Oct. 16 VIRGINIA----impending execution Killer Emmett's latest appeal denied----Death row inmate asks court, Kaine for reprieve Unless the U.S. Supreme Court grants a stay or Gov. Timothy M. Kaine steps in a 2nd time, Christopher Scott Emmett will die by lethal injection tomorrow night. Emmett won a reprieve in June two hours before he was to be executed when Kaine delayed it until Oct. 17 to give the U.S. Supreme Court a chance to consider hearing his appeal. The justices declined. However, on Sept. 25, the high court agreed to hear challenges to the constitutionality of lethal-injection procedures in Kentucky, procedures similar to those used in Virginia and other states that use lethal injection. There was an execution in Texas on Sept. 25 but none in the U.S. since. Yesterday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Emmett's request for a stay. But another federal appeals court stayed an execution set for today in Arkansas. And an execution scheduled for last night in Nevada was halted by the Nevada Supreme Court 90 minutes before it was to take place, according to The Associated Press. Emmett's lawyers are asking the U.S. Supreme Court and Kaine to stop the execution until the high court rules on whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In papers filed yesterday, the Virginia attorney general's office urged the justices to reject the request for a stay, arguing it was foot-dragging. Emmett, the state says, never challenged his method of execution during his trial or in prior appeals. Kevin Hall, a Kaine spokesman, said yesterday that "we're closely monitoring court activity, and the governor is still weighing the updated clemency requests from Emmett's attorneys." Emmett was sentenced to die for the April 2001 slaying of John F. Langley, 43, of Roanoke Rapids, N.C. The 2 men worked for a roofing company in Roanoke Rapids and were staying in a Danville motel during a project. Emmett beat Langley to death with a brass lamp for drug money. In addition to asking Kaine for a reprieve, Emmett's lawyers also asked him to order an administrative review of the state's current lethal-injection protocol. Kaine opposes capital punishment but has said he believes lethal injection is constitutional. Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said he believes condemned inmates seeking reprieves until the Supreme Court rules will be successful. If executed, Emmett would be the 99th person put to death in Virginia -- 70 by lethal injection -- since capital punishment was allowed to resume in 1976. (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch) ************* Federal appeals court denies stay of Va. killer facing execution A federal appeals court today denied a request to stay the execution of a man scheduled to be put to death Wednesday for killing a coworker in 2001. Attorneys for 36-year-old Christopher Scott Emmett subsequently filed a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution. The high court is reviewing whether the lethal injection method most states use is cruel and unusual, based on a challenge from 2 inmates on death row in Kentucky. The court is not expected to hear that case until early next year. Emmett's attorney Matthew Engle says no court should go forward with the execution until the Supreme Court has had a chance to rule on the constitutionality of the 3-drug protocol. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court declined to review Emmett's case. Barring intervention from the Supreme Court or Governor Tim Kaine, Emmett is set to die Wednesday night at the Greensville Correctional Facility in Jarratt. (source: WAVY) ******************* Governor should delay Emmett's execution Continuing to kill inmates by lethal injection while the method is in question would be inhumane. With judicial review of the constitutionality of lethal injection looming, there should be no rush to put Christopher Scott Emmett to death. Emmett, who beat a sleeping co-worker to death with a lamp 6 years ago in a Danville motel, is the only 1 of 20 inmates on Virginia's death row with a scheduled execution date -- Wednesday at 9 p.m. But the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to consider whether the method of lethal injection used by Virginia and many other states violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Emmett's attorneys have asked Gov. Tim Kaine to delay the execution until the Supreme Court makes its decision. The clock is ticking. Kaine should grant the delay and stop all other state executions until the high court rules. A court ruling likely won't be made until next year, possibly as late as the summer. Proceeding with state executions when the legality of lethal injections is in question would be inhumane. Emmett's attorneys have attempted to bolster their request for a delay with a claim that the state bungled last year's execution of John Yancey Schmitt. Attorneys argue that Schmitt lingered too long in pain and agony when he was put to death by lethal injection, a claim disputed by the state. But, if true, it would substantiate the argument that death by a 3-chemical cocktail -- one that puts the inmate into a deep sleep, followed by a second that stops breathing by paralyzing the diaphragm and lungs, and a final chemical that induces cardiac arrest -- is cruel and unusual punishment. The concern is that the drug that puts prisoners to sleep wears off before the drug that kills them takes effect, while the paralytic disguises any outward sign of the extreme pain they would feel. Even before the Supreme Court decided it would use the case of 2 Kentucky death row inmates to examine the constitutionality of lethal injection, 11 states suspended executions because of concerns about the method's cruelty. Since the court's announcement, executions have been put on hold in 2 other states. Virginia should join that list. To continue lethally injecting inmates now would be cruel and unusual. (source: Editorial, Roanoke Times) ILLINOIS: Retrial granted in '80s killing----Defendant says cops coerced him into confessing A Chicago man who says he was coerced 2 decades ago into confessing to 2 murders by detectives working under former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge was granted a new trial Monday. Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Sumner vacated the 1984 conviction of James Andrews, 45, and ordered that he be retried for the 1983 murders of 2 men whom Andrews allegedly robbed and shot to death. In August, Sumner ruled that Andrews' constitutional rights were violated and that his claims of police brutality were worth further review. Andrews was picked up by police in April 1983 and taken to Area 2 detective division on the South Side for questioning in connection with a dogfight, according to court documents. After 90 minutes of questioning about the dogfight, detectives asked Andrews if he knew murder victims Floyd Jenkins and Keith Lewis, according to his petition for post-conviction relief. Although Andrews continuously denied knowing the victims or anything about their murders, the detectives physically and psychologically abused him, the petition said. They punched him, struck him with a heavy-duty flashlight and chained him to a wall, according to the statement. After 12 to 18 hours, Andrews signed two written confessions. According to a previous order by Sumner, those confessions are the only significant corroborating evidence tying him to the murders. Andrews' statements were made to officers now known to have tortured suspects. After a four-year probe, special prosecutors determined in July 2006 that Chicago police officers led by Burge brutally forced confessions out of suspects through the 1970s and 1980s. There are other allegations of abuse against the same detectives who interrogated Andrews, according to Sumner's order. Andrews was ordered held in lieu of $300,000 bail. Defense lawyers exercised Andrews' right to a speedy trial, requesting that the attorney general's office be prepared to go to trial within 120 days. Andrews has another court date scheduled for Oct. 22. The attorney general's office handles all Burge post-conviction cases since a judge ruled that the state's attorney's office led by Richard Devine had a conflict of interest. Mayor Richard Daley was the state's attorney and Devine his first assistant during the period of the allegations against Burge. "If ever there was a time to have a speedy trial it's now," said Derek Witte, one of Andrews' attorneys. "The clock is ticking." After the judge's ruling, Andrews turned toward his family and let loose a smile that seemed to cover his entire face. His 3 sisters wept. One sister, Joan Alford, said she wasn't sure that the family was going to be able to come up with the bail money but that they would rely on each other, as they have throughout Andrews' legal battle. Still, the idea that her brother could soon breathe fresh air for the first time in 24 years had Alford visibly moved. "This is a glorious day. It is another day closer to him coming home to the family," Alford said. "He has always believed, but I just wondered if we would ever see the day of justice." Another Andrews attorney, Scott Schutte, said his client "has his head held high" and sees Monday's ruling as one more step toward vindication. "To him, this has been a long process but he is a man of great faith," Schutte said. "He believes that things will be made right, in this life or the next." (source: Chicago Tribune) CALIFORNIA: Men May Face Death Penalty In Businessman's Slaying 2 men accused of gunning down a North County businessman may face the death penalty in connection with the case. Jonathan Johnson, 21, of Vista, and Dominic Porter, 22, allegedly shot Kenya Hunt, 34, to death in March of this year. The 2 are charged with first-degree murder, and prosecutors on Tuesday filed special circumstance allegations. Those allegations would give San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis the option of seeking the death penalty if Johnson and Porter are found guilty. Prosecutors filed the murder-for-financial-gain and lying-in-wait allegations on Tuesday before a preliminary hearing in the case began. The allegations of murder for financial gain and lying in wait were filed just before a preliminary hearing got under way for Dominic Jerome Porter and Jonathan Johnson. Hunt owned a moving company and was an Oceanside resident. Hunt was shot and killed in front of his home Thursday morning by 2 masked men in the 4600 block of Lofty Grove, police said. Hunt was shot in front of his home in the 4600 block of Lofty Grove Way on March 22. Johnson and Porter were located after the shootings inside a nearby convenience store, according to investigators. Johnson is being held on $5 million bail, while Porter's bail has been set at $5,060,000. (source: NBCSanDiego.com) ****************** San Quentin death row delay is vetoed Assemblyman Jared Huffman's attempt to delay long-planned construction of a new death row at San Quentin State Prison was vetoed late Sunday night by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Huffman, a San Rafael Democrat, said Monday that the Legislature is still moving forward with its study into possible alternatives to the state's plan to build a $337 million maximum-security complex at the west end of the 432-acre prison. In his veto message, Schwarzenegger said Huffman's bill, Assembly Bill 1743, would amount to wasting $20 million that already has been spent developing the project that was studied and approved by lawmakers in 2003. Huffman's bill did not call for the closing of San Quentin, the state's oldest prison, or moving executions to other prisons. But it did call for delaying construction until after the state studied possible alternatives, among them relocating death row to other prisons where the cost of running the top-security inmate housing might be cheaper. Huffman's bill would have required the state to examine sites at San Quentin other than the 40 acres at the west end of the prison, where the new death row is planned. Moving the site would free that acreage for non-prison purposes, such as a transit hub, workforce housing and medical care. Huffman's bill was one of the 72 the governor vetoed on Sunday, his final day to act on 2007 legislation approved by lawmakers. Huffman said that at about 11 p.m. Sunday, he had a glimmer of hope that Schwarzenegger might sign his bill because it hadn't already been vetoed. "I got my hopes up," he said. Then, he saw it listed at the end of 72 bills the governor vetoed just before his midnight deadline. Schwarzenegger said that by delaying the construction of housing and treatment facilities for condemned inmates Huffman's bill would drive up the cost of the project. He noted lawmakers had already concluded that San Quentin "is the most appropriate place to house the condemned inmates." "Every month this project is delayed results in approximately $1 million of increased construction costs because of inflation pressures," the governor wrote. "Further delaying the project will only exacerbate this problem." Huffman's bill came on the heels of a recommendation by the state Legislative Analyst's Office that the project be abandoned and built elsewhere at a lower cost per bed. That advice from the state's independent budget watchdog emphasized that the project's cost had grown to $337 million, a 53 % increase from its original price tag, even after it was reduced in size to 768 cells. San Quentin has 622 inmates on death row, housed in maximum-security housing designed to hold 554 inmates. Huffman, state Sen. Carole Migden and Marin Supervisor Steve Kinsey worked together to draft the bill. Kinsey has pushed for closing San Quentin, a 155-year-old institution, in hopes of freeing up land for transit-oriented development. Huffman said a Legislature-sponsored study already is under way and is scheduled to be finished by the end of May 2008. He said he doubts the state can break ground before then. The Legislature, he noted, still needs to approve funding to close a $116.5 million budget gap for the project. (source: Marin Independent Journal) ******************************* Governor vetoes bills opposed by law enforcement Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed legislation for the second straight year that would have required tape-recording police interrogations, a measure recommended by a commission formed to examine the causes of wrongful convictions. The governor also rejected bills that would have allowed testimony by a jailhouse informant only if another witness corroborated it, and would have established a task force to write guidelines for police at lineups and photo identifications. All three bills were recommended by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which the state Senate created in 2004 to look into cases in which innocent people have been imprisoned and propose safeguards. The 23 commission members include prosecutors, defense lawyers, police representatives and scholars. Organizations representing police chiefs and sheriffs opposed all three bills. A district attorneys association opposed the measure on jailhouse informant testimony and was neutral on the other 2. The vetoes, which Schwarzenegger issued over the weekend, demonstrate "once again the power of California's law enforcement agencies to block needed justice reform," former Attorney General John Van de Kamp, chairman of the commission, said Monday. All three measures, he said, were "modest bills which were based on the best science and the best practices available." He said they had been drafted to satisfy concerns Schwarzenegger expressed when he vetoed earlier versions of the interrogation and lineup bills last year. The governor said in his latest veto messages that the bills were not needed and would unduly restrict police investigations. Representatives of police groups and prosecutors were unavailable for comment. The interrogation measure, SB511 by Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Santa Clara, would have required officers to record interrogations of suspects in police stations or jails in cases involving violent felonies. A study by Van de Kamp's commission found that suspects often confess to crimes they don't commit and that tape-recording would help jurors evaluate a defendant's claim of a false or coerced confession. The commission said many law enforcement agencies already tape a majority of their interrogations and that courts in six other states have required the recordings. Schwarzenegger said the bill would "deny law enforcement the flexibility necessary to interrogate suspects." He did not say how recording would have that effect, and the commission's executive assistant, Chris Boscia, said he was puzzled by the governor's statement. Another vetoed measure, SB609 by Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, would have barred testimony by a jailhouse informant unless another witness supported it. Romero and other supporters said wrongful convictions in numerous cases, including some death penalty cases outside California, have been traced to false testimony by jailhouse witnesses seeking lenient treatment. But Schwarzenegger said the measure was not needed because prosecutors rarely use informants as witnesses. "When that kind of testimony is necessary, current criminal procedures provide adequate safeguards against misuse," he said in his veto message. The third bill, SB756 by Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles, addressed what the commission described as a recurring problem of mistaken identifications by eyewitnesses at lineups and photo displays of suspects. The panel said such mistakes are often prompted by subtle hints from officers. The measure would have required the attorney general to set up a task force to consider voluntary guidelines for police, including the commission's proposal that lineups be supervised by officers who are unaware of a suspect's identity. Schwarzenegger said police departments must be free to develop their own policies, based on "unique local conditions," and that statewide guidelines would only get in the way. (source: San Francisco Chronicle) USA: Listen to the executioners before you opt for executions A FEW weeks ago, I talked to a man called Ron McAndrew. He spoke about the death penalty, but from quite a different perspective than either Kevin Rudd or John Howard. You see, McAndrew had served as the warden of Florida State Prison. He'd actually executed people - and it had changed his life forever. In a slow, sad voice, McAndrew described what it was like sending a man to the electric chair. "When we turned on the electricity to kill this guy," he said, "flames shot out from under the helmet. We burned his head - badly. There was steam going down the side of his face, coming out of his eyes and his nose burned as well. It was horrifying. The chamber filled up with smoke. We could hardly see each other . . . but you could still smell the burning flesh." The man McAndrew killed that day was called Pedro Medina. A court had found Medina guilty of what McAndrew described as "a vicious crime" - he'd stabbed a teacher to death. Medina might not have been a Bali bomber, but he was by no means a nice man. Of course, few of the people on death row are. By and large, the people McAndrew dealt with were the wretched of the earth: men who were, at best, pathetic; at worst, genuinely terrifying. Which is why Rudd's stance on capital punishment makes no sense. If you don't speak out against the execution of unpleasant people, you'll almost never speak out on capital punishment at all. If terrorists don't deserve mercy, what about, say, a Ted Bundy, a man who tortured and murdered about 30 people for no reason other than his own gratification? What about a Gary Gilmore, a multiple killer who actually campaigned to be put to death? Yet it was through such cases - the execution of men guilty of grotesque crimes - that capital punishment returned to the US. But, in the current debate, McAndrew's experience with Medina matters for another reason. It's too easy to discuss the death penalty on a plane of lofty abstraction, far removed from the messy business of actually killing a man. The history of capital punishment in the modern era involves a search for a method of execution compatible with contemporary notions of justice - something clean, sterile and dignified. But the closer you look, the more impossible that seems. The elaborate tortures of the Middle Ages gave way to the simple British gallows. The noose often meant slow strangulation or involuntary decapitation, and Americans turned to the electric chair, which was supposed to make turning off a life as simple as turning on a switch. Except, as McAndrew discovered, it doesn't. Today, most American states use lethal injection: a method that, as Ronald Reagan explained, was just like putting an animal to sleep. McAndrew had also conducted executions by lethal injections - and he'd found it no less grotesque. For a start, he explained, many prisoners were drug abusers, so that getting a needle into their ruined veins was very difficult. "They don't have any veins," he said. "Their veins are flat. So in order to get an IV you've got to do what's called a cut-down, cutting through their arms to get a vein. And you've got to get 2 IVs in - one in each arm. "This last guy they executed up there, it took them 34 minutes. And, you know, he could still move his head on the table. He's looking all around and he's asking them - and I've spoken to some of the guys involved in this - he's asking them, 'What the hell is going on? Give me a shot - do something to stop the pain'." Even when the process went smoothly, it was still traumatic for the prison staff. "You know," he said, "when the person has been executed and you tell the witnesses that they've been pronounced dead, you close the curtain. They don't see anything else. But you've got to stay there. You've got the body. You've got to take the apparatus off them. You've got to pull the needles out of their arm. You've got to stuff the body into a body bag." He didn't know anyone who'd been involved in the death penalty who didn't later regret it. Should it matter to Rudd what the death penalty does to executioners? Let's put it like this: if the execution of even the wickedest man still traumatises the people who carry it out, what about the society that condones it? (source : The Age ( Australia) ************************** Lethal injections: cruel and unusual? A majority decision by 9 United States Supreme Court judges will decide the ultimate fate of murderers Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling In his compelling new book on the United States Supreme Court, The Nine (Doubleday, $27.95), Jeffrey Toobin quotes the question Justice William Brennan used to ask his law clerks in the 1960s: "What is the most important law at the Supreme Court? The clerks would puzzle over the answer. Was it freedom of speech or due process or equal protection? Justice Brennan would enlighten them: "The law of 5. With 5 votes, you can do anything around here." Opponents of the death penalty will be hoping that 5 votes out of nine justices can be found to establish that the death penalty implemented by lethal injection is a breach of the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling were convicted of murder in Kentucky. Baze shot a sheriff and a deputy sheriff who were trying to serve him with a warrant. Bowling shot a husband and wife as they sat in their car. Like 37 of the 38 states that maintain capital punishment, Kentucky uses lethal injections. Only Nebraska still uses the electric chair. Baze and Bowling contend, based on the evidence presented at a hearing before the Kentucky Circuit Court, that the use of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride causes substantial pain and that there are other chemicals that would kill but cause less suffering. The Kentucky Supreme Court rejected the argument because the Constitution does not provide protection against all pain, only cruel and unusual punishment." Since there was nothing cruel and unusual about the Kentucky method, there was no legal obligation to use drugs that would cause less pain to the offender. Last month the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. That required the approval of only four judges. They were no doubt influenced not only by the strength of the arguments advanced on behalf of the applicants as to the pain and suffering that they would incur, but also that a variety of tests have been articulated by state and federal courts as to the principles to be applied. UK lawyers attempt to stop American execution Lawyers from Clifford Chance are attempting to stop Jack Alderman being put to death in Georgia on Friday The Supreme Court has only once before directly ruled on the constitutionality of a method of execution, in 1878, when it upheld the use of a firing squad. The court there accepted that some means of putting criminals to death would be legally objectionable. However heinous the crime, the criminal could not be "embowelled alive, beheaded and quartered" or subjected to "burning alive." In 1890, the court added, "burning at the stake, crucifixion, breaking on the wheel, or the like," would offend constitutional standards. So United States law does not adopt the approach of the Duchess of Malfi in John Webster's play. When asked if the means by which she is to be executed (strangulation) terrifies her, she replies, "Not a whit: / What would it pleasure me, to have my throat cut / With diamonds? or to be smothered / With cassia? or to be shot to death, with pearls?." The applicants' petition to the Supreme Court refers to a number of recent cases where lethal injections caused substantial pain to the death row prisoner, physical and mental. In 2006, in Ohio, the procedure took so long about 2 hours that the condemned inmate had to go to the lavatory while he was waiting to die. Also last year, in Florida, an execution took 34 minutes while the inmate grimaced in pain throughout. The Supreme Court does not have a distinguished record in protecting death penalty prisoners from pain and suffering. In a notorious case in 1947, the electric chair failed to operate "presumably because of some mechanical difficulty," and the intended victim was taken back to his cell. The court held that it was not cruel and unusual to return him to the execution chamber for a 2nd attempt some months later. As Toobin's book suggests, the fundamental problem facing Baze and Bowling when their case is argued next year is that 4 of the justices are most unlikely to decide in their favour. Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas and Justice Alito each adopts, to varying degrees, a narrow view of constitutional rights, a broad concept of state discretion and a hostility to death row offenders who bring repeated legal challenges to postpone their fate. The applicants will need to persuade all 5 of the remaining Justices: Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. Anthony Kennedy, the most conservative of that group, may well decide the case. Of course, opponents of capital punishment are primarily concerned with ensuring its abolition, not its speedy and painless implementation. But as Albert Camus observed in his Reflections on the Guillotine, if capital punishment is not to be abolished, let us at least "begin by reforming the manner of administering it. The science that serves to kill so many could at least serve to kill decently." The author is a practising barrister at Blackstone Chambers in the Temple and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. (source: Times)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., ILL., CALIF., USA
Rick Halperin Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:14:14 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
