-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Abolish-l March 5, 2000---- TEXAS: Roughly 200 death penalty opponents picketed the Governor's Mansion Saturday, calling on Gov. George W. Bush to halt executions in Texas. Protesters with signs that read "Stop Bush's killing machine" and bearing photos of Betty Lou Beets, a convicted killer executed this month, circled the mansion for more than an hour. The protesters want a moratorium on capital punishment, supporting a proposal by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., that would issue a 7-year federal moratorium on executions throughout the country. "Texas' leadership on the death penalty in the United States is barbarous," said the Rev. Chuck Merrill, a minister at University United Methodist Church in Austin. "As a citizen concerned about healthy public policy, I think the state holding someone down and killing them is a mistake. Only God has the authority to take life." Bush has presided over 122 executions since he took office. Though he cannot pardon a death row inmate, under state law he may grant a one-time, 30-day stay of execution. Protests around the mansion have become commonplace in Austin, where groups often hold vigils on the nights of execution. Though Bush rarely addresses the issue of capital punishment, Carl Villarreal, an organizer of Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said he believes the cause is making headway. "I think Bush feels some pressure," Villarreal said. "I think there's more political outcry, at least in other states," he said, adding that he expects California voters to make capital punishment a larger issue in the coming months. Villarreal criticized Bush for vetoing a bill last year he said would have helped indigent defendants get better representation. But the bill in question would have had no effect on death penalty cases, said Bush spokeswoman Linda Edwards. The proposal shifted authority for appointing public defenders to county commissioners instead of judges, she said. "Governor Bush did not want to take the appointment authority away from judges who are sworn to uphold the law and know best who are the most qualified attorneys," Edwards said. The bill in question pertained to the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, not the Penal Code, which provides for capital punishment cases. Others criticized Texas' stance on the death penalty in light of Illinois Gov. George Ryan's decision to halt executions there. In Illinois, more death sentences have been overturned than carried out. Texas officials have said their criminal justice system is fair. "I'm sick and tired of the way Texas is dealing out death in our state in a manner that is unfair, unjust and certainly without compassion and mercy," Jay Jacobson, director of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said to the crowd Saturday. (source: Houston Chronicle) CALIFORNIA: Texas Gov. George W. Bush, seemingly headed for victory in "Super Tuesday's" Republican primary sweepstakes, drew death penalty opponents and other protesters at a California rally on Sunday. About 20 chanting, placard-waving activists briefly disrupted Bush's speech, demanding a moratorium on executions in his home state. Outside, about a dozen people picketed on behalf of rival John McCain, holding signs accusing Bush of lying about the Arizona senator's record. Bush stopped speaking momentarily, but did not engage them. Security officials quickly hustled the group out of the room amid pushing and shoving, while Bush resumed his stump speech without acknowledging their presence. "It didn't bother me that they were there," Bush told reporters later. "I believe in freedom of speech." Last week, Texas executed its 10th person this year and the 209th since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982, 6 years after the U.S. Supreme Court scrapped a national death penalty ban. Texas leads the nation in executions since the restoration of the death penalty. Since Bush -- like McCain and President Clinton a death penalty supporter -- took office in January 1995, 122 people have been executed in his state. He has commuted a death sentence to life in prison in only one case. Bush, who was battling flu, was on the defensive on Sunday after McCain accused him of sacrificing his honor to win the Republican presidential nomination. Asked if Bush had run an honorable campaign, McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press," 'I can't say that with things that have happened ... It's not a campaign that I would run and nor would I ever want to look back and say I ran that kind of a campaign." (source: Reuters) GEORGIA: A cop killer has been sentenced to die for fatally shooting a city police officer and severely wounding another. A stone-faced Gregory Lawler, 47, stood alongside his attorneys Friday but did not react as the jury foreman read the verdict calling for the death penalty. It's the 1st capital punishment sentence by a Fulton County jury in 4 years. The family of Officer John Sowa, who died instantly Oct. 12, 1999 after being shot by Lawler, and Officer Pat Cocciolone, who was wounded and suffered brain damage from a bullet to the head, cried as the verdicts were read and each jury member was polled by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Manis. The trial has been wrought with emotion. An officer's feeling of helplessness Cocciolone, 40, who recalled the shooting in great detail though she is unable to remember simple things like her middle name, broke down when she described the night she and her partner were shot by Lawler as they tried to bring his drunken girlfriend home safely. At one point, the prosecution wheeled in 15 weapons, mostly vintage military rifles, owned by Lawler and frequently brandished them during testimony. Cocciolone described watching Sowa die and feeling helpless. She could not reach her shoulder microphone to call for assistance. Family members said the verdicts brought them closure. Atlanta Police Chief Beverly Harvard issued a statement after the verdicts. "No verdict can return Officer Sowa or heal Officer Cocciolone. My heart goes out to the families of these 2 sterling officers." (source: APB News) USA: Texas Gov. George W. Bush is confident that Betty Lou Beets, who was executed by lethal injection in his state last week, was guilty of the murder of which she was convicted, and there is no DNA evidence to contradict him. But there have been enough overturned-by-DNA convictions in the last decade that Bush and other governors should demand a higher standard of assurance in capital cases. That desire for greater certainty before a state kills a condemned person is what impelled Illinois Gov. George Ryan to declare a moratorium earlier this year on executions in his state, while he studies why there have been more death-row exonerations (13) than executions (12) there since 1977. Ryan's stand was lauded last month by President Clinton, who said that death-penalty supporters like himself and Ryan "have an especially heavy obligation to see that in cases where it is applied, there is no question of whether the guilt was there." To that end, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has introduced legislation in Congress that, if passed, would address the concerns of Clinton and Ryan and would reassure the public that states like Texas, which has executed 121 people during Bush's tenure, are doing everything possible to avoid that most mortal of state sins: the execution of an innocent person. Leahy's bill, the Innocence Protection Act of 2000, cites the dramatic results of DNA testing in criminal investigations over the last decade and aims to make DNA testing available where appropriate. In federal cases, Leahy's bill would require the preservation of biological materials from a criminal case "for such period of time as any person remains incarcerated in connection with that case . . ." With regard to state cases, which comprise the vast majority of death- penalty cases, the bill would amend federal grant programs so that the states also preserve such biological materials. Also, the bill would prevent states from resorting to technicalities to duck requested DNA testing: "No state shall rely on time limit or procedural default to deny access to DNA results." The concern about killing the wrong man or woman has grown largely due to the work of the Innocence Project, which has helped inmates gain access to DNA testing that has resulted in dozens of exonerations. In their recent book, Actual Innocence, the project directors write, "In what seems like a flash, DNA tests performed during the last decade of the century not only have freed 64 individuals but have exposed a system of law that has been far too complacent about its fairness and accuracy." Sen. Leahy aims to erase that complacency with his legislation, and one can hardly argue with his eloquence on this subject: "People of good conscience can and will disagree on the morality of the death penalty. But I am confident that we should all be able to agree that a system that may sentence one innocent person to death for every seven it executes has no place in a civilized society, much less in 21st-century America." (source: Salt Lake Tribune) USA/EUROPE: Italy may seem an improbable place to find an outpouring of sympathy for the likes of Odell Barnes and Betty Lou Beets -- 2 killers recently executed in Texas. Yet over the last few weeks, many Italians embraced Barnes and Beets as hapless victims of a vindictive and amoral U.S. justice system. "Italians are emotional people, and if they see what they believe is an injustice, it makes them even more emotional," said Giovanni Gambini, a Rome-based psychologist. "It's a country that thinks with its heart." That emotion was apparent in the days leading up to the two executions in Huntsville. During the seven-day span that ended Wednesday, Beets was executed for the 1983 murder of her 5th husband, and Barnes was put to death for the 1989 slaying of a Wichita Falls woman. Leading Italian newspapers splashed stories about both Barnes and Beets on their front pages, and one called capital punishment "a barbaric American ritual." Officials at the Vatican and at the top reaches of the Italian government blasted the United States for continuing to execute criminals. People elsewhere in Europe have spoken out against the use of capital punishment in the United States. But nowhere, perhaps, has the sentiment against the death penalty been more visible than in Italy. "America is a leader in so many ways, and yet this is as shocking to us as if the country were condoning slavery or torture," Giancarlo Tavoli, a member of the ruling coalition in the Italian Parliament, told reporters a few days before Barnes was put to death. "The U.S. is a big, powerful country, but it has no right to play God." After learning of the deaths of both Barnes and Beets, the Italian government bathed the Roman Coliseum in golden lights in keeping with its year-old practice of acknowledging news of executions carried out anywhere in the world. In Rome, word of Barnes' death came at 1 a.m. local time Thursday. Despite the hour, about 500 people gathered near the Coliseum to protest. Many wept. "I am crying for his soul and also for the souls of the leaders who acted as if they were God when they made this happen," said 22-year-old Francesca Ottina. "What is next in America?" Ottina asked. "Genocide? Torture? Slavery?" One reason why so many Italians are aware of executions in the United States may be the advertising campaign launched in December by Italian clothing designer Benetton. The ads show the faces and names of U.S. death row inmates along with the words "Sentenced to Death." "I didn't even know the U.S. was still conducting executions until a few months ago," said 18-year-old Mariarosa Fretelli at a recent demonstration against the death penalty in Rome. "But now that I know, I just think it's barbaric." Experts say that when it comes to capital punishment, history has taught different lessons to Europeans than to people in the United States. "Europe has a long history of public executions -- people burned at the stake, killed by the guillotine," said Alan Epstein, a U.S.-born historian and author who now is based in Rome. "It doesn't take a lot of that for a society to reach its limit." In the United States, Epstein pointed out, executions are carried out behind closed doors. "I would guess that a great many Americans would change their minds about it if they had to watch an execution first hand," he said. Epstein also said that many Americans have more faith in their government than Italians do. "Americans are sometimes cynical about politicians, but they have a basic faith that the system works," he said. "Italians have very little faith in their government, and the idea of handing the government the power over life and death must seem absolutely horrifying to them." Antonio Firelli, an expert in Roman Catholic history who is based in Vatican City, pointed out that European countries are much older than the United States, a fact that could help explain the divergent attitudes toward capital punishment. "When I was a young man, I was more uncompromising," Firelli said. "The older I got, the more that changed. Perhaps it's no coincidence that that kind of youthful passion is found more in America than Europe, where civilization thrived for many hundreds of years before it began in America. In America, something is black or white, guilty or innocent." Firelli also noted that 85 percent of Italy's population is Catholic. "The Catholic Church teaches its followers to turn the other cheek, and it talks about the virtue of forgiveness," Firelli said. "The death penalty is the opposite of that." Epstein, the U.S. historian, said that European arguments against capital punishment "invariably discuss the morals of the situation." At last week's protest against Barnes' execution near the Coliseum, for example, several people carried signs that read: "Forgive them, they know not what they do." "But if the alternative is 40 or 50 years in a tiny isolated cell with no chance for parole, it's fair to wonder which option is really more moral," Epstein said. (source: Houston Chronicle) SOUTH CAROLINA: In Anderson, attorneys for a Seneca man accused in a 1997 triple homicide say they'll show their client acted in self-defense. Troy Alan Burkhart, 32, turned himself in to Seneca police wearing a blood-soaked shirt shortly after the shootings on Nov. 17, 1997. "He has waited a long time to explain what happened and why," a statement from Burkhart's defense team Steve Haigler and Michael Glenn and former Seneca mayor and attorney Johnny Fields said. "The fact of the matter is that Troy was defending his life just as anybody would have done under similar circumstances." The death penalty trial is set to start Monday. Brothers Shane Walters, 27, and Stacy Walters, 20, both of Seneca, and 21-year-old Sonya Ann Cann of Anderson were found shot to death in a kudzu patch in a remote area of Anderson County. Burkhart reportedly admitted his involvement in the shootings, but police and prosecutors have said little about the incident. Prosecutors also have asked the victims' families not to comment, citing ethics rules and fears that pretrial publicity may make it hard to seat an impartial jury. The 3 victims, who had been friends for several years but had only recently become acquainted with Burkhart, apparently had been out on a 4-wheeling and deer-spotting trip before they were shot. (source: The State) Rick Halperin AI-Texas </XMP> ===== <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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