April 15 TEXAS: Senate adds life without parole but eliminates life with parole----Compromise was 'the only way the bill could get out,' author says. Texans convicted of capital murder would never have a chance for parole under a bill approved Thursday by the Senate. After weeks of backroom wrangling, the Senate created the sentence of life without the chance of parole - but dropped life with parole - as a sentencing option. Juries could choose only between the death penalty and the new life-without-parole option. "3 options would be better, but this, frankly, is the only way the bill could get out," Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, the bill's author, said after the vote. "This was not my 1st choice." Supporters of Lucio's original bill decried Thursday's switch. "That's sick. It's inhumane. It shows the true character of prosecutors in Texas, who are just mean," said Will Harrell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. "People who wouldn't get the death penalty, who would've been eligible for parole someday, now won't ever get out of prison. That's not right." Keith Hampton, with the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said the change makes little sense. "We took something away from juries today," Hampton said. The bill now goes to the House, where it faces an uncertain future. In the past, the House has been unwilling to tinker with the current law. When the legislative session began in January, Senate Bill 60 had been viewed by many prison reform advocates as a way to make the Texas system a little less harsh. Thursday's change, ironically, could be viewed as making it even harsher. As filed, SB 60 would have added life without parole to the sentencing options in capital murder cases. It gained momentum in January, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the execution of murderers younger than 18, leaving life with the chance of parole after 40 years as the sole option for those defendants in Texas. Even so, after several big-city prosecutors declared war on the execution ban, the Senate in the past 2 weeks twice refused to consider SB 60, failing by one vote each time to bring up the proposal for consideration. Thursday's vote was considered do-or-die for the bill that had failed to make it into law in four previous legislative sessions in a state that for years has prided itself on its law-and-order, tough-on-criminals reputation. Of the 38 states with the death penalty, 17 have three sentencing options, and 19 have 2, but most of those include life with the possibility of parole as one. In Texas, capital killers currently can be eligible for parole only after they serve 40 years. After failing twice to get a vote, Lucio brought up his bill again shortly after lunch, as the Senate was concluding its daily calendar. Lucio conceded that while some prosecutors had agreed not to oppose the bill if it was changed to do away with the parole option for felons convicted of capital crimes, his preference was for 3 options. "Jurors need the fullest range of options," he said as the debate began. Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, immediately moved to amend the bill to obliterate all but its title. In its place, he substituted wording to abolish the parole option. "This leaves 2 choices," Ogden said. It was quickly approved. Lucio, appearing somewhat dejected by the change, nonetheless said he supported passage of the revised bill. But it will not resolve lingering issues over Texas' system of death penalty justice, Lucio told senators. "Three options or two, it is not life without parole that weakens our death penalty system; it is a growing lack of belief that our system is not fair. Nothing undermines people's support for the death penalty more than the concern that it is unfair," he said, citing "daily reports of wrongful convictions and tainted crime labs." "These are things that hurt our system, not whether we give jurors a new right, the right to sentence a person to life without parole," Lucio said. Even Ogden, in explaining his amendment, said he expects that the change to life without parole could result in fewer death sentences - something that Lucio said has not occurred in other states that adopted life without parole as an option to the death penalty. The final vote to approve the bill was 25-6. Opposing it were: Sens. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls; Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay; Mike Jackson, R-La Porte; Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville; Florence Shapiro, R-Plano; and Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. (source: Austin American-Statesman) SOUTH CAROLINA----impending execution Longworth to be executed Friday for Spartanburg cinema murders More than 14 years after the WestGate Mall cinema murders left Spartanburg reeling, the 2nd of 2 convicted killers will be put to death by lethal injection. Richard Longworth, 36, is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Friday for his role in a grisly crime that left 2 college students dead, shattered 2 families and still echoes throughout the Upstate city. On Jan. 7, 1991, Longworth and David Rocheville decided to take in a movie at the mall's theater. They watched only part of the film, though, before heading for the lobby, where they bumped into 19-year-old Alex Hopps. Hopps was working as an usher at the theater before heading back to the University of South Carolina, where he was studying international business. Longworth and Rocheville dragged Hopps outside. Longworth pinned Hopps to a bar, and Rocheville shot Hopps in the head, according to prosecutors. Longworth and Rocheville then convinced another employee, 24-year-old Todd Greene, to let them back inside. The pair ordered Greene to empty the safe and forced him into their van. After driving away from the theater, Longworth ordered Greene to get out, get on his knees and face forward. Rocheville then shot Greene in the head, according to court testimony. Rocheville was executed in 1999. Before his death, Rocheville blamed the murders on Longworth. He said his only crime was being too much of a coward to stop his co-defendant. Hopps' father plans to make the trip Friday from Spartanburg to Columbia's Broad River Correctional Facility to watch the second of his son's killers breathe his final breath. "I want to see the final chapter," Alexander Hopps said Thursday. "I want to see him dead." Hopps witnessed Rocheville's execution a little more than 5 years ago. "I had a great deal of satisfaction watching him die," he said. "I don't think the death penalty is a deterrent in any way. It's purely for the victims." But Longworth's death won't really change anything, Hopps said. It won't take any of the hurt away and it certainly won't bring Alex back. "You never forget when you lose a child," Hopps said. "I think about my son every day and what he would have been. It hurts to see his friends get married and have children. There are some very difficult times." The two families didn't know each other before the killings. But now Hopps said he speaks with Greene's mother every few months and have keep each other updated on changes in the legal process. She did not want to talk to a reporter before the execution. The current chief prosecutor in Spartanburg, Trey Gowdy, was working for a federal judge when Longworth and Rocheville committed their crimes in his hometown. His mother called to tell him about the killings. Like hearing that Ronald Reagan had been shot or that the space shuttle had exploded, Gowdy said no one in Spartanburg will ever forget where they were when they learned the mall and movie theater they grew up with was no longer safe. "WestGate Mall is a central part of our community," Gowdy said. "We all go there. We take our kids there...I took my girlfriend, now my wife, there." A day after a federal judge denied an appeal to spare Longworth's life, his lawyer filed another appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the execution. A decision on the appeal could come any time Thursday or Friday, said Mark Plowden with the state attorney general's office. That decision could also be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Plowden said. Longworth's attorney, David Belser of Asheville, N.C., did not return phone calls from the Associated Press. The drawn-out appeals are one thing Alexander Hopps will be glad to be done with if Longworth dies Friday. He'll be glad there are no more calls from lawyers telling him the latest step in the case. "It's something I want to happen," Hopps said Thursday. "If I could say one thing about tomorrow, I'd rather participate than observe." (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Death row can't be moved, report says----San Quentin called only permissible site State corrections officials looked at a "reasonable range of alternatives" to moving death row elsewhere, but state law requires it be at San Quentin State Prison, according to a report to be released today. "The California Penal Code requires that all male condemned inmates be housed at San Quentin and that all executions occur at San Quentin," says the 500-page final environmental impact report. "The California Department of Corrections has no authority to change this law." Because of that law, the report argues, any site other than San Quentin is illegal and thus "infeasible." Since the California Environmental Quality Act does not require analysis of "infeasible alternatives," the state could rule out ways to house condemned prisoners outside of Marin, according to the EIR. The report is the final document addressing potential environmental impacts of the planned $220 million death row facility. Despite opposition from many Marin residents and leaders, the state corrections department plans to begin construction of the maximum security facility this fall on 40 acres next to the existing 153-year-old prison along the bayfront near Larkspur Landing. Prison officials say the new death row is crucial because security at the aging prison's existing death row - originally meant to house 68 inmates and now home to more than 6,000 - is so inadequate as to be life-threatening. A team of medical experts this week released a scathing report on conditions at the entire San Quentin complex - including death row - saying it was dangerous to house new and sick inmates there. An advance copy of the final death row EIR was made available to the Independent Journal yesterday by a local agency for limited viewing only. The corrections department is scheduled to mail out copies today to several Marin public agencies, including San Rafael, Corte Madera, Larkspur and Marin County's Community Development Agency. The report contains the text of more than 100 comments from residents and public officials who either spoke at a Nov. 4 public hearing in Marin or who mailed in letters during the public comment period from Sept. 27 to Nov. 12. A quick scan yesterday found that most of those who commented were bitterly opposed to the new facility for a variety of reasons, including: - Adverse impacts to traffic, noise, views or habitats. - Economic feasibility. - Better uses for the land, including as a regional transit hub and deep water port. "It is hard to imagine a case where a better, more productive use of land exists than this one," writes Marin resident Carolyn Miller in a Nov. 9 letter contained in the EIR. "While locating a prison facility on the scenic shores of San Francisco Bay might have made sense during the mid-20th century, it seems almost irrational today." The new death row has support, however, from prison volunteers and prison neighbors in San Quentin Village who fear adverse traffic impacts from a transit village at the site. Leading the opposition, however, is Marin Supervisor Steve Kinsey, whose district includes San Quentin, and Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael. The two leaders are assembling a report to present to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's cabinet this month, seeking to persuade the governor to reconsider the project. Kinsey and Nation plan to offer an alternative housing plan for condemned inmates, including transferring the condemned inmates to other state prisons until all their appeals are exhausted. When they are scheduled to be executed, they would be transferred back to San Quentin. The leaders also plan to lay out strong economic arguments against building the new death row in Marin - including the fact that some 49 % of San Quentin's staff live in Solano County because housing prices are too high in Marin. "This (corrections) department must do a truly adequate cost analysis of this expansion, compared to the cost of adding onto an existing facility in a county where employment and construction costs are bound to be much lower," Miller writes. The report acknowledges some "significant" visual impacts, particularly to residents of Greenbrae Boardwalk, a housing community built on piles in the bay across from the prison. Greenbrae Boardwalk residents, who were not included in the draft EIR, say that either a one-story or two-story death row would require leveling a grassy rise called Dairy Hill, thus taking down trees and other vegetation and removing their screening from the prison complex. "If you take the hill away, install prison camp housing and flood the area with light 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, we will definitely be adversely affected and our property values will drop," writes Greenbrae Boardwalk resident Glenda Griffith. The EIR acknowledges Griffith's comment, but according to CEQA, "economic or social impacts of a project shall not be treated as significant effects on the environment." The final EIR will be reviewed by the public agencies for 10 days. After that, it will go to state Corrections Department Director Jeanne Woodford for certification. That will be followed by a 30-day period when the document may be challenged in court. If there are no legal challenges, the report then goes to a state public works board for final certification, according to corrections department spokeswoman Terry Thornton. (source: Marin Independent-Journal) USA: Study: Lethal injection not painless Death Row inmates who die by lethal injection may commonly experience acute pain, according to a study published Thursday in The Lancet, a prominent British medical journal. The finding stands in stark contrast to public perception that most executions are painless and seems likely to spur further challenges to the death penalty, though some experts questioned the researchers' methods. Poorly trained corrections staff may not mix or administer drugs properly and give too little anesthetic to inmates being executed, according to the report, prepared by physicians at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine in Florida. Anesthetics are meant to induce a deep, sleeplike state in which prisoners can't feel the effects of subsequent drugs that cause paralysis and stop their hearts. But the study suggests that in as many as 4 out of 10 cases, doses appear to be much lower than recommended, allowing the condemned to remain conscious but unable to react as they expire. "As it's practiced now, lethal injection is cruel and could even be called torture in some cases," said Dr. Leonidas Koniaris, a cancer specialist at the University of Miami and lead author of the study. The authors of the paper reviewed autopsies of 49 inmates executed in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In 43 inmates, levels of thiopental--a short-acting anesthetic--were lower than that required for surgery, while 21 had concentrations "consistent with awareness." Those findings suggest that doses were inadequate to mute pain and that several inmates may have suffered substantially, the authors said. Without anesthesia, a condemned person would experience "asphyxiation, a severe burning sensation, massive muscle cramping, and finally cardiac arrest" because of the other drugs commonly used in executions, the Lancet paper said. The authors acknowledge it isn't clear whether drug levels administered during an execution can be inferred from tests conducted several days later in an autopsy. "It's not been well-studied," said co-author Dr. David Lubarsky, chairman of the department of surgery at the University of Miami. "Is it possible the levels are higher when they die? Yes." The more important point, he suggests, is that execution chambers have no systems to monitor how drugs are administered and whether they are effective. In a hospital, machines track a patient's vital signs and brain activity, indicating when an anesthetic is taking effect. In the prisons, "you can't tell if they're botching it. They do nothing," Lubarsky said. The report is sure to fuel controversy over whether lethal injection should be barred because it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Although the issue isn't new, it's become far more prominent in the last 18 months through more than a dozen legal appeals in death penalty cases. Last year, New Jersey became the 1st state to suspend lethal injections after courts there called for more information about execution procedures and their medical underpinnings. Some advocates responded to Thursday's study by calling for a national moratorium on lethal injections--a move that would effectively halt the death penalty in the United States. All of the 59 inmates put to death last year were injected with drugs that ended their lives. "This report justifies a thorough review of lethal-injection practices and a halt to executions by this method until procedures can be better explained," said Richard Dieter, a prominent death penalty opponent and executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Others said there was no reason to end lethal injections. "Every murder victim's family I know would much prefer that their loved one died through an injection ... because they were stabbed, raped, strangled or beaten to death, like my son," said Gail Leland, program coordinator for Homicide Survivors, which is based in Tucson, Ariz. "It's just absurd to think about whether these people are suffering when you consider what they did to their victims," she said. The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, suggested the search for a trouble-free mode of execution was unrealistic. "We've gone from hanging to the electric chair to the gas chamber to lethal injection," noted Michael Rushford, the organization's president. "Each time it's been because groups opposed to the death penalty in any form for any crime say it is not humane. "This study needs to be looked at much more extensively before we all run out and say we have a big problem here." Though execution procedures call for drug doses that should be more than large enough to induce anesthesia, experts say administering anesthetics can be complicated. A technician could fail to mix or measure a medication properly, resulting in the wrong concentration or the wrong dose. The three drugs used in executions--one to mute pain, a second to induce paralysis and a third to stop the heart--could be given out of order. If cheap intravenous tubing is used, it might not have valves that force the drugs into the arm of the inmate, and they could drift back into the bag if not carefully watched, Lubarsky said. If the drug is injected into muscle, not a vein, it could be absorbed more slowly. And because thiopental, the anesthetic routinely used in executions, lasts a little more than eight minutes on average, it could wear off if things go wrong or take longer than expected, he said. Dieter said the study points out how little medical science has gone into administering executions. The people performing the procedures "are not medical doctors or medical professionals. They are corrections workers," he said. The study raises the question of whether "the medical profession needs to become more deeply involved in executions," he said, adding that doctors have historically resisted on grounds it would violate their Hippocratic oath to do no harm. "You've got a Catch-22: People with a medical background won't get involved in making sure executions are done well because of ethics, and people doing this are hampered because they don't have a medical background," said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University Law School in New York and a death penalty opponent. Several condemned inmates have challenged their sentences on the grounds that lethal injection is inhumane. One such lawsuit is set to go to trial Monday in Kentucky. In that case, Ralph Baze, one of two men convicted of murdering a sheriff and a deputy, claims that lethal injection would violate his 8th Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. Kentucky officials referred questions about the case to Mark Dershwitz, a Boston anesthesiologist the state hired to testify. Dershwitz, a professor of anesthesiology, biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at the University of Massachusetts, said execution procedures call for dosages of thiopental many times larger than the amount needed to render a person completely unconscious. Typically, a normal-size adult would require 300 to 400 milligrams of thiopental to fall unconscious for 6 or 7 minutes, Dershwitz said. Most states use 2,000 to 5,000 milligrams of the drug in executions, which would be fatal in most cases even without the other drugs, he said. Kentucky uses 3,000 milligrams of thiopental, he said, "which is far more likely by itself to cause death." Dershwitz said the Lancet study is fundamentally flawed because the autopsy studies use venous blood samples that did not accurately reflect the concentrations of the drug in the bloodstream. He said he was surprised that the journal published the study, and he experts peer criticism of the study to be severe. "It's an apples to oranges comparison," he said. The first lethal injection in the United States was performed in Texas in 1982, based on a technique suggested by an Oklahoma physician five years before. All but one of 38 states that allow the death penalty endorse the practice. Some advocates for the death penalty say the study in Lancet was designed to further the cause of abolishing capital punishment. "I think this is a speculative report that is more junk science than anything," said Dianne Clements, president of Houston-based Justice For All, a victims advocacy group that is pro-death penalty. "I think this is meant to cause doubt and perhaps be an avenue for those appealing executions. "The bottom line is we are putting people to death. There is a cognizant effort to put them to death with as little suffering as possible," Clements said. "My gut tells me that any time you are put to death there may be one instant of discomfort." (source: Chicago Tribune) *********************** Bush Embrace of Pope Skirted Death Penalty John Paul sternly opposed it and used his papacy as a platform against capital punishment, while Bush supports it and used it to his advantage in his run for the presidency. They subtly clashed over the issue when Bush was governor of Texas and again as president, but the Pope's death allowed the U.S. leader to embrace John Paul's 26-year reign on his own terms and, experts said, score political points. Bush led Texas from 1995 to 2000 when the state executed 152 people, the most under any U.S. governor in modern history. During that time, the Pope was speaking out against the death penalty and rallying the church to fight it. In a 1999 speech in St. Louis, he called the death penalty "both cruel and unnecessary" and said there was "increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil." At least twice, John Paul appealed to Gov. Bush to stop executions in Texas, most famously in 1998 when he requested clemency for convicted pickaxe murderer and born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker. Bush, who is proud of his Christianity but also was aware of polls showing two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty, refused. On Feb. 3, 1998, Tucker received a lethal injection. She was the 1st woman executed in the state since 1863. 3 years later, in their 1st meeting after Bush won the presidency, the Pope chastised him, saying: "A free and virtuous society, which America aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage from conception until natural death." Bush said Thursday that his views were consistent. "I happen to believe that the death penalty, when properly applied, saves lives of others. And so I'm comfortable with my beliefs that there's no contradiction between the 2," Bush said in response to a question at a meeting of U.S. newspaper editors. After the Pope's funeral, Bush spoke of John Paul in reverential terms, and emphasized their concordance on "culture of life" issues, while not mentioning the death penalty. WARM TRIBUTES WIN-WIN FOR BUSH Bush's admiration for John Paul may have been real, but his warm tributes to the Pope also reflected a win-win situation politically, said Rice University sociology professor William Martin, author of "With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America." Bush was able to appeal to America's 67 million Catholics, whom the Republicans have been working to attract for years, and praise a pope whose anti-communism and "pro-life" positions won many fans among the Christian conservatives who are Bush's base, he said. A poll last year for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and U.S. News & World Report found John Paul to be more popular among evangelicals than 2 of their top leaders, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. "A few decades ago, it would have been considered dangerous for a president to go to a pope's funeral, but those days are gone," Martin said. They are gone, in part, because John Paul was a powerful ally to the religious right in his opposition to the hot-button political issues of abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia and gay marriage. That enabled evangelicals to overlook a history of antipathy toward the Catholic church. "This was a conservative pope, and evangelicals are conservative on all those social and political issues, so we shared many views," said Rev. Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals. They did not agree on capital punishment, but with so many other shared values, it did not matter, said Cizik, whose Washington-based organization represents 45,000 churches and 51 religious denominations. "Doing away with the death penalty for someone who commits a heinous crime seems to us to undermine the sanctity of life, but it is not incomprehensible for someone to support that," Cizik said. "I would think even the most hard-bitten, die-hard Southern Baptist would have to conclude that this pope was quite a guy," he said. (source: Reuters) NORTH CAROLINA: Jurors bypass death penalty----Man convicted of killing his pregnant girlfriend to spend life in prison A Forsyth Superior Court jury has spared the life of a man convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend. Jurors in the capital murder trial of Ricky Royster deliberated for about an hour and a half yesterday before delivering a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. On Monday, the same jury convicted Royster of first-degree murder in the death of Roselyn Dethrow, who was five months pregnant with his child. Earlier in the day, Royster's attorneys told jurors that there was hope of redemption for Royster, that outside his relationship with Dethrow, he had been a "good, decent person." "There's a goodness in him, there is some spark that is worth saving," defense attorney Nils Gerber said in closing arguments. "He's trying to lift himself, and shouldn't we give him that opportunity?" Prosecutors argued that Royster deserved the death penalty because the murder was especially "heinous, atrocious and cruel." Assistant District Attorney David Hall said that Royster punched Dethrow in the head, grabbed her neck and strangled her, then crushed a pillow over her face and smothered her, "all the while straddling his unborn child." When news of the verdict came, family members and courthouse employees rushed to the courtroom. Royster sat with his hands in his lap. Rabil patted him on the back. Royster's stepmother, who cried through much of the trial, sat several rows back, between his father and grandmother. Her body was shaking. Dethrow's family sat on the opposite end of the long bench. Everyone waited in silence as Judge Ron Spivey came in. He warned family members against making major displays of emotion, as he had throughout the trial. The jurors then entered the courtroom, but unlike Monday, when they delivered their verdict of 1st-degree murder, no one cried. After Spivey was handed an envelope with the verdict he thanked the jurors. He looked down and removed the verdict from the envelope and read it to himself as 20 seconds of silence passed. Then he spoke. Jurors had been given 4 questions about the aggravating and mitigating factors in the case. To question one, jurors had answered yes, Spivey said. They found the presence of an aggravating factor, that the murder was especially "heinous, atrocious or cruel." To question two, the jurors answered yes, there were mitigating factors as well. Of the 18 mitigating factors the defense had offered, jurors agreed with all but two, Spivey said. Question three was: "Do you unanimously find beyond reasonable doubt that the mitigating circumstance or circumstances found is, or are, insufficient to outweigh the aggravating circumstances found?" The jurors answered "no," Spivey said. They did not need to answer question four; Royster would not receive the death penalty. They unanimously recommended life in prison. Royster looked down for a moment, appearing relieved. He then turned to his stepmother, who cried but managed a half smile as she nodded at him. Among the mitigating factors found by the jury were Royster's strong work ethic, a supportive and close relationship with his father, strong love for his extended family, commitment to his church and to spiritual growth, no previous criminal history and, apart from his relationship with Dethrow, a lifelong character of peacefulness and nonviolence. Since the summer of 2000, only one person from Forsyth has been sent to death row. That man, Michael Eric Maske, won a new sentencing hearing last year. Floyd Dethrow Sr., Roselyn's father and a retired minister, said after the verdict that the family had forgiven Royster. "It's been a long, hard situation" he said. "We're glad it's over. Our family does not have anything against anybody, and certainly not the Royster family. Our prayers are with them." Roselyn Dethrow's son, Damion, who was 15 when his mother was killed, said he thought justice had been served. After the verdict, he hugged the prosecutors and detectives assigned to the case, thanking them for their work. "I don't have anything against the Roysters," he said. "I feel like the trial was fair on both sides." (source: Winston-Salem Journal)
