Nov. 10
NORTH CAROLINA:
No one sentenced to death in North Carolina this year
As North Carolina politicians engaged in rigorous debate this year about
whether capital punishment should exist, the juries that actually decide
death-penalty cases made a statement of their own.
No jury in North Carolina has come back with a death sentence this year, and
there are no more capital cases on the 2012 docket.
That's the 1st time since 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated in this
state, that a jury has not sentenced at least 1 person to execution.
"The idea that we've come this far in 35 years is a powerful statement of where
the public is at in North Carolina," said Ken Rose, an attorney at the Center
for Death Penalty Litigation and a death penalty critic. "It's a verdict on the
death penalty."
The last capital case on the 2012 court calendar was decided earlier this
month, when a Johnston County jury convicted Matthew Hagert Salentine of
1st-degree murder in the June 2010 beating death of Patricia Warren Stevens.
The jury had an option of sentencing Salentine, 37, to death for killing his
74-year-old neighbor as she tried to stop him from robbing her of jewelry,
money and checks. But after a hearing that included testimony from the families
of both the victim and convicted killer, the jury came back Nov. 2 with a
sentence of life in prison without parole.
That trial came on the heels of 3 other capital cases this year.
Wake County had one of those cases, the trial of Jason Williford, the
32-year-old man convicted of murdering and sexually assaulting Kathy Taft, a
state school board member slain in 2010. The jury that found him guilty in
early June spared him a death sentence, sending him instead to a life in prison
without possibility for parole.
In May, a Guilford County jury sentenced Isaam Mattaay Chaplin, 30, to life in
prison without possibility for parole after finding him guilty of 1st-degree
murder and armed robbery in the death of Juan Salado, a young father working 2
jobs to raise a son. Chaplin, a former N.C. A&T criminal justice major who once
worked at the Old Navy Store where the crime occurred, is accused of dressing
in women???s clothing and a wig and ambushing Salado as he carried bags of
money from the Greensboro store on Dec. 15, 2008.
The other death-penalty case this year was in June in Robeson County, where
John Darren Bullard was tried for 1st-degree murder in the 2006 shooting death
of Crystal Locklear. A jury in that case found Bullard guilty of 2nd-degree
murder, and the death penalty was not an option for that verdict.
Issue in other states
The record-low of 4 capital trials in North Carolina comes at a time when many
states are wrestling with proposals to abolish capital punishment.
In 2004, the courts declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional in New
York. In 2007, New Jersey repealed its death penalty law, with New Mexico
following suit in 2009 and Illinois in 2011. This year, the Connecticut
legislature passed a bill to abandon the death penalty for future convictions,
but the 11 men on death row may still be executed.
But in California this week, 53 % of the voters rejected a ballot initiative to
repeal the death penalty and move all death row inmates to life in prison
without possibility of parole.
Though North Carolina has not put such questions about the death penalty on the
ballot, there has been a de-facto moratorium on executions since 2006, when a
series of lawsuits were filed challenging the fairness and humanity of the
state-sponsored executions. The state legislature also has adopted and repealed
the 2009 Racial Justice Act, which gave all death row inmates and anyone facing
a death penalty trial an opportunity to challenge their case on racial biases.
Death-penalty critics and capital defenders are buoyed by the absence of new
capital sentences this year.
"In some ways, it's a milestone," said Thomas Maher, executive director of the
state's Indigent Defense Services and a former director of the Center for Death
Penalty Litigation. "In other ways, it's part of a trend."
In 2000, there were 57 capital trials and 18 death-penalty verdicts. That
number steadily decreased in the ensuing years, with 12 capital trials in 2008
resulting in one death sentence.
In 2009, there were 2 death sentences from 9 capital trials. In 2010, there
were 11 capital trials and 4 death sentences, 1 more than in 2011, when 3 death
sentences were issued after 12 capital trials.
Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said there are many reasons for
the drop in cases and death sentences. Prosecutors consider the "enormous
resources it takes" to try a capital case, Willoughby said, and the changing
attitudes of jurors toward capital punishment, in addition to recent law
changes that make a sentence of life without possibility of parole mean just
that - a life behind prison walls.
"You will continue to see select cases tried capitally," Willoughby said,
"because the belief by prosecutors is the facts of some cases are so egregious
that a jury should decide whether the death penalty is appropriate."
The Williford case Willoughby has said the "egregiousness" of the murder and
sexual assault of Taft, the 62-year-old state school board member bludgeoned
inside a Raleigh home while she recovered from cosmetic surgery, was what
prompted him to pursue the case capitally.
Ernest "Buddy" Conner, a defense attorney for Williford, said he tried to
arrange a plea deal with prosecutors in which his client would plead guilty to
murder, sexual assault and burglary and spend the rest of his life in prison
without any chance for parole. The Wake district attorney rejected that
proposal, though, and a trial ensued, resulting in the same sentence that
Conner proposed.
Conner, a lawyer in Greenville who has worked on capital cases for 20 years,
said juries are never quick to give a death sentence.
But several things have happened to make them even more reluctant.
In recent years, there have been several high-profile cases of wrongful
convictions, which resulted in the state investing more money into its indigent
defense services.
Now, when a jury gets a capital case, lawyers provide a fuller picture of a
defendant from the start, offering up mental health and other factors that
might have played a part in their behavior.
"When you show the why of it all," Conner said, "juries are often very
reluctant to give the death sentence. If the defendant is a monster, that
monster was made by somebody. If there is serious mental illness, well you
don't kill your mentally ill."
The absence of death sentences this year, Conner said, does not mean that a
death knell has been sounded for capital punishment.
"I think it's still alive," Conner said. "I just don't think it's very well.
This is historic."
(source: News & Observer)
ALABAMA:
Death Penalty Appealed
The Alabama Supreme Court has asked the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals to
take another look at the case of death row inmate Anthony Ray Hinton, convicted
of killing 2 people during 1985 robberies at Birmingham fast food restaurants.
The 56-year-old Hinton had questioned the qualifications of a firearms expert
who testified during the trial. The Supreme Court asked the appeals court to
use a different standard when reviewing the trial judge's decision that the
firearms expert was qualified.
The court ruled 7-0 to send the case back to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
Justices Jim Main and Kelli Wise recused themselves because they were former
criminal appeals court members. Justice Greg Shaw wrote he also was on the
appeals court, but he said the issue was different then.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
After Failed Death Penalty Repeal, California Could See Spate of Executions
In the California county that houses the nation's largest death row, voters
overwhelmingly endorsed an end to executions on Tuesday. But Proposition 34,
which would have repealed the death penalty and replaced it with life without
parole (LWOP), was rejected statewide by a 53???47 percent margin. The measure
drew fire from sentencing reform advocates concerned with embracing LWOP,
sometimes called "the other death penalty." But now that Prop. 34 has failed,
the Golden State could see a wave of executions.
More than 700 prisoners await execution at San Quentin State Prison. But none
have been carried out since 2006, when a federal judge ruled that the state's
3-drug lethal injection procedure could put prisoners in agonizing pain if
administered incorrectly. Though the Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation began overhauling its procedures in response, the new protocols
have remained in limbo in state courts.
But next week, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports, San Mateo County District
Attorney Steve Wagstaffe will attempt to bypass the de facto moratorium by
asking a judge to allow the execution of Robert Fairbank, who has exhausted his
state and federal appeals, with a single lethal drug. 6 states currently use
such a procecure, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. If the
judge grants this request, executions could proceed at an unprecented pace -
California has 13 other inmates who have run out their appeals process.
Death penalty supporters claim that the defeat of Prop. 34 could help clear the
way for resumed executions. "There is no legal effect from defeating a
proposition, but there is a political effect and a psychological effect," Kent
Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in
Sacramento, told the Sacramento Bee. In addition to advocating a switch to the
single-drug procedure, Scheidegger, who helped defeat Prop. 34, advocates a
limit to the number of appeals available to condemned inmates. He notes that if
the state fails to make these and other reforms, death penalty supporters may
advance their own ballot question asking voters to reinstate executions in the
next elections.
Meanwhile, anti-death penalty advocates are also retooling their strategy. "Yes
on 34" campaigners emphasize that support for capital punishment has narrowed
significantly since the death penalty was placed on the books by a 70% margin
in 1978. They say that the question could soon go back on the ballot.
"53 % is not a mandate for carrying out executions," said Natasha Minsker,
Proposition 34's campaign manager, following the initiative's defeat.
Supporters of Prop. 34 nearly tipped the scales in its favor by advocating
death penalty abolition as a cost-saving measure. Jeanne Woodford, a retired
warden of San Quentin State Prison a spokesperson for the initiative, told
voters that capital punishment was "all cost and no benefit," and that its
abolition would result in $130 million in savings annually that could be
distributed back to local law enforcement agencies.
But the savings would have come in part from eliminating the state-funded legal
team that, during the appeals process, is guaranteed only to condemned
prisoners. For this reason, many death row inmates saw the initiative as
limiting their chances to prove their innocence - and said that if they could
vote, they would vote against Prop. 34.
"This initiative is not about saving lives, but about keeping innocent people
behind bars and limiting their rights to clear their names," wrote Darrell
Lomax, who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison for 15 years, in a
public letter.
Groups like the ACLU, which helped spearhead "Yes on 34," advance the pragmatic
position that state-level repeals will build momentum toward a national death
penalty ban. But many sentencing reform activists question whether such repeals
adequately address deeper injustices in the prison system. In Connecticut,
which earlier this year became the 17th state to repeal the death penalty,
prisoners who would have been condemned to death will now be sentenced to life
without parole in 22-hour-a-day solitary confinement.
The Other Death Penalty, a Lancaster, California-based group of prisoners
serving life without parole, charges: "Sadly, in a Faustian bargain, the death
penalty abolition movement, with few exceptions, has bought into the lie that a
slow death by incarceration is a humane alternative to a quick death by lethal
injection."
As both death penalty supporters and death penalty opponents mobilize in the
wake of Prop. 34's failure, it's uncertain what direction sentencing reforms
may take. (Californians did vote overwhelmingly Tuesday to soften the "3
strikes" law, which has often been challenged as a violation on the ban on
cruel and unusual punishment). The Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP),
which ultimately declined to endorse Prop. 34, says that future efforts should
expose the death penalty as "the sharpest edge to a broken system," rather than
relying on tough-on-crime rhetoric to woo voters.
CEDP also notes that inmates were left largely out of the debate. The group
says that of 50 letters it received from California death row prisoners about
Prop. 34, only 4 supported the act.
"You need to hear prisoner voices," said Christine Thomas, a sentencing reform
activist with CEDP at a panel organized by the California Democratic Party's
Progressive Caucus. "You need to hear about the other death penalty - that
people will die in prison without the chance at parole."
(source: In These Times)
***************************
Why the death penalty? Here's why
Andres Ordonez was shot and killed Sunday in Los Angeles over - nothing.
Well, that's not exactly right. As The Times reported, the 25-year-old church
deacon was "shot Sunday with another parishioner after interrupting a woman
vandalizing the wall of the Iglesia Principe de Pas, a small evangelical church
on Beverly Boulevard."
That's right: Someone took Ordonez's life because he had the temerity to try to
stop a tagger.
A restaurant cook, Ordonez, who came to the U.S. as a young boy from Guatemala,
leaves behind a 1-year-old son and a wife, Ana, who is 3 months pregnant.
Here's how The Times described what happened:
Ordonez's wife said she was helping to prepare food after the Sunday evening
service when her husband stepped outside from the singing and praying in the
church to check on her.
"I wasn't feeling really well that day, so he just went outside and asked me
how I was," she said. "Then he heard some noises."
Just around the corner, on Reno Street, another parishioner was asking the
female tagger to stop scrawling her gang's name on the church wall. She shoved
the parishioner, causing him to stumble. Ordonez and another parishioner were
shot when they went to help.
In my business, we often describe this as a "senseless killing." The kind we
see far too many of in our inner cities. And then we move on to other news.
Now, probably the killer will be caught. Probably the tagger will be caught.
Probably they come from broken homes, hard-scrabble backgrounds, tough
circumstances. Probably they'll be convicted of something -- something short of
murder, even though Ordonez is dead -- and will be sent to prison. Probably
they'll be paroled at some point, perhaps having turned themselves around but
more likely just free to commit more crimes.
And Ordonez will still be dead, and his young son and his unborn child will be
without a father and his wife without her husband.
On Tuesday, Californians voted to keep the death penalty. They did so even
though California doesn't really execute anyone; even though the state is
strapped for cash and capital punishment is a costly sham here.
And even though most experts will tell you that the death penalty really isn't
a deterrent.
And intellectually, I agree.
But there's another part of me -- and it's a part of a lot of people, like the
ones who voted to keep the death penalty. And that part makes me wonder if the
death penalty -- a real death penalty -- could have saved Andres Ordonez.
We reserve capital punishment for the worst killers in our society. It wasn't
always this way. Once, you could be hanged for stealing a man's horse. But now
we're more civilized.
But maybe, just maybe, the fact that we're more civilized is what keeps the
death penalty from being a deterrent.
Ordonez's killer will probably never face a charge that could result in the
death penalty. But what if that weren't true? What if the person who took
Odonez's life had known that doing so would result in forfeiting his own? That
pulling the trigger wouldn't mean just a few years in prison but the end of his
life?
Would that be a deterrent?
Yes, I know, this is a cruel, uncivilized way of thinking. It's not Christian
(well, OK, perhaps it's Old Testament Christian). It's not liberal, or
Democratic.
But there's something about the death penalty that seems to be hard-wired in
humans. It's been around a long time: It's "an eye for an eye."
And if it would have saved Andres Ordonez -- or any future Andres Ordonezes --
then maybe we do need it.
That's not reason talking. But that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
************************
Death Penalty Survives In California, But 3-Strikes Law Cut Back
When 53 % of California voters rejected Proposition 34 on Election Day, they
were choosing to retain the death penalty instead of replacing it with life in
prison without the possibility of parole. The same day, a larger percentage of
the California electorate voted to radically reduce the number of felons
serving life sentences under the state's so-called "3-strikes" law. In both
cases, the punishment costs the state dearly - either because of years of
fighting an inmate's appeals or years of housing and feeding him. How could the
same voters care so much about saving money in one context but be so
indifferent to the squandering of it in another?
The answer to that is something that the backers of Prop 34 didn't seem to
understand - but if they did, then it's all the better that the measure failed.
When Americans think about ordinary matters of crime and punishment, economics
are key. But when you throw the death penalty into the mix, moral
considerations rule. Economic arguments matter at the margins, but at its core,
the debate over the death penalty is never really about dollars and cents -
rather, it turns on our idea of what it means to be a human being.
I doubt the 726 inmates on California's death row care very much about this
debate. The state has not executed anyone since January 2006, when officials
administered a lethal injection to 76-year-old Clarence Allen, and because of a
federally imposed moratorium there is no immediate prospect that any of the
dozen or so death-row inmates whose appeals have run their course will be put
to death any time soon. In fact, California has executed a total of only 13
people since capital punishment was reinstated there in 1978 - an average of
one execution every two and a half years.
Meanwhile, in Texas 2 days after the election, Mario Swain became the 13th
person executed in the state this year. Swain was my client. 10 years ago he
broke into a house owned by a woman named Lola Nixon, intending to commit
burglary. While he was inside, Ms. Nixon returned home, and Swain killed her.
The courts ruled against our final appeals late on the night of Nov. 7, around
26 hours before Swain was put to death. I decided to wait until Thursday
morning to tell him, hoping that by keeping the news to myself, it would give
him a better final night. Another lawyer might have told him right away.
Death-penalty lawyers disagree about such things.
(source: David Dow, The Daily Beast)
***************************
California keeps the death penalty
The people of California have spoken: "Like the inmates on death row, we also
believe that killing someone is the answer to a problem."
We have become what we abhor.
George Horan--Los Angeles
(source: Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Condemned Pa. killer to return to home prison
Hubert Lester Michael Jr., the condemned Pennsylvania prisoner whose execution
was stayed only after the nation's highest court weighed in, can look forward
to returning to his home prison where the routine agrees with him - at least
until Gov. Tom Corbett signs a new death warrant.
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling came more than an hour after Michael had been
scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday night for the murder of a
teenage girl. The high court agreed with a federal appeals court ruling earlier
in the day that stayed the execution preparations and prevented him from
becoming the first person put to death in the state since 1999.
The state Corrections Department responded to the judicial cancellation with
strong language.
"If and when the stay is lifted by the court, the execution will be scheduled
directly," said department spokeswoman Sue McNaughton. She declined to
elaborate.
Michael, who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting Trista Elizabeth Eng in 1993,
had been taken earlier in the day to Rockview State Prison in Bellefonte, home
of the state's execution chamber.
Pennsylvania has put to death only three inmates in the past 50 years, and all
of them - unlike Michael - had given up on their appeals.
Prison officials described the 56-year-old Michael as "very quiet, polite and
composed" during what were to have been his final hours. He arrived there
shortly after 6 a.m., after being transported from Greene State Prison in the
state's southwestern corner.
After the Supreme Court decision, one of Michael's lawyers, Helen Marino, said
he remained "incredibly remorseful" that he had killed Eng.
Marino said the courts saw there were "compelling claims relating to Mr.
Michael's debilitating mental conditions that have never been reviewed by any
court."
Earlier Thursday, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to a
district court judge to address, among other things, whether Michael's appeal
should be considered a successive petition that is subject to stricter rules,
whether "extraordinary circumstances" existed and whether a district court
proceeding is needed to consider the merits of Michael's claims.
Prosecutors argued in vain to the Supreme Court that that decision was in
error.
"An examination of this case leads to the inexorable conclusion that Michael
simply is not entitled to relief," wrote Chief Deputy Attorney General James P.
Barker.
But Michael's lawyers argued that his claims that his federal rights have been
denied deserved more attention in the lower courts.
Since he was sentenced to death, Michael had abandoned his appeals but later
resumed a legal fight, saying he had been confined under circumstances at
Graterford State Prison that worsened mental health. Those problems got better
after he was transferred to Greene, his lawyers have argued.
In a filing Thursday, the attorney general's office said Michael is pursuing a
"successive" federal appeal that is subject to more strict court rules.
"Michael's entire argument was that, since the time of his voluntary waiver,
the circumstances of his confinement have improved and effected some
concomitant amelioration of his spirit. He has developed relationships ... and
he has changed his mind," prosecutors wrote. "Even if true, this argument is in
no way similar to a complaint of error at the district court proceeding based
on failure to exhaust, procedural default, or the relevant statute of
limitations."
Pennsylvania has just over 200 people on death row, the 4th most of any state
after California, Texas and Florida.
The lack of executions has been attributed to a number of factors and debated
for years in the state's legal circles. Prosecutors claim an anti-death penalty
bias on the part of appeals judges, while defense attorneys note many of the
sentences have been proved to be flawed and overturned on legitimate legal
grounds.
While the courts were deciding Michael's fate Thursday night, about a dozen
protesters gathered along the highway in front of the sprawling prison complex.
"It's definitely a relief," said Patrick Klinger, a member of the group called
Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty. "Relief, but with a heavy heart
because we might be back up here in 2 weeks."
At a 1997 hearing in Michael's case, his former public defender testified that
Michael told him how he picked up the girl hitchhiking, bound her with
electrical cord stolen from her home, raped her and killed her on state game
land.
He was not charged with rape because of a lack of physical evidence, though
prosecutors suspected it. Michael confessed to his brother, who located her
remains about a month after she disappeared and called police. She had been
shot in the head and chest.
At Wednesday's pardons board hearing, the victim's mother, Suzanne Eng, set the
tone for relatives and friends who made emotional pleas to keep the execution
on track.
"He kidnapped her, he raped her and then he executed her," the mother said. "As
she begged him not to kill her, he shot her 3 times."
(source: Associated Press)
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