July 23
TEXAS----impending execution
Lawyers Argue Inmate Incompetent for Aug. 1 Execution
Marcus Druery says that his cell on death row at Livingston's Polunsky Unit is
wired. The wires, he believes, carry voices into his cell and transport his
thoughts to other people. Prison staff members, he claims, have contaminated
his food with feces, urine and insects.
Druery, 32, is scheduled to be executed Aug. 1 for the 2002 robbing and fatal
shooting of a 20-year-old man in Brazos County. On Tuesday, his lawyers will
ask a judge to appoint experts to examine the convicted murderer, who they
argue is ineligible for execution because of his severe mental illness.
“He started to experience voices and hearing echoes in his cell and has
deteriorated pretty quickly since arriving on death row,” said Kate Black, who
represents Druery and is a staff attorney at the Texas Defender Service.
A spokeswoman for the Brazos County district attorney’s office declined to
comment on the ongoing case, but said that the state would file a response to
Druery’s motion before the hearing.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 in another Texas death penalty case,
Panetti v. Quarterman, that it isn’t enough for prisoners to simply understand
the fact that they will be executed and are being punished for a crime. The
court ruled that inmates must have enough mental capacity to have “a rational
understanding of it.”
Druery was sentenced to death in 2003 after his conviction in the murder of
Skyyler Browne. Druery, along with two teenagers, drove Browne to a pasture.
Druery shot Browne repeatedly, took his cellphone, cash, pager and a bag of
marijuana and set his body on fire before tossing it in a stock pond. Browne's
body was found two weeks later. The two teenagers were not charged in the
crime.
At Tuesday's hearing, Druery’s lawyers will ask the judge to appoint two
independent experts to evaluate his mental competency. In documents requesting
the hearing, they wrote that Druery’s “psychotic disorder prevents a rational
understanding of the connection between his crime and his punishment.”
Since 2009, Druery has been in and out of the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice's Jester IV unit for psychiatric treatment, and staff members have
diagnosed him with schizophrenia with “psychotic, delusional symptoms.” He
refuses to take anti-psychotic medication, because he doesn’t believe that he
is mentally ill and worries that the medicine contains poison, Black said.
In hundreds of letters that Druery has sent to attorneys, courts and others, he
refers to nonexistent “settlements” and “options” that he says should have
secured his freedom. In a January 2011 letter to the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals, with the subject line, “Wired Situation,” Druery told the judges that
his case had been thrown out and yet people were hindering his freedom. “I’m
still under wires in prison and don’t know what to do about it,” he wrote,
going on to list a litany of imagined infractions and dangers, including
stabbings and torture. “There is still a speaker in my cell playing
continuously and it needs to end ASAP!” he wrote in closing.
Despite Druery’s continued bizarre behavior, though, he does not meet the
prison’s criteria for forced medication. And he is back on death row in
Livingston.
The question in Druery’s case does not concern his guilt or his sanity at the
time of the crime, but rather, Black said, whether he is able to understand now
why he is being executed.
“He’s factually aware there is an execution date, but because of his delusional
thought content, he doesn’t believe that date applies to him or that he will be
executed because of a crime he’s committed,” Black said.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in
Washington, D.C., said that although there has always been a ban on executing
the insane, the courts have struggled to deal with the developing science of
mental illness.
“We don’t yet have a definition of what mental illnesses are so debilitating
they would bar the death penalty,” Dieter said.
In addition to requesting psychiatric evaluation of Druery’s mental competency,
Black said, his lawyers have also asked the court to withdraw his Aug. 1
execution date. Druery’s condition, she said, has worsened as that date draws
closer.
“Since the setting of the execution date, we’ve seen an even more rapid
decline,” Black said. “His delusional thought content is becoming more
disorganized.”
(source: Texas Tribune)
GEORGIA----impending execution
Murderer Hill awaits appeals decisions to stave off scheduled Monday execution
Murderer Warren Hill will die Monday evening unless his attorneys can find a
court that believes his mental capacity is diminished enough that it would be
unconstitutional to execute him, or if a judge finds fault with the state's new
method of execution.
If he is executed as planned, Hill will be the 1st in Georgia to be put to
death using only 1 drug — the powerful barbiturate pentobarbital — instead the
3 that the state has been using in combination since 2008.
Hill still has appeals based on the mental retardation issue pending in the
Georgia and U.S. Supreme Courts. And on Monday a Fulton County Superior Court
judge is scheduled to hear the issue of the Department of Corrections' sudden
change in its lethal injection protocol from 3 drugs to 1 drug. Last Tuesday,
the day before Hill was initially scheduled to die, the prison system announced
it was abandoning the 3-drug cocktail — a sedative followed by the paralytic
pancuronium bromide and then potassium chloride, which stops the heart. It was
replaced with a single drug process, pentobarbital, the same as in 6 other
states [a seventh uses a different sedative].
Later, on Monday evening, there will be vigils held in 11 Georgia cites to
express outrage that the state is executing a mentally retarded man.
"In other states, Hill would not face the ultimate punishment due to his
disability," said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International
USA."Unless the Supreme Court steps in to prevent this execution, the state of
Georgia will have committed a terrible injustice."
Hill was condemned for using a nail-studded 2-by-6 board in 1990 to beat to
death fellow prisoner Joseph Handspike. At that time Hill was already
incarcerated for murdering his 18-year-old girlfriend.
The judge presiding over the 1991 trial for Handspike's murder found Hill, with
an IQ of 70, was more likely than not to be mentally disabled. But the judge
also determined that the lawyer representing Hill at the time had not proven
his mental disability beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard set in 1988 when
Georgia became the 1st state to prohibit executing the mentally disabled.
Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court said it has said it is unconstitutional to
to execute the mentally retarded who are at "special risk of wrongful
execution." But also in that 2002 decision, the justices left it up to the
states to determine what was required to show mental retardation; Georgia has
the strictest standard.
"Mildly mentally retarded individuals like Warren Hill frequently defy the
stereotypical image we often have of persons with the disability in part
because they tend to make efforts to hide the symptoms," wrote Hill's attorney,
Brian Kammer. He said if a defendant can prove retardation beyond a reasonable
doubt, then he is likely so severely retarded that if he went to trial the
death penalty would not be an option. "He may even be found incompetent to
stand trial. This leaves the majority of mentally retarded persons in the
criminal justice system, who are mildly mentally retarded, in the lurch,
because it is the mildly mentally retarded whose symptoms can mislead ... about
the significance or even the existence of the disability."
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
**************
Georgia is about to execute a mentally disabled man in violation of the U.S.
Constitution.
Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, the state of Georgia will execute a
man that everyone agrees is mentally retarded. A state court determined that a
decade ago. The execution would violate the U.S. Constitution if carried out,
but apparently that standard is not good enough for the Peach State.
Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, the state of Georgia will execute a
man that everyone agrees is mentally retarded. A state court determined that a
decade ago. The execution would violate the U.S. Constitution if carried out,
but apparently that standard is not good enough for the Peach State.
Warren Lee Hill, Jr., who has an I.Q. of 70, is scheduled to die by lethal
injection on July 23. His original execution date of July 18 was postponed due
to changes in the state’s execution drug protocol. Georgia, which once used a
three-drug cocktail, has opted for a single drug dosage of pentobarbital—a
sedative used to put down dogs and cats that has been banned for export by the
European Union.
On July 18, Texas used pentobarbital to execute Yokamon Hearn. Hearn was a
mentally impaired man who, according to his defense, suffered mental
impairments due to his mother’s prenatal drinking, and abuse from his parents.
In his order denying relief to Hill, Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Wilson
wrote that Hill meets the criteria of mental retardation by a preponderance of
the evidence. This the standard set by the nation’s high court in the 2002 case
Atkins v. Virginia. Any higher standard, the Supreme Court ruled, is
unconstitutional.
Writing for the majority in Atkins, Justice Stevens opined that the mentally
disabled should not be executed because it provides no deterrent effect, and
that such offenders are not culpable to deserve such a form of retribution. He
added that with reduced capacity, mentally retarded defendants face a risk of
wrongful conviction. They are poor witnesses, may give less meaningful
assistance to their lawyers, and their demeanor may give an impression that
they lack remorse.
“Those mentally retarded persons who meet the law’s requirements for criminal
responsibility should be tried and punished when they commit crimes,” Stevens
wrote. “Because of their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment, and
control of their impulses, however, they do not act with the level of moral
culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct.
Moreover, their impairments can jeopardize the reliability and fairness of
capital proceedings against mentally retarded defendants.”
However, Georgia sees things differently. Georgia requires defendants to prove
they have an intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt—the strictest
standard in the nation. And Georgia is an outlier, as the only state in the
Union with such an unreasonably high burden of proof. Yet, the state judge
believes that Hill does not meet Georgia’s standard, and that Georgia’s
standard does not violate the U.S. Constitution.
Many have already spoken out on this case. Several jurors from the case said
they would have sentenced Hill to life without parole if they had the option.
Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn Carter called for clemency, and the
victim’s family called for a commutation of his sentence. Mental health
advocacy groups, including the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities,
the Arc of Georgia and the American Association on Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) have called for a stay of Hill’s execution
as well.
Further, the international community has voiced its opposition to the
execution. Christof Heyns—the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary
or arbitrary executions—said Hill’s execution “would be a fatality in violation
of international as well as domestic law.”
Georgia has a history of problems in its application of the death penalty,
often making big mistakes by playing fast and loose with justice. In 2005, the
state of Georgia granted a posthumous pardon to Lena Baker. A black maid who
was executed in 1945 for killing a white man she said enslaved and beat her,
Baker was the only woman executed in Georgia’s electric chair. Her last words
were "What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself
... I am ready to meet my God."
And last September—despite strong indications of innocence, an international
outcry and a petition of 1 million signatures— Georgia sent a man named Troy
Davis to his death. The execution of Troy Davis, despite the absence of a
murder weapon, physical evidence or DNA linking him to the crime, placed the
spotlight on Georgia and the injustices of the death penalty. This, in a state
where five death row inmates have been exonerated.
And Georgia is in the spotlight once again, as it plans to execute Warren Hill,
a mentally ill man. And as the state decides to go it alone— flying in the face
of the Constitution— the attention it receives is an embarrassment.
(source: Daily Kos)
******************
Georgia death row inmate set to be executed
A Georgia death row inmate's execution is set to go forth unless he gets
last-minute relief from a court.
Warren Lee Hill's execution is set for 7 p.m. Monday. Hill was serving a life
sentence when he was convicted in the 1990 death of a fellow inmate.
His lawyer has argued Hill is mentally disabled and shouldn't be executed. The
state has argued the defense failed to meet its burden of proving beyond a
reasonable doubt that Hill is mentally disabled.
Hill has petitions for a stay of execution pending before the Supreme Court of
Georgia and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hill's execution was scheduled for last week but was delayed after the state
announced changes to its execution procedure.
(source: Associated Press)
NORTH CAROLINA----death row inmate dies
Frank Wetzel, killer of two N.C. lawmen, dies after half century in prison
Frank Wetzel, dubbed one of the state’s most notorious criminals after being
convicted of killing two state highway patrolmen, fought for more than half a
century for his release from prison.
On Saturday, his struggle ended.
Wetzel, 90, died in Central Prison as the state’s oldest prisoner and one of
the longest-serving.
Wetzel, a silvery-haired, blue-eyed inmate who lived out his last years in a
cloud of dementia, maintained through the years that he was the victim in his
case, not a cold-blooded cop-killer, but the target of a law enforcement
conspiracy.
His case, with its sensational manhunt and trial, offers a trip back in time
and across the country of a half century ago when cars had tail fins, Luther
Hodges was governor of North Carolina, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.
At 8 p.m. Nov. 5, 1957, police radios in Richmond County crackled with urgent
news: Trooper W. L. Reece had been fatally shot and was lying on U.S. 220 near
Ellerbe, a Richmond County town.
About 20 minutes later, radios delivered another punch: Another law enforcement
officer, James T. Brown, had been shot on U.S.?1 near Sanford. A man who
claimed to be a hitchhiker in the assailant’s car told police the killer had
drawn a large pistol from the glove compartment when the trooper in Richmond
County pulled the car over for speeding.
The hitchhiker described the assailant as a dark-complexioned man who spoke
with a foreign-sounding accent.
A sensational trial
Wetzel, fair-skinned with distinctive blue eyes, became a suspect after a black
1957 Oldsmobile was discovered in Chattanooga, Tenn. Inside, the FBI found
Wetzel’s fingerprint on a North Carolina license plate.
A nationwide manhunt ensued, and 2 weeks after the killings Wetzel was arrested
as a vagrant in Bakersfield, Calif.
Less than 2 months later, he went on trial for the 1st killing.
The Raleigh Times reported this on Dec. 9, 1957:
“About 100 newsmen, photographers, police officials and curious gathered at the
Seaboard train station here [Rockingham] to meet him.
“Wetzel climbed from the Pullman car submissively as the crowd shoved up tight
around him, photographers popping flashbulbs.
“He stood between Richmond County Sheriff Raymond Goodman and Patrol Captain A.
W. Welch, his hands cuffed before him and a pistol held by Prisons Fugitive
Officer Dexter Stell pressed into his back under a gray corduroy car coat.
“His black hair neatly combed, the clean-featured man quietly answered, ‘I knew
they would bring me back anyway,’ when asked why he did not fight extradition
from California.”
His preliminary hearing, in which Wetzel cross-examined an eyewitness himself,
was a media event.
The Raleigh Times account continued: “The courtroom was packed to overflowing
and curious people jammed into the hallway outside the courtroom which has 575
seating capacity. Local observers said it was the largest turnout at the
courthouse since the sensational murder trial of W. B. Cole a local mill owner
in 1925.
“A battery of some 25 to 30 still, newspaper and television photographers
banged and ground away at the obviously self-conscious Wetzel, for some 15
minutes before the hearing was opened.” Supporters doubted guilt
Wetzel received 2 life sentences in 1958 after he was found guilty of killing
the 2 troopers. Wetzel claimed he was on his way south to try to break his
brother out of a Mississippi prison.
Over the years, Wetzel has collected a group of followers, family, lawyers and
others who insist that he could not have committed 2 killings on the winding
North Carolina roads – that no one, not even the fastest NASCAR driver, could
get from Ellerbe to the Sanford killing site in 20 minutes.
“I’ve offered anyone who can do that a million dollars,” said Richard Wetzel,
the convict’s 57-year-old half-brother. “I don’t have a million dollars, but
I’m not worried that anybody can do that, not anyone in NASCAR or speed
racing.”
Wetzel grew up in New York after his father, a farmer forced out of North
Dakota by the Dust Bowl, struggled as an on and off foundry worker to put food
on the table for 7 children. Wetzel got into trouble as a young boy, stealing
from grocery stores and landing in reform school and eventually New York jails.
Richard Wetzel was only 6 when his father took him on a Greyhound bus from
Charlotte to Raleigh and Central Prison to meet Frank Wetzel.
“It was kind of scary going in there with all those doors,” Richard Wetzel said
Sunday. “They brought him in through the glass, and it wasn’t long before I
knew I was going to like him.”
Frank Wetzel married in prison nearly 30 years ago, and his wife, Bianca, a
former North Carolinian who now lives in Florida, advocated for his release for
many years.
Richard Wetzel, who said he doesn’t plan to let his half-brother’s appeal die
with him, said Sunday that funeral arrangements for Frank Wetzel were
incomplete.
(source: News & Observer)
OREGON:
Convicted Oregon murderer fights delay in execution
Gary Haugen, who has been convicted twice of aggravated murder, wants his death
sentence to be carried out. On Tuesday, he returns to a Marion County, Ore.,
court to fight the reprieve issued by a judge in November. A senior judge from
Washington County will hear arguments in Haugen's civil suit against Gov. John
Kitzhaber, who issued a reprieve Nov. 22 that blocked Haugen's death warrant.
The execution was set for Dec. 6.
Judge Timothy Alexander is not expected to immediately decide the case after
hearing it. Appeals of his decision could go all the way to the Oregon Supreme
Court, which upheld Haugen's death warrant on a 4-3 vote Nov. 21 — the day
before Kitzhaber intervened.
Whatever the outcome, the case is likely to add to the relatively slim case law
dealing with the governor's authority under the Oregon Constitution to grant
reprieves, commutations and pardons.
A reprieve is a delay, while a commutation reduces penalties but does not
overturn a conviction. A pardon does forgive a crime.
In a 1958 decision that the lawyers will argue about Tuesday, the Oregon
Supreme Court ruled that the governor's authority in this field was broad.
"The courts have no authority to inquire into the reasons or motives which
actuate the governor in exercising this power," Justice Hall Lusk wrote for the
court back then.
But Harrison Latto, an attorney representing Haugen, said the courts have a
duty to decide this case. Unlike the 1958 case, in which the parents of the
murder victim sued, he said Haugen, 40, has a direct stake.
"His claim is not that the governor has abused his discretion, but that he has
abused his power," he wrote. "This court therefore has authority to resolve the
question presented."
Kitzhaber vowed at his Nov. 22 announcement there would be no executions
carried out as long as he was governor.
During his 1st term, Kitzhaber let stand the executions of 2 men — in 1996 and
1997 — both of whom, like Haugen, had waived their appeals.
Haugen had been convicted of killing the mother of his girlfriend and later was
found guilty of murdering a fellow inmate.
3 points
In his written arguments filed with the circuit court on Haugen's behalf, Latto
said the case boils down to 3 points: Haugen has rejected the reprieve; the
governor's order is open-ended; and it exceeds his authority under the law.
Latto based his 1st argument on a pair of Oregon Supreme Court cases that date
to 1907 and 1918.
"… An act of clemency by the governor is effective only upon acceptance; this
one has been rejected, rather than accepted; and therefore, it is ineffective
to halt Mr. Haugen's execution," he wrote.
But the state's lawyers — 2 assistant attorneys general, Matt Donahue and Tim
Sylwester — argue that a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the
president's clemency authority applies to this case, because the governor has
similarly broad authority under the Oregon Constitution.
Open-ended?
Latto also argued that Kitzhaber's order is improper because it is open-ended
with respect to Haugen.
"This burden, that he has never sought or accepted, is that he will be required
to abide a long period of uncertainty about if, and when he will be put to
death," he wrote.
Latto said the uncertainty stems from whether a new governor might or might not
continue Kitzhaber's moratorium.
The state's lawyers disagree.
The language of Kitzhaber's order, which they quote, said that it is in effect
"for the duration of my service as governor."
Kitzhaber's current elected term ends Jan. 12, 2015. If he were to win again in
2014, the end of that elected term would be Jan. 14, 2019.
Suspending law?
Latto wrote that Kitzhaber's order amounts to a suspension of the laws, and
therefore is illegal and unconstitutional.
"For a certain period of time, which is the duration of Gov. Kitzhaber's
service as governor, the ordinary operation of these laws, in the case of one
particular inmate, will be 'interrupted' and will 'cease for a time from
operation and effect,' " he wrote.
"But this temporary cessation will be brought about not by the act of the
Legislative Assembly… but by action of the governor, who has no such power."
The state's lawyers argue that Kitzhaber's order applies specifically to
Haugen, and that nothing the governor has done bars prosecutors from seeking
the death penalty in other aggravated-murder cases.
"The governor possesses the authority to temporarily suspend an individual
sentence, and that temporary suspension
(source: Statesman-Journal)
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