Jan. 30
TEXAS:
EXONEREES, FORMER DEATH ROW CHAPLAIN REFLECT ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN TEXAS
3 men whose paths were scheduled to cross in Texas’ execution chamber in
Huntsville will be at SMU Feb. 2 for “The Death Penalty in Texas 2012,” a panel
discussion that will highlight the state of the death penalty in Texas and how
the lives of 2 condemned men and a prison chaplain took drastic turns.
The free event, open to the public, will be 7–9 p.m. at McCord Auditorium, 306
Dallas Hall, on the SMU campus.
2 of the panelists, Anthony Graves and Clarence Brandley, were exonerated after
serving 18 and 9 years, respectively, for heinous murders. They will join
former death row chaplain the Rev. Carroll Pickett — who once had counseled
both Graves and Brandley about being at peace with death as they waited for
execution. Carroll went from supporting the death penalty to being ardently
against it.
“Watching people put to death who I later learned may have been innocent, and
seeing more than 80 people who were almost killed but at the last minute were
found innocent, made me begin to wonder if many of the others we executed while
I was there were innocent as well,” Pickett says. “I knew I could no longer
stand there and watch them die, listen to their last breaths, when there were
too many doubts. And the sad thing is,” he adds, “even though Anthony and
Clarence are alive, they’ll never be compensated for what happened to them.”
Pickett retired in 1995 after working for the Texas prison system for 16 years
and overseeing 95 executions.
“All 3 of these people are part of this terrible system called ‘the conveyer
belt of death,’ says Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s Embrey Human Rights
Program, which is sponsoring the event. “Clarence Brandley and Anthony Graves
are alive today to talk about their experiences not because of the system but
in spite of it.”
For more details about the event call 214-768-8347.
(source: SMU News)
GEORGIA----impending execution
Pardons board denies clemency for Ga. inmate
The Georgia pardons board has denied clemency for a death row inmate who has
refused to file appeals that would likely delay his lethal injection for years.
Board of Pardons and Paroles spokesman Steve Hayes said the board issued the
decision on Monday after reviewing the case of Nicholas Cody Tate, who is to be
executed Tuesday for the 2001 murders of a Paulding County woman and her
3-year-old daughter.
Tate has exhausted his automatic appeals but refused to challenge his
conviction and death sentence through habeas corpus appeals.
He waived his appeal rights at a 2009 hearing, saying "you caught me
red-handed."
Authorities say Tate and his 2 brothers broke into Chrissie Williams' home and
killed the woman and her daughter.
The 2 other men are serving life sentences.
(source: Associated Press)
FLORIDA:
3 state lawmakers push separate measures to alter death penalty procedure
If a killer is headed to death row, a jury needs to recommend it unanimously,
contend 3 Florida legislators who are pushing bills in Tallahassee this session
to change Florida law. The current requirement of 7 out of 12 jurors isn't
enough to condemn a person to death, they say.
3 bills — 2 in the House, one in the Senate — seek to amend current Florida law
so that unanimity among jurors would be required when suggesting capital
punishment to a judge.
In Florida, a 1st-degree murder case has 2 phases — 1 to determine guilt and a
2nd proceeding for the jury to recommend a penalty. Florida is the only state
that doesn't require juror unanimity for the recommendation.
"This is out of step with every other state in the United States," said Seth
Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida. "And frankly,
it means that a number of people who shouldn't get the death penalty, get the
death penalty here in Florida."
With the leading number of death row exonerations in the U.S., Florida's need
for capital punishment reform is pressing, Miller emphasized in a recent video
sent out to email subscribers.
There have been 23 death row exonerations in Florida since 1973. Illinois
follows closely with 20, according to December 2011 figures from the
Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center.
The legislation proposed for 2012 isn't a new concept.
They highlight a suggestion made by the American Bar Association in a 2006
report, which advises: "Florida should require that the jury's sentencing
verdict in capital cases be unanimous and, when the sentencing verdict is a
death sentence, that the jury reach unanimous agreement on at least one
aggravating circumstance."
2 similar bills died in state House and Senate committee hearings during the
2011 legislative session.
This year, Senate Bill 772, sponsored by Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne; Senate
Bill 352, sponsored by Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, and House Bill 29,
sponsored by Rep. John Patrick Julien, D-North Miami Beach, all seek the same
reform: the unanimous jury on death penalty cases.
The hesitancy to pass such legislation is twofold, said a law professor who
worked on the bar's report.
"One explanation for the resistance to unanimity is that it might significantly
reduce death penalty verdicts," said Christopher Slobogin, director of
Vanderbilt University Law School's Criminal Justice Program. "But the unanimity
requirement hasn't prevented Texas and other states from sending plenty of
people to death row."
Slobogin, who headed the team that wrote the report, said another explanation
"is that, since the jury verdict in Florida is advisory in any event, it
doesn't matter whether the jury is unanimous. As far as I'm concerned, that's
an argument for taking the ultimate decision away from the judge and giving it
to the jury."
In theory, a judge in Florida can overrule the jury's decision.
From 1972 to 1999, just under 20 % of the 857 1st-time death sentences involved
a judge overriding a jury's recommendation of life imprisonment or life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole, according to the report.
Report researchers didn't find instances since 1999 of this judicial override,
although it is still legally possible.
If passed, new laws requiring juror unanimity would only apply to convictions
after Oct. 1, 2012.
Additionally, Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee, is attempting
to abolish the death penalty in Florida by July 2012 with House Bill 4051.
If any of the new legislation passes, it still wouldn't change the fate of 2
men sentenced to death in Collier County who remain on death row.
Brandy Jennings, found guilty of the 1995 murders of 3 employees of the Cracker
Barrel restaurant in Golden Gate, was sentenced to death a year later when the
judge agreed with the jury's 10-2 vote.
The second, Thomas Gudinas, was convicted in Collier in 1995 after the trial
was moved to Naples from Orlando. He was found guilty of killing a woman in
Orlando in 1994 and was sentenced to death following a 10-2 jury decision.
The next scheduled execution in Florida is Robert Waterhouse on Feb. 15. He was
convicted of the 1980 killing of a woman in St. Petersburg.
ALABAMA:
International advocate for death penalty abolition coming to Auburn
Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is hosting a seminar which advocates
the abolition of the death penalty Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The event will feature Journey of Hope, a nonprofit organization led by
families of murder victims.
“It was an idea that I came up with when I was doing a march against the death
penalty in Texas in 1991,” said Bill Pelke, founder of the organization.
The organization’s 1st event was in 1993, and the nonprofit was incorporated in
'98.
“It was under the auspices of an organization I was involved with at that time
called Murder Victim Families for Reconciliation,” Pelke said. “We hosted
nearly 100 events in Indiana around that time. It was going to be a one-time
event, but it turned out to be very successful.”
Pelke’s grandmother was killed by a group of teenage girls in Indiana in 1985.
The group's leader, Paula Cooper, who was 15 at the time, was sentenced to
death. After some time, Pelke began a petition that gained attention worldwide.
“Over 2 million people signed a petition in Italy asking that she be taken off
of death row,” Pelke said. “The pope asked the governor for mercy.”
At the time in Indiana, Pelke said, a 10-year-old could be tried as an adult
and therefore be eligible for the death penalty. The international attention
caused legislators to change the age to 16, but Cooper was prosecuted under the
old law.
“When it went onto the automatic appeal before the Supreme Court, they
overturned her sentence and it was changed to a 60-year sentence,” Pelke said.
Pelke and members of his organization have since traveled to more than 40
different states and hosted events in 14 countries.
“Through a terribly dark cloud, God was able to find a silver lining,” Pelke
said.
The upcoming event is sponsored by Justice and Mercy, an organization run by
First Church Birmingham.
“Justice and Mercy is responsible for bringing Bill Pelke to Alabama for a mini
Journey of Hope during the month of January, leading up to the opening of the
Alabama legislature,” said Judy Collins, one of the event coordinators.
The first event of the month was co-hosted by Project Hope to Abolish the Death
Penalty and the student group Arise, an organization whose goal is to “educate
and advocate for policy change to improve the lives of low income citizens on a
state level in a university community,” according to its Facebook page.
The Jan. 12 presentation addressed violence and the use of the death penalty in
Alabama, Collins said.
“Participants were invited to share their concerns initially, after which they
heard presentations by a mother whose son had been killed, a former police
chief and a former inmate on Alabama’s death row who was exonerated,” Collins
said.
Miranda Heard, senior in social work, attended the presentation.
“I was surprised at the way the speakers challenged my way of thinking on the
death penalty,” Heard said. “The Journey of Hope tour has inspired me to take a
personal interest in raising awareness of the hatred behind the death penalty.”
Since attending the event, Heard said she has used every opportunity to educate
people about the death penalty.
“I would challenge anyone available to attend Bill Pelke’s speaking engagement
to do so,” she said.
(source: The Auburn Plainsman)
CONNECTICUT:
Cheshire killer sentenced to death
Joshua Komisarjevsky was sentenced to death on Friday for an infamous 2007 home
invasion that left 3 people dead.
New Haven Superior Court Judge Jon Blue imposed 6 consecutive death sentences
for capital felonies plus 140 years in prison on other counts for
Komisarjevsky’s role in the July 2007 murders of the wife and 2 daughters of
William Petit in their Cheshire, Conn. home. The sentence was handed down in
the same courtroom where a Dec. 9 jury of 12 determined that Komisarjevsky
deserved the death penalty instead of life in prison without parole.
“The task of sentencing another human being to death is the most sober and
somber experience a judge can have,” Blue said on Friday, according to CNN.
“But [the sentence] is one you wrote for yourself with deeds of unimaginable
horror and savagery.”
Kominsarjevsky will join his accomplice — 48-year-old Steven Hayes — and 9
other men on Connecticut’s death row. The state carried out its 1st execution
since 1960 in 2005, and Komisarjevsy will likely spend years, even decades, in
prison before receiving his sentence.
Kominsarjevsy and Hayes tormented a family of 4 — William Petit, his wife
Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and
11-year-old Michaela — in their Cheshire home on July 23, 2007. After
bludgeoning William Petit with a baseball bat and binding his 2 daughters, the
2 assailants forced Hawke-Petit to withdraw $15,000 from a bank account by
escorting her to a local teller.
Upon driving Hawke-Petit back home from the bank, Hayes raped Hawke-Petit and
Komisarjevsky sexually assaulted Michaela. Hayes then strangled Hawke-Petit to
death, doused the daughters and parts of the house with gasoline, and set the
home ablaze. Hayley and Michaela, tied to their beds as the house burned down,
died of smoke inhalation.
William Petit, the lone survivor, escaped to a neighbor’s house, where he
called police. The ordeal lasted 7 hours.
On Friday, Petit read a statement in court, referring to the tragedy as his own
“personal holocaust,” according to USA Today.
“They offered to give you everything you asked for — you didn’t have to take
their lives,” Richard Hawke, Hawke-Petite’s father, said in a victim’s
statement prior to sentencing. “You will from now on be known as a prison
number in the book of death.”
Komisarjevsky said he came into Friday’s trial “angry and defiant.” He also
claimed that he was not guilty of rape and did not pour the gasoline or light
the fire that destroyed the Petits’ Cheshire residence, according to CNN.
Walter Bansley, Komisarjevsky’s attorney, could not be reached for comment.
News of the attack sent political shockwaves throughout the state, reigniting
the debate over capital punishment. In 2009, the General Assembly, the
Connecticut’s main legislative body, sent a bill to then-governor M. Jodi Rell
abolishing the death penalty in the state. But Rell vetoed the bill, citing the
2007 Cheshire murders.
“The crimes that were committed on that brutal July night were so far out of
the range of normal understanding that now, more than three years later, we
still find it difficult to accept that they happened in one of our
communities,” Rell wrote in a statement following Hayes’ sentencing in 2010. “I
have long believed that there are certain crimes so heinous, so depraved, that
society is best served by imposing the ultimate sanction on the criminal.”
Since the 2007 murders, the General Assembly has enacted tougher laws for
repeat offenders and home invasions. In June 2008, new legislation took effect
that made home invasion a class A felony with a 10-year mandatory minimum
sentence.
Connecticut has carried out a total of 126 executions between 1639 and 2005.
(source: Yale Daily News)
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