March 28 CALIFORNIA: High court to hear California appeal of death sentence reversal The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear California's appeal of a lower court ruling that overturned the death sentence for a Kern County man convicted of killing a woman 23 years ago. Ronald Sanders, 52, was convicted of clubbing to death Janice Allen, 52, of Bakersfield. She and her boyfriend were bound and gagged when Sanders robbed the apartment for cocaine. The boyfriend survived. Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Sanders' jury might have been improperly instructed, leading to the death sentence. The court said jurors were asked, among other things, to vote for execution if they found the murder "heinous, atrocious and cruel." The appeals court said the jury instruction was too vague and required jurors to "guess at its meaning." The San Francisco-based appeals court, however, upheld the murder conviction by the same Kern County jury. That means Sanders, who is on death row in San Quentin State Prison, will remain in prison for life unless the Supreme Court rules in the prosecution's favor or authorities convince a new jury to sentence him to death. The high court agreed to take the case without commenting. Sanders' attorney, Nina Rivkind, said she was disappointed with the Supreme Court decision. "I think the decision of the 9th Circuit was correct, and I'm looking forward to convincing the Supreme Court of that," Rivkind said. The state Attorney General's office has 45 days to file papers with the court, she said. State Deputy Attorney General Patrick Whalen said prosecutors are looking forward to bringing the case before the high court. "It gives us another opportunity to reverse the 9th circuit's decision," Whalen said. The case is Brown v. Sanders, 04-980. (source: Associated Press) CONNECTICUT: Lawmakers say votes are not there to end death penalty A bill that would abolish Connecticut's death penalty weeks before the state's 1st execution in 45 years has no chance of surviving a vote Wednesday in the state House, supporters acknowledged Monday. The bill, which was approved Monday by the Appropriations Committee on a 28-21 vote, would replace the death sentence with life in prison without parole. Its passage would halt the execution of serial killer Michael Ross, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on May 11. Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a death penalty opponent, said early vote counts indicate there are only about 50 to 55 votes in the 151-member House for outlawing executions. Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell has said she would veto any bill that abolishes the death penalty. That would mean the opponents would have to muster a 2-3 majority in both the House and Senate to override Rell's veto. The bill's supporters take solace that it has made it this far. Previous legislation to abolish the death penalty has died in committee. "Legislators actually want this vote to be heard," Harrison said. "For the 1st time, this is a real serious discussion." If the death penalty is abolished, Ross and the 6 other men on death row will have their sentences commuted to life in prison without the chance for parole. According to the legislature's nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis, that would save the state at least $1 million. Preperations for Ross' execution have already cost the state over $292,00. The state's Division of Public Defender Services spends about $1 million each year to defend people who face possible execution. OFA said the state could also save some money by moving the men on death row to other maximum security prisons. It costs about $66,000 a year to house an inmate at Northern Correctional Institution because of the additional staff assigned to handle problem prisoners. It costs about $35,000 at other prisons. ************************** Death penalty opponents demand rules from parole board The state Board of Pardons and Parole should create regulations before New England's first execution in 45 years is carried out, death penalty opponents told a judge Monday. Members of the Missionary Society of Connecticut want the board to, among other things, govern how Connecticut will allow condemned inmates to waive their rights to appeal death sentences. The board was created by the General Assembly last year and met in October for the 1st time. Serial killer Michael Ross, who said he will forgo further appeals, is scheduled to die by injection May 11. His would be the 1st execution in New England since 1960. "We expect our government to obey the law," said society lawyer James Wade. "The law says the Board of Pardons and Parole is required to adopt regulations." "If you're going to kill people, you've got to set up regulations," Wade said. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal argued that policies are in place and that the Missionary Society, an arm of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, has no legal standing to intervene in the Ross case. "Mr. Wade's argument is very novel," Blumenthal told Superior Court Judge Robert E. Beach Jr. Ross is on death row for the murders of four young women in eastern Connecticut in the early 1980s. His arrest in 1984 ended a three-year spree of attacks that stretched from Connecticut to New York, North Carolina, Illinois and Ohio. He raped most of his victims, and killed 8 of them, 6 in Connecticut. Monday's arguments were similar to arguments Wade and Blumenthal had before the state Supreme Court in January, when Ross was scheduled to die. The execution was postponed after a federal judge threatened the law license of Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding, if Ross died without adequate representation. In February, a state judge appointed a special counsel to investigate claims that Ross is mentally incompetent to call off his appeals. Ross was not present in court on Monday, though Paulding observed the 90-minute proceedings. "He's really not interested in this," Paulding said. "He's not particularly interested in what the policies may or may not be." Blumenthal said Wade's arguments could slow or even halt Ross' execution, which he said was imposed through lawful procedures. Wade said he was not seeking to halt the legal proceedings involving Ross. "We're not trying to stop a process," he said. "We're trying to start a process." (source for both: Associated Press) TENNESSEE: U.S. Supreme Court rejects death penalty appeal by Alley The U-S Supreme Court today refused to hear the case of a Tennessee death row inmate who has exhausted most of his appeals. The court didn't comment in rejecting the case of Sedley Alley. He was sentenced to die for the 1985 brutal rape and murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Suzanne M. Collins at the Millington Naval Air Station outside Memphis. He was scheduled to be executed in June but received a stay from a federal judge in Memphis to await a federal appeals court ruling in another case. The Tennessee Supreme Court declined in January to set a new execution date for Alley because his appeal was still pending in federal courts. (source: Associated Press) COLORADO: Court overturns Harlan death penalty A convicted murderer was spared execution today when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled a jury's death penalty recommendation was tainted because jurors consulted a Bible during deliberations. The court ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. "The Supreme Court finds that it can no longer say the death penalty verdict was not influenced by passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor," the court said in a 47-page ruling. The court said Bible passages, including the verse that commands "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," could lead jurors to vote for death. Harlan's attorneys challenged the sentence after discovering 5 jurors had looked up Bible verses, copied some of them down and then talked about them behind closed doors. Prosecutors said jurors should be allowed to refer to the Bible or other religious texts during deliberations. Harlan was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder and rape of Rhonda Maloney and the shooting of Jaquie Creazzo, a Good Samaritan who tried to come to Maloney's aid when she escaped from Harlan's car. Creazzo was paralyzed in the attack. An Adams County judge had overturned the death penalty after learning of the role the Bible played in the jury room, but the state had appealed. (source: Rocky Mountain News) NEW YORK: Breeding Psychotics As the State Legislature considers reinstating the death penalty, lost in the debate is any mention of the appalling conditions that are often inflicted on prisoners sentenced to death. Since the death penalty was re-enacted during Gov. George E. Pataki's 1st term, seven people have been condemned to die, but none have been executed. Prisoners on death row have been kept in virtual solitary confinement while they await the outcome of their appeals, exoneration or execution. A recent study by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, of which I am a co-author, has found that the conditions on New York's death row are among the harshest in the nation. According to the study, each condemned man in New York is locked in his isolated 78 square-foot space for 23 hours each day. Each cell contains only a toilet, a sink, a bed, a mattress and a pillow. The cells are not air-conditioned and fans are not permitted. All meals are given to inmates in their cells during the daytime shift, which means that inmates go more than 16 hours without food. The inmates cannot see other prisoners from their cells and are not permitted to hold prison jobs, attend programs or engage in organized activities. When a prisoner is allowed out of his cell for his one hour a day, he is confined to a solitary cage of about 2,000 square feet, aptly called a dog run. Compounding the isolation, visits are greatly restricted and take place in booths separated by a plexiglass barrier that prevents physical contact. Inmates are limited to 2 10-minute phone calls per week. Judge James L. Dennis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, has said that restrictive death row conditions are "enough to weaken even the strongestindividual." Psychologists who have studied such conditions have concluded that they can lead to severe psychological consequences, including withdrawal, hopelessness, hallucinations, aggression, rage, paranoia and psychosis. Death row inmates who may be rendered insane by these conditions may no longer be deemed competent when the time comes to execute them. There is also the possibility that inmates will be driven by these conditions to abandon their appeals and volunteer for execution, a phenomenon that occurs with more than 10 % of all inmates on death row nationally. And, of course, some prisoners subjected to these conditions might actually be innocent - last month, an Ohio inmate who was convicted in 1985 became the 119th innocent person to be freed from death row since 1973. Not only are conditions harsh, but the state is also highly secretive about how it runs death row. The Department of Correctional Services has refused to open death row to inspection even to representatives of the New York City bar association asserting undefined security concerns. When the death penalty law was passed, the Legislature and Governor Pataki gave the department the authority to close death row to inspection by judges, members of the Legislature, district attorneys, ministers in towns where prisons are located and even by the governor himself. Inmates on death row are not the only ones who must endure these horrible conditions. New York confines approximately 5,000 other inmates by locking them into their cells for 23 hours a day. Approximately 2,800 of these inmates are housed in disciplinary lockdown units, some of which approach the severity and degree of isolation of the notorious "supermax" prisons in other states. The conditions in these units are analogous to those on death row. The toll exacted by these conditions has not been fully calculated, but some things are known. A recent review of public data by lawyers from the Prisoners' Rights Project of the New York Legal Aid Society found that from 1998 to 2001, 30 percent to 50 percent of prison suicides occurred within these harsh confinement units, which house less than 8 percent of the total prison population. There is never justification for prison conditions that cause mental torture. And it is a mistake to think that the conditions do not directly affect us. Many inmates will some day return to be our neighbors, some even from death row. New York State should not be in the business of creating dreadful conditions that breed psychotics who then return to society. Given the extreme conditions of death row, one might expect that the inmates held there are exceptionally dangerous. But they are not. The bar association study found that prisoners on death row are among New York's most cooperative inmates. From 1996, when New York's death row was established, to 2001, there was not a single reported incident of violence, an attempted escape or even a serious security violation, like the possession of a banned item that could be made into weapons. The time has come to correct these problems. No longer should any areas of the New York prison system be off limits to observers. Governor Pataki should ensure that state prisons, including death row, are open to inspection by responsible persons outside the system. And legislation should be enacted that ensures that the harsh isolation and brutal conditions that are inflicted on death row inmates are stopped. Whether or not the death penalty is reinstated in New York, death row conditions and the ill treatment of thousands of other inmates in supermax units need to be part of the debate. We cannot close our eyes to their suffering. The Legislature and the governor should immediately undertake reforms to ensure that New York State prisoners are no longer subjected to what is essentially state-sponsored torture. (source: Michael B. Mushlin is a professor at Pace Law School; Opinion, New York Times)
