Oct. 11
TEXAS:
WITNESS TO INNOCENCE: FOUR DEATH ROW EXONEREES TO SPEAK AT SMU OCT. 16
4 former death-row inmates, who in some cases were just days away from
execution when their convictions were overturned, will share their stories at
SMU this Sunday, Oct. 16, in an effort to put a face on the fallibility of the
death penalty.
The free “Witness to Innocence” event, sponsored by the SMU Embrey Human Rights
Program, will be at 7 p.m. in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Forum (lower
level), 3140 Dyer St., on the SMU campus.
Those who were sentenced to death and lived to tell about it include:
• Clarence Brandley, who spent nine years on death row for the 1980 rape and
murder of 16-year-old high school student Cheryl Dee Ferguson in Conroe, Texas,
despite there being no physical evidence to convict him. Brandley, a janitor,
was the only African American on staff at the high school, andit was reported
that racial bigotry played a significant role in the case.
• Gary Drinkard, sentenced to death in 1995 for the robbery and murder of an
automotive junk dealer in Decatur, Ala. His conviction was overturned when it
was ruled that inept legal representation left 2 key witnesses not being able
to testify that Drinkard’s recent back injury would have made committing the
crime a physical impossibility.
• Shujaa Graham, a native of Lake Providence, La., who was discovered to have
been framed in the 1973 murder of a prison guard at the Deul Vocational
Institute in Stockton, Calif. Before then he spent 3 years on San Quentin’s
death row.
• Jeremy Sheets, arrested for the rape and murder of 17-year-old Kenyatta Bush.
He served 5 years on death row in Nebraska but was released based on unreliable
evidence.
“The system is broken,” Drinkard says. “I don’t think the death penalty is
appropriate for anyone. God is the only one who has the right to take a life.”
Since 1973, 138 prisoners have been released from death rows around the country
after they were shown to be innocent of the crimes for which they had been
sentenced to die.
This year marks 35 years since the United States reinstated capital punishment
in 1976. During that time, 1,271 people have been electrocuted, shot, hanged,
gassed or put to death by lethal injection; 475 of those deaths have occurred
in Texas, which leads the nation in state-mandated executions. Virginia is 2nd,
with 109.
“The death penalty remains the most basic of all human rights violations, and
its process is constantly called into question over issues of fairness,
innocence and morality,” says Rick Halperin, director of the Embrey Human
Rights Program and Amnesty International USA’s Texas State Death Penalty
Abolition Coordinator.
“All 4 of these men were subsequently freed and restored to their families in
spite of the system and not because of it,” he says. “They are living examples
of all the tragic reasons why this nation shouldn’t have a death penalty.
Imprisoning and then killing people who are innocent is the worst mistake of
all.”
(sources: SMU News)
GEORGIA:
Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty ---- Joshua Drucker of McDonough was found
guilty Monday of murdering 2 people in 2004.
Sentencing is set to begin Tuesday for Joshua Kevin Drucker of McDonough, who
was found guilty by a Cobb County jury Monday on all counts in the drug-related
killings of 2 people at a house near Marietta, the Marietta Daily Journal
reports.
Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty in the sentencing phase of the
trial.
Drucker was also convicted of armed robbery, possession of a firearm by a
convicted felon and credit card fraud, Marietta 11 Alive reports.
The shootings of 40-year-old David Andrew Robertson and 25-year-old Lora
Nikolova occurred on April 5, 2004, Marietta 11 Alive says.
Drucker at one time served as youth minister at the Global Outreach Church his
father pastored in Stockbridge, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
(source: Marietta Patch)
KANSAS----new death sentence
US man sentenced to death for killing family
A judge sentenced a U.S. man to death Tuesday for fatally shooting his
estranged wife, their 2 daughters and his wife's grandmother, then ordered him
to stay in court and listen to his victims' relatives talk about the pain he
caused them.
James Kraig Kahler was convicted in August in the 2009 killings in Kansas.
Kahler shot his 44-year-old wife Karen, her 89-year-old grandmother Dorothy
Wight, and the Kahlers' 2 daughters, 18-year-old Emily and 16-year-old Lauren,
as the couple struggled through a divorce.
A psychiatrist testified that he had been upset with his daughters for siding
with their mother, who had instigated the divorce, and that he believed Wight
should have encouraged his wife to stay in their marriage. Karen Kahler had
been having an affair with a woman from Texas.
Kahler's attorneys said he was unable to control his emotions and had been
suffering from a deep depression when he went from room to room at Wight's home
and shot the victims with an assault rifle.
Kahler's attorney asked Osage County Judge Phillip Fromme to allow his client
to return to his jail cell before the victims' families read their statements,
but the judge rejected that request. The relatives' statements were tributes to
the victims and did not name Kahler.
Kahler did not make a statement.
The Kahlers' son, Sean, was present during the shootings but escaped unscathed.
Kahler's attorney, Thomas Haney, said Sean declined a request to appear in
court Tuesday.
The boy, who was 10 at the time of the shootings, testified that he did not
want his father sentenced to death.
(source: Associated Press)
SOUTH DAKOTA:
State Finalizing 1-Drug Lethal Injection Method
The state of South Dakota may use only one drug to carry out lethal injections
in the state.
A recent court filing by Donald Moeller's attorney in the convicted killer's
federal death penalty appeal reveals that state officials may finalize a new
1-drug lethal injection protocol by this weekend.
The move comes a few weeks after the federal Drug Enforcement Agency told South
Dakota and several other states that their supplies of lethal injection drugs
imported from India could not be used for executions. South Dakota Attorney
General Marty Jackley sent the DEA a letter pointing out that South Dakota's
drugs were properly cleared and tested to meet U.S. standards.
Changes to South Dakota's lethal injection procedures were made in 2007 after
Governor Mike Rounds delayed the execution of Elijah Page over fears that the
use a 3-drug lethal cocktail would violate state law. The legislature changed
the law so Department of Corrections officials could create set their own
lethal injection standards, and Page was executed a year later.
(source: KELOLAND TV)
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