July 16
TEXAS:
Advocates Seek to Exclude Death Penalty for Defendants With Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome
A growing number of murder cases nationwide seek to exclude the death penalty
for defendants with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), The Seattle Times reports.
In one such case, advocates are trying to prevent the death penalty for Mark
Anthony Soliz, a convicted murderer on death row in Texas. His mother drank
heavily, used drugs and sniffed paint while she was pregnant, the article
notes.
Those who favor eliminating the death penalty for people with fetal alcohol
syndrome point to the U.S. Supreme Court decision to abolish the death penalty
for defendants with mental retardation. “The damage to the executive
functioning of the brain is as severe as someone who is intellectually
disabled,” said John Niland, Director of the Capital Trial Project with the
Texas Defender Service.
Victims’ advocates and prosecutors say such a decision would let killers off
easy. “FAS should not be used as an excuse for intentionally and knowingly
murdering another person,” victims’ rights advocate Andy Kahan told the
newspaper. “Clearly, the defendant has been able to make law-abiding decisions
on a daily basis, and they obviously know right from wrong. FAS is yet another
hurdle for surviving family members of homicide to overcome to secure justice
for the coldblooded murder of their loved ones.”
Another Texas death-row inmate, Yokamon Laneal Hearn, who was also diagnosed
with fetal alcohol syndrome, is set for execution Wednesday. He was convicted
in the shooting of a stockbroker during a robbery. Amnesty International is
urging a letter-writing campaign for clemency to Texas Governor Rick Perry. The
article notes the U.S. Supreme Court has already rejected a request to review a
fetal alcohol case, which involved Louisiana death-row inmate Brandy Holmes,
who was named after her mother’s favorite liquor.
(source: Drugfree.org)
*********
Executions Scheduled for July 18 in Texas and Georgia Present Serious Mental
Health Issues
Yokamon Hearn is facing execution in Texas on July 18 despite clear evidence of
brain damage since his early childhood. Hearn’s trial attorneys failed to
conduct an adequate investigation into Hearn’s early history, which would have
uncovered mitigating evidence that he was neglected by his parents and had a
history of mental health problems. His mother's alcoholism was so severe that
she drank to the point of passing out during her pregnancy with Mr. Hearn. He
has been diagnosed with a disabling condition known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Hearn’s current attorneys said there is a strong likelihood that one or more
jurors would have reached a different sentencing conclusion had they been
presented this important mitigating evidence. Further interfering with an
adequate review of Hearn's case is Texas's resistance to apply a recent Supreme
Court decision regarding inadequate representation at both trial and appeal.
In Georgia, the State Board of Pardons and Parole denied Warren Hill’s request
to commute his death sentence on July 16. He, too, is scheduled to die on July
18. (See previous DPIC post on Hill's mental retardation.) A recent article in
The Atlantic noted the common thread in Hearn's and Hill's cases. While in
prison between the age of 28 and 33, Warren Hill tested at a grade level of
approximately 6-7, and had an IQ within the range of mental retardation. Mr.
Hill’s attorneys described his childhood: “Mr. Hill has suffered from
neurological impairment since birth, manifested in a vulnerability to seizures
and in mental retardation. During his school years, his teachers and fellow
students regarded him as the slowest student in class. Because there were no
special education programs available in the segregated schools attended by Mr.
Hill, his teachers opted for 'social promotion,' an informal but then-common
practice of moving students on to higher grades in spite of their inability to
master age-appropriate work.” Although a state judge agreed that Hill met the
criteria for the diagnosis of mental retardation, the Georgia Supreme Court
later said Hill failed to prove his intellectual disability “beyond a
reasonable doubt.” See Hill's Motion for a Stay of Execution filed with the
U.S. Supreme Court on July 16.
(source: DPIC)
GEORGIA----impending execution
Parole board denies clemency to inmate found mentally disabled
A death-row inmate denied clemency Monday is asking the nation's highest court
to stop his execution on grounds he is mentally disabled.
Enlarge photo Special Warren Hill is asking the State Board of Pardons and
Paroles to grant him clemency on Friday. His lawyers say Hill should not be
executed because he is mentally disabled.The photo comes from his lawyers
through Hill's family.
Warren Lee Hill is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday by lethal injection
for beating fellow prison inmate Joseph Handspike to death with a nail-studded
board. At the time, Hill was serving a life sentence for killing his
18-year-old girlfriend.
Hill's lawyer, Brian Kammer, said he was "horrified and outraged" by the parole
board's decision to deny clemency, noting that a state judge previously found
Hill to be mentally disabled.
Lawyers for Hill are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the xecution.
The high court declined in June to hear Hill's latest appeal, but his lawyers
asked the court to reconsider. Hill is asking the court to postpone the
execution until it rules on that request.
The case is "close to becoming a miscarriage of justice," Hill's motion said.
If that fails, Hill will file new appeals in the state and federal courts, said
Kammer.
Hill's problem is that the judge found him mentally disabled by a preponderance
of the evidence — or more likely than not. Georgia's law, the only one of its
kind and the strictest in the nation, requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
"The Board is making the same mistake it made in denying clemency for another
mentally retarded inmate, Jerome Bowden, in 1986," Kammer said. "This shameful
decision violates Georgia's and our nation's moral values and renders
meaningless state and federal constitutional protections against wrongful
execution of persons with mental retardation."
In a statement last week, the state Attorney General's Office said Hill had
failed to prove he was mentally disabled.
In response to the public backlash to the execution of Bowden, who had an IQ of
about 65, Georgia became the first state in the country to ban the execution of
the mentally disabled. But the 1988 state law also requires capital defendants
to prove their disability by clearing the stringent legal threshold.
Hill's case attracted pleas for mercy from former President Jimmy Carter and
his wife Rosalynn as well as state and national groups for the developmentally
disabled.
Rita Young, director of public policy for All About Developmental Disabilities
in Decatur, said her group believes Hill should be allowed to spend the rest of
his life in prison without the possibility of parole. "We are shocked and
deeply disappointed in the board's decision to execute a man with an
intellectual disability," she said.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
**********************
Clemency denied for Georgia death row inmate Hill
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has voted to deny clemency to death
row inmate Warren Lee Hill, who is facing execution Wednesday.
The board announced its decision Monday after hearing arguments in the case
Friday. Hill was convicted in 1991 and sentenced to death for killing a fellow
inmate while serving a life sentence for the slaying of his girlfriend.
His lawyer Brian Kammer has argued that Hill is mentally disabled and therefore
shouldn't be executed. Kammer said he's "horrified and outraged" by the board's
decision.
"This shameful decision violates Georgia's and our nation's moral values and
renders meaningless state and federal constitutional protections against
wrongful execution of persons with mental retardation," he said.
Kammer had asked the board to commute Hill's sentence to life in prison without
parole or to grant him a 90-day stay of execution to give the U.S. Supreme
Court time to consider the case. A petition to have Hill's case heard by the
U.S. Supreme Court was denied last month, but Kammer has filed a new request
with the high court.
Hill and Joseph Handspike were both serving sentences for murder at the Lee
Correctional Institution in 1990 when Hill beat Handspike to death. Hill was
serving a life sentence at the time for the 1986 slaying of his 18-year-old
girlfriend, who was shot 11 times.
Hill's defense says he is mentally disabled and therefore shouldn't be executed
because state and federal law prohibit states from executing people who are
mentally disabled. The state has said the defense has failed to meet its burden
of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Hill is mentally disabled.
Georgia's standard of requiring death row inmates to prove mental disability
beyond a reasonable doubt is the toughest in the country. Most states that
impose the death penalty have a lower threshold for defendants to prove they
are mentally disabled, while some states don't set standards at all.
Kammer has said the high standard for proving mental disability is problematic
because psychiatric diagnoses are subject to a degree of uncertainty that is
virtually impossible to overcome. But Georgia's strict standard has repeatedly
been upheld by state and federal courts.
(source: Associated Press)
FLORIDA:
The long, slow death of innocence----Kris Maharaj has been in jail in Miami
since 1986 for a double murder, yet all the evidence shows there is no way that
he was the killer. What went wrong with American justice?
A view of the death chamber from the witness room at the Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility. Photograph: Ghetty Images For 18 years and counting I
have failed Krishna Maharaj at every step in the American justice system.
Kris’s is one of several hundred capital cases I have done over the years, but
I doubt there is any other that has taken more out of me. Partly it is because
we have a very close connection. He’s British. Once, when Kris was very wealthy
(a self-made millionaire) and I was about 12 years old (living in Newmarket),
he bought two racehorses off my father, long before both of them lost their
businesses. I’ve known Kris’s wife, Marita, for many years, and often stay with
her when I pass through south Florida on my way to Guantanamo Bay.
On 1 December 1987, Judge Harold Solomon accepted a Florida jury’s
recommendation and ordered that Kris Maharaj should be taken up to the state
penitentiary and executed with 2,400 volts of electricity poured through his
brain, “And may God have mercy on your soul.”
Kris was convicted of the murder of Derrick Moo Young, 53, whom he had known
for many years, along with the man’s 23-year-old son, Duane. It was a
sensational crime, committed in October 1986 in Room 1215 of the DuPont Plaza
Hotel in downtown Miami. On the face of it, when I first read the transcript of
the trial, the prosecution case seemed strong. The victims were, the jury
heard, innocent businessmen on a very limited income of about £15,000 a year.
Kris had a motive: he was convinced the Moo Youngs had embezzled money from
him, and that Derrick had embarked on a very public campaign to smear his name
in a local tabloid, the Caribbean Echo.
The lead detective on the case, John Buhrmaster, said that Kris had denied
ever being in Room 1215, or ever owning a pistol. Yet Kris’s fingerprints were
found all over the hotel room and he was shown to have bought a 9mm Smith &
Wesson some months earlier, so he had to be lying. And a witness by the name of
Neville Butler had, the judge was told, passed a lie-detector test with respect
to his testimony: he had been present, watching, as Kris shot Derrick several
times, and then executed Duane with a single bullet to the back of the head.
I took Kris’s case on in 1994. That may be a long time ago, but by then he’d
already faced electrocution for 7 years. He had watched as 16 other men had
been led away to be killed, including Jesse Tafero, whose mother used to ride
up for visits with Marita. Jesse insisted on his innocence – his co-defendant
Sonia Jacobs was later exonerated and now lives in Eire. The flames flickered
around Jesse’s head like a halo in 1990 as the electric chair malfunctioned.
Kris was left sitting in his cell, imagining a similar fate of his own.
When I started working on his case, I had to give my new client the benefit of
the doubt and take his claims of innocence seriously, or there would have been
no point in his having a lawyer. But I never thought that justice could
disintegrate quite as it had for Kris.
First, there was the matter of legal process. Before trial, Kris claimed that
the trial judge, Howard Gross, had attempted to solicit a bribe of $50,000 from
him: pay up and things would go well. Perhaps unwisely, as it transpired, Kris
spurned the demand out of hand. The judge was taken off the case on the 3rd day
of Kris’s trial and replaced. The jury never knew it, but Judge Gross (known to
his friends as “Howie the Mouse” for his rodent features) had been arrested
that morning for taking bribes in another case. He was later disbarred.
The trial just ploughed onwards. If Gross was suitably named – given his
apparent venality – the new judge was not: Harold Solomon could hardly be
described as wise. When I asserted Kris’s right to see the prosecution files
under the Freedom of Information Act, I found that this new judge had met
secretly with the prosecutors, asking them to write up an order sentencing
Kris to death even before evidence for mercy had been presented.
And so it went on. Later, yet another judge, Leonard Glick, secretly told the
prosecutors to write an order refusing Kris a hearing on new evidence casting
doubt on his conviction. Glick also failed to disclose that he had been the
prosecutors’ supervisor at the time of the 1st trial. Kris was finding it
difficult to find a judge who would hear his case fairly. But was he telling me
the truth when he insisted, the first time I met him, that he had nothing to do
with the Moo Young murders?
Pretty soon it became clear to me that he was. First, I found the result of a
lie-detector test taken by the prosecution’s star witness, Neville Butler, in
the police file. It turned out that Butler had failed the polygraph. Kris, on
the other hand, had passed his. Whatever the reliability of such a test, there
were many other reasons to doubt Butler – his story just did not add up, and
changed so many times that I was left with the clear impression that he was
hiding a great deal, and most especially his own involvement in the murder.
I wish I could say I was surprised that Detective Buhrmaster misrepresented
what Kris told him on the night of his arrest, but I’m afraid I’ve seen too
much of that. In New Orleans, even officers have called it testi-lying when a
policeman takes the stand. It turns out that Miami police were no strangers to
the practice. Kris could not have carried out the murder with his Smith &
Wesson, because the investigating detective’s notes (hidden from the defence,
of course) corroborated Kris’s statement to me: the only pistol he had ever
owned had been stolen from him months before the crime. And the detective had
not told the truth about the fingerprints, either: his own partner described
under oath how Kris explained that he had in fact been in the hotel room that
day – Butler had lured him there in the morning on the pretext of a business
meeting. He was then framed to look like the real killer.
But the biggest shock came with regard to the Moo Youngs. The detective told
the defence, pre-trial, that the briefcase the two men were carrying when they
were murdered had been returned to the family, yet I found a copy of its
contents in the police file. The documents in it were astonishing. First, it
seemed, they had been trying to buy some jewels from a California “church” for
$94m. Next, they were looking to purchase a bank in Panama (then led by Manuel
Noriega) for $600m. And finally, there were letters from the Moo Youngs
offering loans around the Caribbean to the tune of $5bn.
It all began to fall into place. In the mid-1980s, there was only one source
from which that kind of loot could come – indeed, three of the five richest
people in the world came from the same country, Colombia. Detective Buhrmaster
had shown no interest in Jaime Vallejo Mejia, the man occupying the room across
the hall from the murder scene; the policeman said he had peered through the
door and the occupant “seemed legit”. Had Buhrmaster done a simple criminal
records check on Mejia, he would have learned that the man came from Pereira,
Colombia, and was wanted for carrying $40m in cash to Switzerland. I was amused
to discover that Pereira was “twinned” with Miami. I wondered whether the Miami
councillors had been high on cocaine when they voted to establish the link.
It was obvious that the Moo Youngs were trying to launder drug cartels’ money.
A close analysis of the documents showed they were trying to skim 1 % off the
top – and 1 % of $5bn is $50m. You could get killed for looking strangely at a
drug lord; stealing that kind of money guaranteed a death certificate.
The evidence exonerating Kris went on and on. There were six alibi witnesses
who could place Kris in Fort Lauderdale, miles away, at the time of the
murders. Ultimately, because he did not commit the crime, I came to know much
more about the case than he did.
Kris’s case has stayed with me because he is so patently innocent, yet nobody
seems to want to listen. It has been one of the most dissonant experiences in
my life to be as certain of the innocence of someone as a lawyer can ever be,
while the political and judicial might of the US continues to insist that he is
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and should pay the price.
How could this be? It’s not solely because the judges are corrupt. As I sat
glumly wondering how I could have failed him for so long, it became clear to
me: to err is human, but the US justice system is structured to make mistakes.
It all begins with the innocent defendant. He is the most useless person a
criminal defence lawyer can ever have for a client. Not only can he tell you
nothing about the crime – “I don’t know who did it, I wasn’t there,” says Kris
– but he was unwilling to spend the time and money to ensure that he got a fair
trial. He knows (100 per cent) that he is innocent, so how could 12 jurors
possibly find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Why does the defence need
time for investigation? Why pay for experts? Why not go to trial tomorrow?
Justice depends on having jurors who really will give the accused person the
benefit of the doubt. Over the years, I have conducted an ad-hoc survey of what
that means and have learned that the average judge (let alone lay juror) thinks
that proof beyond a reasonable doubt indicates only that you have to be a
little over 80 % sure he is guilty. In effect, they are aiming to be wrong 1
time in 5. With 3,000 Americans on death row, they are shooting to execute 600
innocent people. If you aim low, you usually miss.
Who is to say that jurors do better than judges, particularly when, in a
capital trial, it is a hanging jury? Citizens are excluded from service in a
capital trial unless they promise they are willing to vote to execute the man
on trial if he is found guilty. Consider what this means – if you have a
problem with the death penalty, if you don’t feel you have the right to order
the death of another human being, then you are automatically disqualified.
And what of the defence lawyer? Surely we agree that a capital trial, where
life is at stake, calls for the best advocates that the law can provide. A
corporation may pay $1,000 an hour for a lawyer – sipping a cup of coffee with
your corporate attorney can cost you hundreds of dollars. But someone without
money, who is accused of a capital crime, has to take a public defender who may
be paid little more than $1,000 for the whole case. You get what you pay for.
Often the death penalty is imposed not for the worst crime, but for the worst
lawyer.
On the other side of the adversarial system are the policemen and the
prosecutors. If Darwin was correct, then those best adapted will assume these
roles – but best adapted to do what? If we want to achieve accurate justice,
and avoid sending innocent people to prison, that is one thing; if we want to
convict as many people as possible, that is another. The US prosecutorial
system is focused almost exclusively on the latter goal.
I was talking to a couple of police officers not long ago and I asked them how
many times, in their cumulative 54 years on the force, with thousands of
arrests between them, they thought they might possibly, maybe have taken an
innocent person into custody. Never! came the emphatic reply. Those people
later found not guilty at trial? Guilty, all of them, or we wouldn’t have
arrested them in the 1st place. So, we choose as police officers those whose
predisposition leaves them most likely to make mistakes.
In the US, where district attorneys are elected, it is unlikely that the
prosecutor will take a more sympathetic approach to the rights of the suspected
criminal. Indeed, half of the prosecutors in 1 poll do not agree with the
presumption of innocence; their office has already made the decision that the
defendant is guilty when they send his case forward for trial.
Perhaps that is unsurprising: it would be difficult to drive to work pondering
how many innocent people one was going to send to prison each day. There are
exceptions to every rule, of course, yet generalisations are generally true.
But surely, one hopes, these problems will be balanced out in the courtroom,
where cooler judicial heads hold sway? Yet it is here that the system lets
people like Kris down most abruptly.
In 1989, in Murray v Giarratano, the US Supreme Court came to one
extraordinary conclusion – the US constitution does not require that a person
who has been sentenced to death should be provided with a lawyer or any
government funding to investigate his case and navigate the hypertechnical
world of death penalty law once he has been convicted. For this reason, Kris
has had to depend for his habeas appeals on me and a fellow volunteer, Ben
Kuehne from Miami, since 1994.
Ben and I lost his appeals, in part because we had no money to bring all his
witnesses to court to prove his case in post-conviction hearings. We cannot
shoulder all the blame, however. If the Giarratano case was absurd, the rule of
Herrera v Collins (1993) is fatuous: nothing in the US constitution, the
Supreme Court tells us, says that an innocent person cannot be held in prison
for the rest of his life, or even executed.
As the federal judge ruled in Kris’s case, “claims of actual innocence based on
newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal
habeas corpus relief”. In plain English: whether Kris is innocent is not
relevant to whether he should die in prison.
To be sure, we did ultimately get Kris a new sentencing trial because we proved
that the prosecutor secretly wrote the order sentencing him to death. At that
trial, because Kris stood convicted, Ben and I were told we would be held in
contempt of court and sent to jail if we tried to suggest to the jury that Kris
was not guilty. As fortune would have it, we prevailed regardless and he was
resentenced to life – meaning that the earliest he can be considered for
discretionary parole will be in 2040, when he is 101 years old. So he will
still die in prison.
To an innocent man who is 73 years old, whose septuagenarian wife has stood by
him for 26 years, it matters little, ultimately, whether he dies in the
execution chamber or in a prison cell. How could the courts ignore the patent
evidence of his innocence? It became very clear to me that the justice system
is primarily interested not in justice, but in ensuring that nobody points to
how the emperor is wearing no clothes.
The US has a terrible crime problem, one that presents American politicians
with a challenge demanding expensive and complex solutions. They could crack
down on guns, but that would offend the National Rifle Association. They could
try introducing a national health service, but that would violate the
constitutional right to suffer without treatment. They could experiment with a
sensible welfare system, but that would be socialism. They might legalise many
drugs, but common sense is not, as they say, so common.
The politician would rather turn to the tough-on-crime placebo. He pretends
that the death penalty will solve America’s social ills, returning us to a
golden age when all American children were above average and the policeman’s
greatest challenge was a pedestrian crossing the road before the little red man
turned green. Thus, the politician assures us that the thin blue line of law
enforcement is protecting us from the crime wave (rather than being part of a
tidal wave of corruption). And the courts refuse to admit that the system often
gets it horribly wrong, because if the emperor were seen to be naked, we might
lose faith in the folly of our elected officials who sold us the system in the
first place.
When I last saw Kris, he was shackled to a hospital bed, struggling to survive
flesh-eating bacteria in his leg. He begged me to remember him and his faithful
wife, Marita, every day. I want to make sure that he is never forgotten. More
importantly, I want to make sure that the people who know what happened to
Derrick and Duane Moo Young in that Miami hotel room that day in 1986 realise
that Kris Maharaj is still behind bars and will die there if they don’t come
forward.
We have proven that Kris is innocent to the satisfaction of any sane legal
system, but that has not been enough. Someone out there has a piece of
information that will unlock his cell door – whether through looking at old
records, or from casual words dropped by a close friend. If someone will just
get in touch and tell us what they know, or even hint at where the answer can
be found, we can still get this case back into court and locate justice for
Kris. And if nobody does, an innocent man will die in prison, not as an
anomaly, not just because I failed, but because the system made it turn out
that way.
(source: New Statesman; Clive Stafford Smith is the director of Reprieve
(reprieve.org.uk). His book about the Maharaj case, “Injustice: Life and Death
in the Courtrooms of America”, is newly publishedby Harvill Secker (£18.99) )
ARKANSAS:
State stymied on executions
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel voiced frustration with the state Supreme
Court last week over what he sees as resistance to the death penalty, but other
legal experts say the problems the state has encountered in carrying out
executions cannot be laid entirely at the court's feet.
In an interview with Arkansas News Bureau business columnist Roby Brock,
McDaniel said, "If the Supreme Court thinks … that executions should be
declared unconstitutional, then they should do that. But instead, since the day
I became attorney general they've simply erected one procedural hurdle after
another to ensure that we can't execute those who have committed the most
heinous crimes in Arkansas."
Numerous lawsuits and court rulings have prevented the state from executing any
prisoners since 2005. Most recently, the state Supreme Court ruled last month
that a 2009 law authorizing the director of the state Department of Correction
to decide what chemicals are used in lethal injections gave the director too
much discretion, in violation of the separation of powers between the executive
and legislative branches of state government.
Gov. Mike Beebe has said he does not intend to schedule any executions until
the Legislature passes a new law on lethal injections. That is expected to
happen during the legislative session that starts in January.
(source: Arkansas News Bureau)
*************************
Trial to start for man in Ark. officer's death
A man charged with fatally shooting an Arkansas police officer last year is
expected to go on trial for capital murder this week.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Jerry Lard, who they say killed
Trumann police officer Jonathan Schmidt in April 2011 following a traffic stop.
Jury selection is slated to begin Monday in Paragould — about 35 miles from the
small Delta town where witnesses told The Associated Press Schmidt heroically
pushed a fellow officer out of harm's way before he died. Lard is also charged
with attempted capital murder for shooting at the other officer, Corey
Overstreet.
Lawyers for Lard, 38, wrote in court filings that they plan to argue he has a
mental disease or defect.
His attorneys and prosecutors declined to comment ahead of the trial because a
judge barred them from talking publicly about the case.
Lard's trial comes after the state Supreme Court last month threw out Arkansas'
lethal injection law, effectively leaving the state without steps to execute
any of its death row inmates.
Lard's lawyers said the high court's decision should pull the death penalty off
the table in Lard's case, but Circuit Judge Brent Davis ruled that the high
court didn't strike down the death penalty.
"The fact that there's this question about how the person will be executed
should they get the death penalty ... that's a different issue from how this
murder trial is going to proceed," said Felecia Epps, who teaches criminal law
and criminal procedure at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Authorities said Schmidt pulled over Keith Elumbaugh after a license plate
check raised questions about his car insurance.
Lard was in the back seat. Elumbaugh told the AP last year that Schmidt was
smiling and joking with the people in the car after mispronouncing Elumbaugh's
name.
Then, when Schmidt opened the car door where Lard was sitting, Lard lunged at
the policeman and started shooting, Elumbaugh said.
Schmidt, hit by a bullet, managed to get Overstreet behind the car and out of
the line of fire, Elumbaugh said.
Once Overstreet was behind Schmidt's police car, Schmidt turned back toward
Lard and began to return fire.
While he was shooting, Elumbaugh said, Lard was cursing Schmidt, saying "Die,
(expletive)!"
"Please don't shoot me. Please don't shoot me," Schmidt cried out, Elumbaugh
said.
Prosecutors said in a court document that Lard killed Schmidt to avoid an
arrest in an outstanding felony rape case.
Lard is also charged with unlawfully possessing a gun and methamphetamine.
(source: Associated Press)
MISSISSIPPI:
The faces of Mississippi's death row
Mississippi has executed 6 death row inmates so far this year, the most
executions in the state since the 1950s when the death penalty was imposed for
a larger variety of crimes, including armed robberies and rapes.
And it's likely more executions are on the way.
50 inmates are on death row.Gary Carl Simmons Jr., 49, was the most recent
inmate executed. He had spent more than 15 years on death row before his June
20 execution for the 1996 shooting death and dismemberment of a Texas drug
dealer. He never apologized for his crime.
"The main impetus for all these executions of inmates on death row is that
their appeals are running out, especially the ones convicted in the 1980s and
1990s," said Phillip Broadhead, clinical professor of law at the University of
Mississippi.
Broadhead said the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
shortened the time for post-conviction appeals. President Bill Clinton signed
the act into law in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombings to impose a
statute of limitations on federal appeals.
The act, Broadhead said, requires people to file all of their complaints at
once. "So … absent any extreme circumstances, you are going to see an
acceleration of executions in the next few years," he said.
Attorney General Jim Hood said appeals take an average of 12 to 15 years from
the date of the crime to execution. Each case varies, Hood said, and some cases
"get remanded for a new sentencing hearing and this actually starts the process
anew. There is no way to predict how long a case will take …"
Richard Gerald Jordan has been appealing since his 1977 conviction. His case is
before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and his appeals could soon run out.
Jordan was sentenced to death in 1977 in Harrison County for the Jan. 13, 1976,
kidnapping and shooting death of Edwina Marter. Authorities said Jordan took
Marter to a wooded area and shot her. Her husband paid a $25,000 ransom for her
safe return, but she was already dead.
The state and, ultimately, taxpayers spend $102.27 per day to house a death row
inmate, as opposed to $41.61 a day for other inmates. The state spent an
estimated $569,132 to house Simmons for 15.3 years, compared with the more than
$1 million so far to house Jordan.
That cost does not include hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on appeals
litigation, which experts said can run into millions.
Mississippi has used lethal injections for executions since July 2002, when
Tracy A. Hansen was put to death for the shooting death of a state trooper.
16 others, including Simmons, have died by lethal injection.
Death row
Mississippi has 50 death row inmates, 2 of them women serving their time at the
Central Mississippi Correctional Facility at Pearl. Of those 50, 11 are from
the 6 South Mississippi counties.
Death row inmates spend 23 hours a day in their 80-square-foot cells, though
Don Cabana, a former warden at the state penitentiary at Parchman, said they
are sometimes granted minor privileges.
"Certainly the warden, based on behavior, can let a couple of guys play
basketball or sit out and play checkers," Cabana said. "There are advantages to
being able to do that. It certainly helps to keep things calm. Generally,
though, you have far fewer discipline problems on death row than in any other
part of the prison. All they want is to concentrate on their appeals."
The death row cells sit side by side, facing cinder-block walls. For 1 hour a
day, the inmates have the option to shower or exercise under guard.
"They can communicate with each other," Cabana said. "They hang out of the bars
and shout at each other. They will hold a mirror out where they can see what's
going on down the block. They chit-chat with the counselors and officers and
stuff. It's a very monotonous existence."
Unlike inmates housed in the general population, death row inmates are not
eligible for education or vocational studies, though they do have access to
library books and the law library. They can have televisions and radios, but no
Internet access, said officials at the state Department of Corrections.
"Death rows by their very nature are particularly toxic," said Dr. Stuart
Grassian, a Harvard psychiatrist who has long studied death row inmates in
solitary confinement. "It's an agonizing thing to go through. They know when
somebody is leaving to go to the death cell they aren't coming back. The very
conditions they live in (over the years) is often too much."
Some death row inmates, Grassian said, drop their appeals because they do not
want their executions delayed. The public is usually told the inmate wants to
spare his victim's family, he said, but the inmate is really no longer able to
bear death row.
Grassian has found some inmates suffer psychiatric symptoms, and others adjust
to the surroundings.
One inmate, whom Grassian quoted in a journal article, said: "You get sensitive
to noise, the plumbing system. Someone in the tier above me pushed the button
on the faucet … it's too loud, gets on your nerves. I can't stand it. I start
to holler."
Others experience auditory hallucinations. One inmate said he heard what
sounded like an inmate beating.
Some suffer panic attacks, he said, and others admit fantasies of revenge,
torture and mutilation of their prison guards.
Grassian noted one prisoner's comments: "I try to sleep 16 hours a day, block
out my thoughts; muscles tense, think of torturing and killing the guards;
lasts a couple of hours. I can't stop it. Bothers me. Have to keep control.
This makes me think I'm flipping my mind … I get panicky, thoughts come back."
Grassian said the inmate, housed at a Massachusetts prison, pictured throwing a
guard in caustic lime so he could see it "eat away his skin, his flesh." The
inmate said he tried unsuccessfully to block those images.
In Mississippi, Willie C. Russell is facing execution for the July 18, 1989,
stabbing death of a guard at Parchman.
Other death row inmates, Grassian said, experience extreme paranoia and some
spend the majority of their time "spaced out."
Cabana defends the conditions, saying the type of confinement death row
prisoners experience is necessary to ensure the safety of the prison staff and
the public in the event of an escape.
"You are dealing with the world's biggest and best sociopaths," Cabana said.
"They are a different breed of people. You are talking about people who can go
in and slaughter a family.
"These are pretty strong guys mentally. We always offer a sedative before an
execution. None of the 3 or 4 I dealt with wanted it.
"And I never had one fight me when it was his time to go. If it was me, you
would either have to knock me out or take me in kicking and screaming. But to
them, you say 'Son, it's time to go.' They will say 'Yes sir' and they will
walk the mile and do what they got to do.
"I just don't feel bad for the guys on death row. You have to have committed a
really heinous crime to go to death row. That's what makes these guys and some
of the women different from the rest of us.
"We can debate all we want as to whether it (their treatment) is inhumane, But
the U.S. Supreme Court has said, on any number of occasions, it is not cruel
and unusual punishment. They were sentenced to death. By God, they earned their
way into that set of circumstances."
Simmons, convicted in 1997 in Jackson County, had been a grocery store butcher
before his life began anew on Parchman's death row, labeled Unit 29. State
Department of Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps said Simmons was a
problem prisoner, having been written up for 60 serious violations.The offenses
included refusing to follow a guard's orders, threatening to kill guards,
throwing a "very hot greasy soapy liquid substance" on guards, possession of
contraband and threatening to "scald" a guard.
Unintended punishment
"The amount of time on death row was the unintended part of the punishment,"
said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center
in Washington. "In the early days, the person was executed within a year of the
sentence. The modern-day death penalties have gotten much longer and continue
to get progressively longer during the appeals process.
"From all the reports that we've looked at … there is real concern about the
time and conditions for these inmates. If there is any problem of mental
illness, it becomes exacerbated after being on death row. It's a concern in
itself, as far as humane treatment and cruel and unusual punishment. What these
inmates get is essentially (both) life and death sentences from a legal
perspective."
Cabana, who has worked in corrections for 42 years, countered, saying: "These
people need to think about the victims for a while. I'm not suggesting we
should run Nazi-style death camps. We aren't. There are always those who are
going to whine and cry about the conditions on death row, but in my opinion, it
is absolutely needed. It's not nice, but it's not supposed to be nice. The
execution is the punishment and the confinement is based on legitimate security
needs."
Death row inmates speak
In 2002, the Sun Herald asked death row inmates to send letters explaining what
it was like during the July 17, 2002, execution of Tracy Hansen. Hansen shot
state Trooper Bruce Ladner to death in April 1987 in Harrison County. Hansen
was the 1st inmate executed in the state in 13 years, and the 1st by lethal
injection. Prior to that, the state used a gas chamber and before that, an
electric chair.
"On the day of the execution, some chaplains came around and shared with the
guys who wanted to talk," inmate Alan Dale Walker wrote. "I spoke with one but
really it does no good to talk to them.
"They're strangers, and just because they are chaplains and they're listening
to you doesn't help me at all. When I am hurting and sad, it does me no good to
talk to a stranger. I have to deal with my pain and sadness in my own way."
Walker said Hansen's death was particularly hard because the 2 had become
friends. Prison guards allowed Hansen and Walker a face-to-face visit 2 days
before the execution.
"I am not going to tell you what we spoke about," Walker wrote, "but I will say
I had time to say goodbye face to face and I loved it. Being able to say
goodbye … was the nicest act of kindness anyone has ever shown me since I have
been here."
Another death row inmate, Thomas Loden, wrote: "To fully understand this, one
must comprehend that there are but 65 of us, a rather small group. Sure, we
come from many different backgrounds, races, even religions, but we all have a
common interest; therefore the passing of one, we all feel. … Tracy was an
alarm to most here, the clock ticks on for all …"
Another condemned killer, Howard Neal, said he remembered the nights leading up
to Hansen's execution. He heard Hansen crying in his cell.
The day of the execution, Neal didn't want to talk to anyone. "I was thinking
that could be me they killed that day," he wrote.
Walker said he was surprised by how the execution affected some guards.
"Some of the nicer guards hated to see it and were sad that it took place," he
wrote. "Some didn't know what to think and others didn't … get close enough to
the inmates to really care one way or the other. Some of the guards wanted no
part of it. I spoke to one or two who wanted to get away from this place. They
didn't want to be this close to death."
Loden wrote most people forget death row inmates are still human beings.
"Yes, we all have justly been sentenced," he wrote, "but would it surprise
anyone that we still feel, that we still are human? As far as being aware of
who is next, we all are, but this is something that's not really openly
discussed. We do try to show respect to one another. "But overall … the hardest
part of the row isn't the end, it's the dying a little each day … knowing
you're but one day closer to death."
Law officers and relatives of murder victims have little sympathy for the
inmates facing execution.
"There are those few that even life behind bars is not enough because they
would be a danger to staff and other inmates in the prison," Cabana said.
"After many years, I finally reached the conclusion that however sad it may be
there are those among us who are simply so dangerous, so bad, that … there has
to be an ultimate final penalty for them. There is nothing to do with them
except execution."
As Simmons took his last breath, his victim's father, Paskiel Wolfe Sr.,
watched along with wife Linda Wolfe. He said the execution was "16 years
overdue."
Upon their return to Texas, Wolfe headed straight to his son's grave to tell
him justice had finally been served.
(source: Biloxi Sun-Herald)
_______________________________________________
DeathPenalty mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Search the Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A free service of WashLaw
http://washlaw.edu
(785)670.1088
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
