March 29 PENNSYLVANIA: Rights Row Over Septuagenarian Facing Death Penalty A 70-year-old woman from Pennsylvania known for her delicious cookies faces execution by lethal injection for allegedly bludgeoning her 84-year-old neighbour to death with a hammer. The case has provoked outrage from human rights groups, who argue that she is too old for the death penalty. Kathy MacClellan lived a short walk from Marguerite Eyer, the alleged victim, in a community of prefabricated houses called Hickory Hills. Residents, most of them elderly, have to undergo a background check and crime was almost unheard of until Eyer, who lived alone, was found bleeding to death on her kitchen floor, alleging that "Kathy Mac ... did it with a hammer." Amnesty International has launched an urgent appeal for MacClellan, originally from the Netherlands, saying that prosecutors are barred by international law from seeking the death penalty because of her age. MacClellans lawyers are investigating a mental health defence she was found lying in the foetal position outside the dead womans home, allegedly with blood on her face, hair and trousers. Prosecutors say that they plan to seek the death penalty, claiming that she was motivated by greed and that the attack was unusually vicious. Ms Paula Roscioli, first deputy district attorney for Northampton County, Pennsylvania, said: "The defendant didnt just strike the victim once, causing her immediate death; she struck her at least 37 times with the claw end of a hammer, and this victim lived for a significant period of time in excruciating pain." Mr John Morganelli, the district attorney, said: "I was shocked when I saw the photos of this womans face. It was unrecognisable." He said that it was the most brutal killing he had seen in 13 years in the job. Activists are bracing themselves for what would be one of the most controversial capital murder trials since the death penalty was reintroduced here in 1977. Former President Jimmy Carter signed a convention that year restricting executions to offenders aged between 18 and 70, but the Senate has never ratified it. Opponents of the death penalty hope that the case will prompt the Supreme Court to act as it did recently by banning executions of juvenile offenders and the mentally retarded. (source: The London Times) IOWA: Rants won't bring up death penalty bill in House Iowa House Speaker Christopher Rants said Monday it's unlikely he would allow the House to consider reinstating the death penalty in Iowa even after the alleged kidnapping and murder of a Cedar Rapids girl last week. "Frankly, I think it would be hard to pass in a narrowly divided House," said Rants, R-Sioux City. He said he also doubts it could get the votes in the Senate, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. With a month to go in the Legislative session, no bills instituting the death penalty have gained committee approval ahead of a funnel deadline, and Rants said he doesn't see one moving forward. The last time lawmakers took the death penalty issue all the way to the floor for debate was in 1995. The measure was approved 54-44 in the House but defeated in the Senate on a 39-11 vote after an emotional debate. The issue is being stirred up again after prosecutors charged 37-year-old Roger Paul Bentley of Brandon with 1st-degree murder and 1st-degree kidnapping in the slaying of 10-year-old Jetseta Gage. Bentley, a registered sex offender, is accused of abducting the girl Thursday night from her home in Cedar Rapids. Police found her body the next day at a mobile home where Bentley had been staying in rural Johnson County. Rants said a number of lawmakers have urged him to take up a debate on the death penalty after the girl's death, but said he's not inclined to do so this year, even though he personally supports it. Instead, lawmakers will move forward with legislation this week that will tighten restrictions on sex offenders and seeks to improve Iowa's sex offender registry. The courts struck down an Iowa law that prohibited registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or registered day care center, finding it was unconstitutional. Rants said lawmakers will look at retooling that law to impose a 1,000-foot limit instead in the hopes it would survive a court challenge. Rep. Joe Hutter, R-Bettendorf, is co-sponsoring a bill that would create a team to review Iowa's sex offender registry laws and give lawmakers a report by the end of the year. "This was a concern of the legislators on both sides before this happened," said Hutter, a retired police officer. Rep. Jim Van Fossen, R-Davenport, said the Cedar Rapids case and others like it across the nation make the argument that Iowa needs a death penalty as a deterrent. "In situations like this, I think this is a perfect case for the death penalty," Van Fossen said. Van Fossen is also a retired police officer. Rep. Don Shoultz, D-Waterloo, has been through more than 1 death penalty debate during his 22 years in the Legislature. "Many times it has been right after some heinous crime of this type particularly involving young people or small girls, and everybody feels very emotional about it," Shoultz said. But Shoultz said he feels Iowa's life sentence without the possibility of parole, which is what Bentley is facing if he's convicted, amounts to the same thing as a death penalty. "In Iowa, I know it sounds trite to say, but we already have a death penalty, and I don't think people understand that," Shoultz said. (source: Sioux City Journal) NEVADA: High court rejects death penalty filing in Las Vegas slaying case The Nevada Supreme Court has rejected Clark County prosecutors' notices of intent to seek the death penalty against a man accused of murdering a Las Vegas prostitute. The state high court ruled Monday that the Clark County district attorney's office twice failed to properly summarize witnesses, documents and other means by which prosecutors intend to try Armando Cortinas. The ruling means the district attorney's office will need to revise and resubmit a third notice before Cortinas' trial on charges in the strangulation of Kathryn Kercher. Her body was found in the desert on April 20, 2003. A Clark County grand jury heard testimony that Kercher went to Cortinas' home, where he paid her $150 for sexual favors, choked her, put her body in the trunk of her car and drove to the desert. Cortinas is also accused of stabbing Kercher in the back and taking the $150 and two diamond earrings. In their notice to seek the death penalty, prosecutors said the murder was committed during a robbery, was committed without apparent motive and involved torture or mutilation. The Supreme Court rejected that filing and a second notice of intent to seek the death penalty, saying prosecutors did not summarize the substance of its evidence and identify specific witnesses. The court also said Clark County District Judge Kathy Hardcastle "manifestly abused" her discretion in refusing to grant the motions of Cortinas to strike the state's notice of intent to seek the death penalty. ***************************** Death penalty to be sought in Las Vegas slaying of Fla. tourist Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty against 2 men charged with killing a Florida tourist during a robbery in Las Vegas in January. The Clark County district attorney's office filed a notice of intent March 8 to seek the death penalty against Charles Anthony Walker, 26, and Shawn Lewis White, 21, in the slaying of Thomas Latimer, 49, of Maitland, Fla., officials said Tuesday. Latimer was in Las Vegas for a convention when authorities say he was shot Jan. 21 outside a McDonald's east of the Las Vegas Strip. He died the next day. A witness testified at a preliminary hearing in February that Walker stepped from a car and shot Latimer twice as Latimer struggled with White. Authorities allege the robbery was part of a string of holdups by Walker and White in and around Las Vegas. The case is due for trial in August in Clark County District Court. Walker was being held at the Clark County jail on $114,000 bail. His lawyer, Joseph Sciscento, called the slaying a tragedy, but said it was not a death penalty case. White was being held on $69,000 bail. His lawyer, Special Public Defender David Schieck, said White wasn't the shooter and had no control over the weapon used in the slaying. (source for both: Associated Press) USA: Life and Death Could Bind Left and Right----Political Adversaries May Find Some Common Ground On Abortion, Capital Punishment On the surface, the fight over Terri Schiavo has seemed an exemplar of America's polarized politics, pitting Republican conservatives against Democratic liberals, the religious right against the legal system. But could the dispute point toward issues where the nation's ideological camps might find common ground? Some on both sides say it could, perhaps on capital punishment. Last week, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who fought for reinsertion of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, said he was re-evaluating his position on the death penalty. His fellow conservative Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is co-sponsoring legislation with Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts that he hopes will reduce the numbers of aborted Down syndrome fetuses, says he is also open to the possibility of narrowing the range of crimes for which the death penalty would apply. Linking a reduction in the number of abortions with fewer executions "would be a great discussion to have," observes Mr. Brownback. Marshall Wittmann, a former aide to Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona who is now at the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group, adds, "There's room for a new consensus position that both values life and attempts to find an activist government role that nurtures life." Each party has juggled positions on such issues that the other regards as conflicting and hypocritical. Many Democratic liberals oppose capital punishment, arguing that state-sanctioned killing is wrong, while favoring abortion rights on the grounds that fetuses aren't human beings. Many Republican conservatives, on the other hand, oppose abortion on sanctity-of-life grounds while arguing that society is justified in ending the lives of killers. Activists on each side are essential elements of the major parties' bases. But Republican and Democratic politicians lately have seen more incentives for striking a different tone. After their 2004 defeat, Democrats have been looking for ways to project a more moderate message about their values. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the consensus front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, recently drew attention with a speech emphasizing the tragedy of abortion, though she didn't abandon support for abortion rights. For their part, Republicans have echoed Pope John Paul II's invocation of a "culture of life" in their calls for curbing abortion, as well as for continued nourishment of Terri Schiavo. But they have also seen the Catholic Church amplify its opposition to the death penalty at a time when Catholics loom increasingly large as a swing voting constituency. In talks and writings, including a 1995 encyclical on "the incomparable worth of the human person," the Pope has exhorted valuing life from conception to natural death, by opposing, among other things, "any type of murder," abortion, euthanasia and genocide. "We cannot defend life by taking life," Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, declared at a news conference last week. Independent pollster John Zogby released a survey showing the proportion of American Catholics favoring the death penalty has fallen to 48% from 68%, and the proportion who strongly support it has declined to 20% from 40%. A majority of Americans support capital punishment. But after cresting at around 80% in the early 1990s following decades of rising crime, that majority has shrunk. Analysts attribute the decline in part to receding crime rates and in part to technological advances that have helped exonerate some death-row inmates through use of DNA evidence. Then-Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois in early 2000 that is still in effect. President Bush, who presided over 152 executions in his 6 years as Texas governor, hasn't come anywhere close to that position. But in this year's State of the Union address -- invoking the cause of "equal justice" -- he backed "dramatically expanding" use of DNA evidence and funding for better training of defense lawyers in capital cases. Ralph Reed, a former Christian Coalition leader now running as a Republican candidate for Georgia lieutenant governor, says emphasis on the "culture of life" in the Schiavo case isn't enough to goad many conservatives to go further than that. But Mr. Brownback, who has championed other unconventional conservative causes such as a crusade against international sex trafficking, says there is room for fresh debate over how widely the death penalty should be applied. Executing those whose life would threaten others even if imprisoned, such as Osama bin Laden, can be justified, he says. But the Kansas Republican regards the case for executing others as far less clear. The U.S. Supreme Court, a majority of whose members have been appointed by Republican presidents, fueled the debate with its recent ruling that the death penalty is unconstitutional for crimes committed by juveniles. At the other end of the spectrum, some liberals see little reason for Democratic politicians to move toward the center, and point to polls showing that most Americans oppose the decision by the White House and Congress to become involved in the Schiavo case. "This particular issue is one, like stem-cell research, where the hard-line conservatives Bush is catering to are completely out of step with public opinion," says Ruy Teixeira, co-author of "The Emerging Democratic Majority." "People don't like religion [or] ideology -- whether it's called 'the culture of life' or something else -- messing with scientific progress and medical decisions," he said. Yet Mr. Wittmann, of the Democratic Leadership Council, says shifting attitudes on the death penalty and the left's attempt to recalibrate its abortion stance could begin to narrow "a fundamental divide in American politics on the nature of life." Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a disability-rights advocate who aligned with Republicans on the Schiavo case, cited his belief that "every precaution should be taken to learn and respect [patients'] desires regarding the removal of life supports." Ms. Schiavo's husband says his wife, who has been severely brain-damaged for 15 years, wouldn't want to be kept alive in her debilitated condition; Ms. Schiavo's parents have fought to have their daughter's feeding tube reinserted. Mr. Zogby, the pollster, says the "culture of life" gives foes of the death penalty a chance to justify a stance at odds with majority opinion, so long as they emphasize that the alternative punishment for heinous crimes is life imprisonment. "There's an opening here if Democrats want to take it," he says. One test case may come this fall in the off-year Virginia governor's race. The Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine, opposes the death penalty, which Republican strategist Chris LaCivita says makes him too "liberal" for a state Mr. Bush carried last year. But Mr. Kaine cites his Catholic faith in opposing capital punishment and abortion, though he vows to uphold laws under which both are practiced. He opposes public funding of abortion, and favors parental notification in abortions for minors. "The political parties stake out the extremes" on "culture of life" issues, the lieutenant governor says in an interview, but "the populace is more in the middle." Political handicapper Charlie Cook rates Mr. Kaine's race against likely Republican rival Jerry Kilgore as a tossup. (source: Wall Street Journal)
