April 16 TEXAS: One more option A bill in the Texas Legislature that may lead to fewer executions was thought to be out of hope this session, thanks to the recent full-court press by many of the state's district attorneys. But this week, a true life-without-parole bill got a reprieve in the Texas Senate on a 25-6 vote. That means it now goes to the House -- where, we hope, it will be approved and sent to the governor. Although he has encouraged debate on the issue, Gov. Rick Perry has not indicated whether he would sign such a bill if it were to pass both chambers of the legislature. We urge him to do so. Passage of the legislation is a victory -- a bittersweet one, frankly -- for Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, who has attempted for several years to pass a bill that would give Texas jurors another alternative to the death penalty. In order to get more senators to sign on to the bill, Lucio had to accept an amendment that eliminates the current capital life sentence, which allows a prisoner to petition for parole after having served 40 years. Lucio rightly believes that it would be appropriate for certain felons to have that hope for parole and that jurors ought to have all three choices in a capital murder case. We would encourage the Texas House to restore that part of the bill before it goes to the governor. The district attorneys, in their stalwart opposition to the life-without-parole bill, clearly show little faith in our jury system and underestimate the intelligence of those who perform this most noble duty. Once they have been presented with the facts in court, and in their wisdom have found a defendant guilty in a capital case, jurors are more likely than not to make the best choice -- provided they have appropriate choices -- when it comes to punishment. (source: Opinion, Fort Worth Star-Telegram) ************************** Jury selection begins in capital murder trial The trial of an Amarillo man accused of capital murder in the 2003 triple slayings of 3 neighbors is expected to start early next month. 47th District Attorney Randall Sims said 251st District Judge Pat Pirtle met with a large panel of jurors who were quizzed about their ability to serve as potential jurors in the case of Jimmie Urbano Lucero. Lucero, 47, is charged with capital murder in connection with a shooting Sept. 6 that left a mother, father and daughter dead and another daughter critically injured. Lucero allegedly walked into an east Amarillo home and started shooting. Pedro Robledo, 71, Maria Manuela Robledo, 72, and their daughter, Maria Fabiana Robledo, 31, died. The shooting happened just before 10 a.m. that day at the Robledo home in the 1700 block of east Sixth Avenue. Lucero also was indicted on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly shooting and injuring Guadalupe Fabiana Robledo, 32. Neighbors said Lucero, who lived next door, had been feuding with the family for some time. If convicted, Lucero could be sentenced to death or to life in prison. About 200 jurors were called for jury service Friday and about 130 remain for further questioning, Sims said. Jurors will be quizzed on nondeath-penalty issues early next month and later will face specific questions about their beliefs on the death penalty before a final jury is chosen by the defense and prosecution. Sims anticipates the death-penalty case could begin May 16 and would take about a week. (source: The Amarillo Globe-News) ***************************** No death penalty for woman whose child died District Attorney Carlos Valdez will not seek the death penalty for a woman who is accused of killing her infant child. Valdez signed a death penalty waiver earlier this week in the capital murder case against Kimberly Castillo. He said the circumstances of the case warranted the waiver. Castillo, 21, is accused of killing her 18-month-old son, Jerry Galindo. Castillo was arrested in October after the child was declared brain dead and taken off a respirator at Driscoll Children's Hospital. Police said the child suffered 14 bites, a broken rib, swelling of the brain and bruises. Police first charged Castillo with murder, but that charge was upgraded to capital murder by a Nueces County grand jury because of the boy's young age. The maximum punishment Castillo now faces is life in prison. (source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times) OHIO: Will jail-issue clothes hurt a defendant's case? It will take a while to know whether the decision to stick with jail-issue togs for the courtroom appearances of accused Ohio highway sniper Charles A. McCoy, Jr. is a stroke of genius by his attorneys or a bonehead move. In the end, we may never know. A jury is not supposed to judge a defendant on his attire. McCoy, who has gained weight since he was arrested, showed up for the 1st 2 days of jury selection this week in jail scrubs the hue of practical fertilizer. "He is what he is, and we're not going to go out and fit him for a suit," one of his attorneys, S. Michael Miller, said. The Popeye-paraphrasing Miller may be a bubble off plumb on this one. Part of providing the best defense possible is to spare McCoy what bias he might invite by wearing jail jammies to court - essentially that he is a criminal. "I don't know what they are thinking," Phoenix jury consultant David Wenner said. "You may not want him in a suit, but you don't want him looking like a criminal either. You want him looking like a paranoid schizophrenic. Maybe they think the prison garb makes him look crazy." Wenner, who works for Jurybias.com, suggested, "I would have used a focus group. I would have taken a picture of him in a suit, in prison garb and maybe just a sweater, then asked the focus group, 'Tell me a story about this guy.'" Amy Singer, a jury consultant from Plantation, Fla., who has worked with Columbus, Ohio, lawyers said, "It is a problem, especially with the insanity defense, because, to the jury, he is going to look like a criminal instead of a crazy person." "Some people may see it as completely benign," said Dan Young, a jury consultant with the Cleveland company Directed Decisions, "because this may be their 1st trial." Though Young, Singer and Wenner were perplexed by the defense team's decision, they acknowledge that the defense must contend with far more important jury concerns than wardrobe. In the same way that the prosecution "death qualifies" jurors to ensure that they are comfortable with capital punishment, the three said, the defense must "insanity qualify" the jury. "Here is the kind of juror I want," Wenner said. "Somebody that can understand mental-health problems, why people do things, and can excuse their conduct because of biochemical imbalances. I want people who have been in counseling or therapy, who may have taken anti-depressants or have family members who have. They will be more willing to listen to a psychiatrist who is on the stand contending that there were other explanations for why he did what he did." Singer said of the prospective jurors, "You have to ask them questions that cause them to respond with sentences that begin, 'I think' or 'I feel' or 'I believe,' because that is how they will deliberate; on their value beliefs and not on the facts of the case." Not on the facts? If that is true, it wouldn't matter if McCoy's attorneys trotted him out in a chicken suit. I don't believe it is true. I do believe that appearances and presentation can shade jurors' judgments. Sure, I know that even in a tuxedo, McCoy's demeanor resembles that of a mildly distracted sea turtle awakening from a nap to find that he is not basking in the warm surf off the Galapagos, but is on trial for a murderous shooting rampage. Even so, I'd want someone to spend $40 at Wal-Mart so I could at least look presentably insane. (source: Mike Harden, Scripps Howard News Service) NEW YORK: flecting growing national unease with the ultimate punishment, New York strikes down its death penalty law. Last June, New York's highest court struck down a provision of the state's death penalty statute as unconstitutional. The provision required trial courts to instruct jurors in capital cases that if they failed to unanimously agree on a penalty of either life imprisonment or death, the court would set a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. In People vs. Stephen LaValle, the Court of Appeals concluded that jurors might sentence a defendant to die not because they thought he deserved it, but because they feared he might someday go free. It was up to the state Legislature to fix the law in order to reinstate the death penalty. On Tuesday, the Codes Committee of the General Assembly chose not to. What happened in Albany was historic. At least for this year, New York has unburdened itself of the decision on capital punishment, and opponents of the death penalty hope it signals a nationwide trend. 38 states still have death penalty statutes on the books in one form or another. New York's is now in limbo. Kansas' statute was deemed unconstitutional and awaits a federal review; Connecticut, Nebraska and New Mexico have come close to abolition, and Illinois' moratorium on executions has lasted through 2 governors, one Republican and one Democrat. Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, called what happened in Albany a "shift of powers." New York's Republican governor, George Pataki, came to office a decade ago on a heavy-handed crime and justice platform, centered on the promise of death penalty restoration. New York reinstated capital punishment in 1995. Now, well over 50 percent of New Yorkers say they are opposed to the death penalty, according to a recent New York Times poll. "A consensus has been made," Dieter concludes. Salon talked to Dieter about the New York Legislature's move and its wider implications. How will New York's failure to revive its death penalty law impact the nationwide debate on the death penalty? It comes at a time in which death sentences and executions and public opinion are all down around the country, and yet no state has gotten rid of the death penalty in many, many years, so this might be the start of a new trend. It's been difficult for states to take the action of abolition because it's certainly a political risk. Kansas is in a similar situation: Their state Supreme Court recently overturned the death penalty; in New Jersey executions are on hold as they're reviewing their statute. In New York they were acting without any federal instruction, and it seems like the death penalty will continue to be handled on a state-by-state basis. There is momentum to at least reconsider the death penalty in all parts of the country. Where do you see this momentum taking us? A lot of places, really. Public opinion is down 50 % -- that means jurors are half as likely to ask for death. Executions are consequently down 40 %. And then you turn to legislatures; New York declined to even fix it. Other states are taking more of a reform approach; some are coming close to voting to abolish the death penalty. New Mexico and Connecticut came close, and Illinois continues its moratorium. Kansas is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review what its state court did, and so its death penalty is pending; it could be that if the Supreme Court doesn't do anything, Kansas will fix it through legislation. There's a wide range of legislative changes across the country -- 14 states have had commissions to study the death penalty, states are allowing DNA testing on appeal, particularly for death row, and some states are approving defense council review. What will happen to Robert Shulman and John Taylor, the two convicted murderers sitting on New York's death row? I am almost certain that they will have their death sentences lifted. The problem was a problem in the law. The prosecution might try them again before the Supreme Court for sentencing, but the Assembly's not going to put them to death. And no one from this point can even receive the sentence of death, so that if they were tried again, the maximum punishment is life without parole. Where does the U.S. Supreme Court stand on the death penalty? Can you talk about some of the more recent cases brought before the court? The most recent case is Roper vs. Simmons, which removed juvenile offenders from the possibility of a death penalty. That was March of this year. In Texas, the Supreme Court has sent back cases for prosecutorial misconduct, allegations of racial biases, and turned over cases where lawyers didn't do a good enough investigation of the defendants' cases. In 2002, the mentally retarded were excluded, and juries were required to take more responsibility than judges. This had to do with international pressure. Precisely. In 1989, there was a global treaty signed and ratified (with the exception of the U.S. and Somalia) to end the execution of juveniles, and in 2002, the European Union submitted a brief calling for an end to the execution of the mentally retarded. But these changes can also be attributed to domestic pressures. The chief way the death penalty is evaluated is the Eighth Amendment, which the court has said is an evolving standard of decency. Fifteen years ago, it was OK to execute juveniles and the mentally retarded. When the public's views are expressed through legislation and juries' by votes, the Supreme Court announces a consensus has been made, and the law quickly acclimates. It was state legislation that the Supreme Court looked to in both of those cases [Roper vs. Simmons and Atkins vs. Virginia]; it's the direction states were going. They found 31 states that forbid the practice [of executing juveniles] and that number had grown from 15 years ago, back in 1989 [when executing juveniles was deemed constitutional]. That was enough to prove our standards had evolved. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said that U.S. society would eventually come to a consensus that the death penalty should be struck down entirely. Can you foresee this happening? If the Supreme Court were to strike down the death penalty, they would probably do it because the standards of decency have moved against it, but they're not going to do it on their own. It could be so through the will of the people; the court could kind of mop up the final act. They could by finding it unconstitutional. The death penalty will continue to be tested through state-by-state legislative actions, and through litigation of the typical issues that have always been a part of this debate -- innocence as the primary issue. It is and will remain very difficult to construct a statute that will never make mistakes, and it's becoming more expensive to sentence someone to death. Courts are giving people another review because of possible innocence, to ensure the quality of the review, and because of changes in the Supreme Court. New York estimated that they spent $170 million [to maintain the death penalty system] and have nothing to show for it. Would you say that generally the decrease in executions signals a public reticence about the death penalty, and where do you think American public opinion on the death penalty stands? Yes, I think so. I think that reticence stems from these mistakes, these innocent people: 119 innocent people around the country have been freed from death row, a lot of them in recent years, so the problem is very present. They see DNA cases, and people walk out of death row -- it's really a very scary thing. In New York, many cases resulted in sentences of execution, but juries are reluctant to impose it, prosecutors are reluctant to ask for it, and courts are overturning death sentences in the appellate stage. Even some conservatives, like Republican Sens. Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, seem to be backing off their positions on capital punishment. Why? Is this part of the larger national debate on "life" issues? I think this is no longer a conservative vs. liberal issue: Nobody wants innocent people executed, and this is clearly a risk anytime the death penalty is sought. The idea that innocent people were executed was at most a theory 10 years ago; now it's plain knowledge. For hundreds and hundreds of cases of people who are condemned to execution there isn't any DNA, but they still go through the same system; you have to wonder. Some of this is related to the Catholic Church's views, with other denominations weighing in as well, so for some conservative politicians, that's a factor. But in the State of the Union address, President Bush noted that capital cases must be handled more delicately, that maximum resources should be used. This is shocking if you know how he responded while governor of Texas. Sometimes sounding ambivalent about a subject doesn't sound good, so you take what sounds like a rallying cry -- that you're for victims. But there was just no sympathetic side to the issue until all of these innocent people started to show up on television, in churches, talking about years spent on death row; and so now it's not so clear. The death penalty did not enter into the last presidential debate because those who supported it didn't want to make themselves vulnerable. People have begun to ask questions: What about the innocents? The sleeping lawyers? The DNA? People are skeptical that we can eliminate all these problems. Many have voiced the idea that each human life is precious and we have to do everything we can to protect it. 5 years ago, the thrust was to shorten the appeals; cut funds for the lawyers; don't let the federal courts see these cases; just get on with it. There's a sense now that if we don't have to risk innocent human lives, we shouldn't, and with the death penalty you never know. With a life sentence you at least have that chance to undo it if something changes -- and with the death penalty, you don't. (source: salon.com) USA: Not Fit For Animals. OK for Humans? The 1st lethal injection execution in the United States took place on Dec. 2, 1982. Overall 789 men and women have been subjected to lethal injection "experiments" as part of capital punishments administered in the USA. [my note--the first US lethal injection in the USA occurred in Huntsville, Texas, on December 7, 1982] An editorial accompanying a Research Letter, "Inadequate Anaesthesia in Lethal Injection for Execution" by Virginia Capital Defense Attorney and Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP) board member, Jonathan P. Sheldon, and Leonidas G. Koniaris, Teresa A. Zimmers, and David A. Lubarsky, University of Miami Medical Researchers, appearing in the April 16th issue of Lancet, the leading medical journal of the United Kingdom, documents the "experimental" nature of this form of execution. Their findings are of grave concern as lethal injection is the most common form of execution used in this country. Since 1976, the US has executed 957individuals: 152 by electrocution, 11 by the gas chamber, 3 by hanging and 2 by firing squad. In most states, lethal injection is the sole method of execution. The report's finding were drawn from Department of Corrections protocol information from Texas and Virginia and autopsy toxicology reports from Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Texas and Virginia refused to release autopsy data to the researchers. Statistics show that of the 49 executed inmates 43 (88%) had concentrations of the anesthetic Thiopental in their blood at levels below that required for surgery and 21 (43%) of the inmates had concentrations consistent with awareness. These findings challenge the widely accepted notion that execution by lethal injection does not violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition of execution by methods that are "cruel and unusual." The authors state: Our data suggest that anaesthesia methods in lethal injection in the USA are flawed. Failures in protocol design, implementation, monitoring and review might have led to unnecessary suffering of at least some of those executed. Because participation of doctors in protocol design or execution is ethically prohibited, adequate anaesthesia cannot be certain. Therefore, to prevent unnecessary cruelty and suffering, cessation and public review of lethal injection is warranted. (p1414) The report also indicates that the lethal injection protocols used on inmates violate the standards which the American Veterinary Medical Association (AMVA) set in the year 2000. Veterinarians are specifically prohibited from using neuromuscular blocking agents in animal euthanasia due to the risk of unrecognized consciousness. In execution by lethal injection three chemicals are administered in Virginia: sodium thiopental, an anesthetic which induces sleep; pancuronium bromide, a blocking agent which causes paralysis; and potassium chloride which stops the heart, causing death. The Lancet editorial is entitled "Medical collusion in the death penalty: an American atrocity." In addition to commenting on the report's findings it goes on to point out the disturbing survey of the American Medical Association (AMA) that "although AMA ethical guidelines forbid physicians to participate in executions, 19% (of American doctors) said they would inject lethal drugs and 41% said they would perform at least one action prohibited by the AMA guidelines, such as starting intravenous lines. In fact, only 3% of those asked were aware that there were guidelines." The editorial issues a strong indictment of capital punishment based on its ineffectiveness as a deterrent and the inequity with which it is used for retribution largely against people of color and those who are indigent. It concludes as follows: Capital punishment is not only an atrocity, but also a stain on the record of the world's most powerful democracy. Doctors should not be in the job of killing. Those who do participate in this barbaric act are shameful examples of how a profession has allowed its values to be corrupted by state violence. (p1361) Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty opposes all executions and recommends that those concerned about the ethical issues involved in state sanctioned killing make their views known to their elected officials. In addition VADP recommends the book by Dr. Robert J. Lifton and Mr. Greg Mitchell, Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions. By using medical knowledge and personnel to kill people, we do more than undermine the emerging standards and procedures for good ethical decision-making about the sick and dying. We also set off towards a terrifying land where the white gowns of physicians are covered by the black hoods of executioners. Lifton & Mitchell The homepage of The Lancet can be viewed at the following url: http://www.the Lancet.com/. From there one can scroll down to the cover story summary "Inadequate anesthesia in lethal injection for execution" and click on links to both the Research Letter and the Editorial. It is necessary to complete a free registration to view the article and editorial. Information about Lethal injection as a method of execution and tables as to its use by various states in the United States is available on the website of the Death Penalty Information Center: http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/. (source: Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty) ***************************** Inmates in U.S. escaping into Internet Keith Maydak's jail cell is roomier than some. Must be all that cyberspace. State and federal prisons don't let inmates use the Internet. Neither do many county jails. But that hasn't stopped Maydak and thousands of other inmates across the United States from having their own websites. Using their telephone and mail privileges, plus a network of family, friends or activists, inmates are contributing to websites to plead their case, pillory prosecutors or find pen pals. Maydak, 34, of North Versailles became a computer bulletin board devotee after seeing the 1983 movie War Games. He spent 7 years in federal prison for a telephone scam that federal prosecutors say cost AT&T $550,000. He is jailed on a probation violation and is awaiting sentencing. From his Allegheny County Jail cell, he uses a network of toll-free numbers he controls and a group of friends to relay phone and e-mail messages. He also has a website, "Why is Keith Maydak in Jail?" Joe Weedon, a spokesman for the American Correctional Association in Lanham, Md., said prisons keep inmates away from the Internet primarily for security reasons. "There were a few jurisdictions that allowed it on a limited basis, but they ran into problems with offenders contacting their victims or inmates running scams of some sort," Weedon said. Federal appeals courts haven't heard a major case on inmate Internet access, but victims' advocates promise to fight them. "Your rights are very limited when you go to prison and certainly the right to communicate with people on the Internet is one of them," said Michael Rushford of the Sacramento, Calif.-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. In 2000, inmates successfully fought an Arizona law that prohibited helping inmates to access the Internet and punished those who transmitted items to someone for posting on the web. The law was passed after a murder victim's family complained about the killer's Internet pen pal ad. A federal district judge struck down the law in 2003. The American Civil Liberties Union pursued that case on behalf of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. The group publishes websites for about 500 U.S. death row inmates, and pen pal solicitations for about 700 more, said co-founder Tracy Lamourie. "They're sentenced to death. They're not sentenced to silence," Lamourie said. "Even if just one was (innocent), how can we silence someone who's going to be killed in our name?" Lamourie's group maintained a site for Juan Melendez, 53, who spent 18 years on Florida's death row before he was found to be wrongfully convicted 3 years ago. Lamourie and her partner pay for envelopes, stationery and postage out of pocket or with donations. The server space for the web pages is donated by a European death penalty opponent. "I try to understand how alarming it would be for a victims' family to see the smiling face of an inmate who has caused some great harm to a family on the World Wide Web looking for women to write to him," said Donna Hamm of Middle Ground Prison Reform Inc., an Arizona inmate rights group. "But it's difficult to imagine how that infringes on a free world person's right to put something on the Internet." One inmate's website is at the centre of a death penalty appeal in Connecticut. Serial killer Michael Ross has volunteered to be executed. Those trying to stop him said Ross decided to end his appeals only after his former fiancee broke up with him in 2002 -- cutting off his access to the outside world through a website she ran. These days, jails and prisons are trying to take advantage of Internet technology without letting inmates abuse it. Arkansas prison officials recently OK'd an Internet banking system to let people send inmates money. Alabama officials are installing law library computers to give inmates better access to court rulings, but no Internet or e-mail access. Such outreach programs sometimes backfire. Several inmates at the Weld County Jail in Greeley, Colo., are suspected of using jail library computers to access Social Security numbers and other personal information of county employees. **************** Key sites in the world of inmates on the Internet Thousands of U.S. prison inmates have Web sites, but here are a handful of sites at the epicenter of the issue of inmates on the Net. - http://www.ccadp.org is the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. This Toronto-based nonprofit maintains Web pages and pen pal sites for more than 1,000 death row inmates. - http://www.jimmydennis.com is a site run by the Canadian group on behalf of Pennsylvania death row inmate James Dennis. Dennis faces an evidentiary hearing next month as part of ongoing efforts to overturn his conviction for murdering a 17-year-old Philadelphia girl for her jewelry in 1991. - http://www.middlegroundprisonreform.org is a Tempe, Ariz. nonprofit that has supported inmate Internet access and other rights. It was founded in 1983 by a now-retired judge, Donna Leone Hamm, 2 years after she met her eventual husband, James Hamm, during a tour of a prison where he was serving a murder sentence. James Hamm has since had his sentence commuted and works with Middle Ground Prison Reform Inc. - http://www.inmate.com/inmates.htm is a database of inmates from several U.S. prisons who seek pen pals, and other prison links. - http://www.f2ff.com, or Faith to Faith Friends, features religious-themed prisoner pen pal ads. (source for both: Associated Press) ************************* Scalia gives lecture at W&L----As an 'originalist' he backs interpreting the Constitution according to writers' intent U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience yesterday that deciding controversial cases is easy if you judge according to the mind-set of the Constitution's writers. The death penalty isn't cruel and unusual punishment for murder, because many felonies were punishable by death in the late 18th century, Scalia told an audience at Washington and Lee University. And there are no constitutional rights to abortion or assisted suicide. Judges who divine unwritten rights and authority by interpreting the Constitution as evolving, or "living" law act contrary to the intentions of the document, he said. Scalia, 69, spoke inside Lee Chapel for the Washington and Lee School of Law's annual Lewis F. Powell Jr. Distinguished Lecture Series. Hundreds of university students, faculty and staff gathered for Scalia's speech. The justice elicited occasional applause, but with wit that drew frequent laughter as he spoke on the idea that the real fault line between judicial philosophies runs not between political conservatives and liberals but between "originalists," like him, and "nonoriginalists." He and other originalists interpret law according to the intention of the Constitution's writers at the time it was written. Others believe the document should adapt to the times of succeeding generations, he said. The latter interpretive philosophy is erroneous, legally baseless and even dangerous, Scalia suggested. He said his philosophy is a rare minority -- one shared by Justice Clarence Thomas, but which few other judges or legal scholars elsewhere share. It wasn't always that way, Scalia said. "It used to be orthodoxy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution was this changing document," he said. It was meant to be permanent, "the rock that society was tethered to." The justice urged the audience not to revere a living Constitution but to love it as a dead legal document. The Founding Fathers didn't envision the articles of government changing from one age to the next. That's why they made amendments to it so difficult to pass, he said. The flexibility to enumerate new rights and privileges shouldn't be interpreted from the Constitution if they aren't written in it. They should be passed by legislatures, he said. For example, the question of what does or does not constitute an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion is an important one, but should not be mulled in court, Scalia said. "Of course it has to be decided, but it's not a question for lawyers. It's a question for the people to decide -- personally or through their representatives," he said. Scalia spoke for nearly an hour, then fielded questions from students and faculty for about another 20 minutes. He declined to answer a question about the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died after state and federal courts refused to prevent removal of her feeding tube. Scalia was the 3rd speaker in the annual series managed by law students and named after Powell, an alumnus of Washington and Lee. Scalia was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and took office in 1986, just one year before Powell left the court. He praised Powell's service and told the audience in Lee Chapel that he always has admired the Washington and Lee law school. One of his biggest laughs came when he intimated that he interviewed for the law school deanship before he began his career on the federal bench. "I don't know how it would have turned out," he said, as the audience roared. (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch) **************************** Shock waves still rumble 10 years later The bomb spared a family, but 10 years later costs them their home. A survivor of the blast finds peace but not peace of mind. Grass grows on the crater, but there's still a void in the city's heart. A decade after Timothy McVeigh parked his anger against the government in a Ryder truck outside a federal office building, the people and place go on -- but with scars that speak to what his bomb changed forever. "Life up to the point of the bombing is like a book," said Jim Kreymborg, whose wife and daughter were among the 168 killed April 19, 1995. "You put it on a shelf. You try and close it and start reading a new book. "You try and get past some of that stuff," he said, "but you don't forget." The blast took Clifford Cagle's left eye, part of young Brandon Denny's brain and Aren Almon-Kok's little girl. "I was young," says Almon-Kok, 33, the mother of two children born in the years since her 1-year-old daughter, Baylee, died in the building's daycare center. "I never got the chance to find out who I was going to be. It changed me." The bomb stole the skin from Michael Reyes' back, chin and temple and Reyes' father, Antonio, from this life. It also took Reyes' false sense of security, probably for good. "I think when 9-11 happened, more people around the country came to lose that as well," said Reyes, who has come to terms with the bomb in his life, even though loud noises still startle him. The blast tried and failed to take Jim Denny's 2 children. They were among only 6 children in America's Kids day care center who survived the bombing. At 12, red-haired Rebecca is "going on 22," Denny said. But the risk of seizures means Brandon must forgo summer camp and other 13-year-old pursuits. For a boy who doctors feared would never walk or talk again, Brandon has adapted well, even catching baseballs with his left hand because of limited use of his right arm, Denny said. But the combination of medical bills and fact Denny quit his job to be available to deal with Brandon's seizures forced the family in 2002 to sell their home, move to an apartment and live off the equity. "Since this happened, I don't think there's one hour of one day when I don't worry about something," Denny said. The bomb also tore at the peace of mind of the nation. "People didn't think that any city was a target. That's what Oklahoma City was -- a powerful reminder that terrorism can strike home," said Brian Houghton, director of research for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. It brought setbacks, bollards and other barriers to federal buildings nationwide, along with more guards, bomb-sniffing dogs and metal detectors. More importantly, said Dennis O'Connor, chief of staff for the Federal Protective Service, it changed mindsets about the need for security. "In years past, security was considered inconvenient. A lot of people complained about going through it," O'Connor said. "Security is part of everyday life now." The blast's reverberations can still be felt on death rows across the country, too. Families of bombing victims and survivors, looking to speed McVeigh's execution, helped push for legislation that cut the time spent on death penalty appeals in half. McVeigh's lethal injection came in 2001. Bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols is serving multiple federal and state life sentences for his role in the blast. The victims' families have moved on from McVeigh and Nichols' destruction with new marriages, new children, new lives. "Time is a wonderful healer," said 68-year-old Kreymborg, who enjoys his retirement with the widow he met at a grief support group and married seven years ago. But even for those who only knew the bombing as a distant thunder, it took something irreplaceable. "It made me feel vulnerable," said Piedmont school teacher Cheryl Crabtree, choking back her unexpected tears at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. "It could have been me, my children, my family," echoed Shirley Christmon a grandmother from Denver, Colo., standing with her hand over her mouth and her eyes on the 168 chairs that represent each man, woman and child killed. "It could happen anywhere," said Maria Llanes of Wharton, Texas, adding that she sometimes worries it will. (source: Associated Press)
