the death penalty has spend quite a bit on advertising, over $300,000 on advertising over the last month or so. It does not appear that they've changed the mind of any Nebraskans on this issue." But in a Skype interview, Retain A Just Nebraska official Dan Parsons said that's not the exact question voters will see on the ballot. "The question voters will be asked to answer is, if we should replace the death penalty with life in prison," Parsons said. Parsons believes, when given an option, taxpayers will choose to spend their money elsewhere. "Frankly people are sick and tired of spending millions of dollars on another failed government program," he said. Retain A Just Nebraska also plans to release a study comparing the cost of implementing the death penalty with that of imprisoning inmates for life. But Nebraskans for the Death Penalty said you can't put a cost on public safety. (source: KETV news) * A New Poll Suggests Nebraskans Support the Death Penalty A new voting polls suggests Nebraskans Support the Death Penalty that's according to the Nebraskans for the Death Penalty. The survey includes 600 eligible voters and according to the poll Nebraskans support the death penalty at a 2 to 1 margin. "Yes I think if the election was held today Nebraskans would vote overwhelmingly to repeal 2.68 in order to keep the death penalty and I think that's important point because of the way Nebraska's election laws are written in order to detain the death penalty it is necessary to repeal LB268 on election day," said Don Stenberg, Former Nebraska Attorney General and Current State Treasurer. "It should not be viewed as an accurate assessment of how Nebraskan's view the death penalty. It's a poll that really does mislead Nebraskans into that they do not have any other option than getting rid of the death penalty when in reality the question that Nebraskans will be asked on the November 8th ballot is if they wish to replace the death penalty with life in prison? So that's really the question that should be asked and this poll doesn't ask this question," said Dan Parsons, Communications Director/Spokesperson, Retain A Just Nebraska. (source: nebraska.tv) CALIFORNIA: 'Grim Sleeper' handed death penalty The US serial killer known as the "Grim Sleeper" has been sentenced to death in Los Angeles as police admit they are no closer to identifying a further 33 potential victims. Lonnie Franklin Jr, 63, was sentenced last week for the murders of 9 women and a teenage girl in the Los Angeles Superior Court last week. The former garbage collector was linked to the deaths of 14 people during the trial, including 4 he wasn't charged with killing. But Los Angeles Police Department investigators are struggling to identify a further 33 potential victims that were found in photographs pinned on walls inside Franklin Jr's home and released 180 photographs of the potential victims earlier this year. Some of the photographs found inside his home show multiple women sleeping, drugged or dead, according to the Associated Press. Franklin earned his nickname due to an what appears to have been a 14-year gap in murders from 1985 to 2007. Prosecutors allege he targeted vulnerable young women who had turned to prostitution to support crack cocaine addictions. He was arrested in 2010 after a police officer posed as a busboy at a birthday party he was attending and managed to get DNA samples from dishes and utensils. Police then discovered a collection of
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., CALIF., USA
Aug. 24 NEBRASKA: Bruning confident state can restore death penalty Nebraska's attorney general says the state's corrections department has been too busy dealing with other problems to focus on resolving drug shortages that have halted executions in the state, which hasn't carried out the death penalty in 17 years. Attorney General Jon Bruning told The Associated Press he's confident Nebraska will resume executions but it could be years before officials can work out a new approach using different drugs or a new supplier. He notes the corrections department has been busy with other issues, including questions over the early release of some inmates. Nebraska lost its only approved method to carry out executions when its supply of one drug used in the process expired in December. Bruning says the state can manufacture the missing drug or change its execution protocol (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Erin Corwin Murder: Suspected Killer Admits He Searched for 'How to Dispose' of Body Christopher Lee, the former Marine accused of murdering Erin Corwin, told investigators that he searched the Internet for how to dispose of a human body, arrest records reveal. The revelation is just part of the evidence that San Bernardino County prosecutors have amassed against Lee, 24, who police contend was having an affair with Corwin and killed her out of fear his wife would learn of the relationship. Several days before her disappearance, Corwin, 19, told a friend that she and Lee were planning on taking a special trip together, according to court documents. An additional murder charge might be filed against Lee pending the outcome of Corwin's autopsy, which won't be finalized for the next 4 to 6 weeks. There's still an ongoing investigation to determine if she was pregnant at the time of the murder, San Bernardino District Attorney Michael Ramos tells PEOPLE. If we find that to be true and the fetus was far enough along, there could be another kind of murder charge filed. Corwin's body was located at the bottom of a 125-foot gold-mine shaft on Sunday, seven weeks after her husband, Marine Cpl. Jon Corwin, reported her missing. Detectives also discovered .22-caliber casings and pieces of rebar at the mine shaft that matched those found in Lee's Jeep. Lee, who is awaiting extradition from Alaska, where he recently moved with his wife and daughter, told police he was collecting tires on the morning Corwin disappeared. Detectives found a tire at the mine shaft. A witness also informed investigators that Lee asked him the best way to dispose of a human body, according to court documents. The authorities are also curious to learn whether Lee's wife, Nichole, may have played a role in the murder. Investigators would like to interview her at some point, says Cynthia Bachman with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, to determine her involvement, if any. Prosecutors are still a couple months away from deciding whether or not they'll ask for the death penalty for Lee, added Ramos. I was only able to speak with him briefly the day before he waived extradition, Lee's lawyer David Kaloyanides told The Desert Sun. He's not pleased that the case has gone in this direction, but seems to be doing okay. USA: Government's ultimate power: Executing Americans, with atrocities I have been reporting for years on the kinds of executions that led Justice Harry Blackmun to declare in a Feb.22, 1994, dissent (Callins v. Collins) that he would no longer vote for the death penalty. The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution. And Justice William Brennan told me more than once: I can't believe that the leader of the free world is going to keep on executing people. I still believe that eventually we become more civilized. It would be horrible if we didn't. In addition to the increasing revelations that some prisoners on death row are innocent, there is the increasing shock - and I mean shock - of how some states carry out executions with the approval of the courts, including our highest court. I knew Justice Brennan well, and I have no doubt how he would react to this July 24 press release from the always-carefully documented Washington, D.C.-based Constitution Project: Yesterday, Joseph R. Wood III was pronounced dead after a nearly two-hour long execution by the state of Arizona. Media witnesses, some of whom have observed previous executions, reported that Wood gasped for air more than 600 times during the execution. The process was so prolonged that Wood's attorneys filed for a stay of execution in the midst of it, which was then rendered moot once Wood was pronounced dead (Transparency Needed Before Executions
