Dec. 30
TEXAS:
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----253
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present----492
Perry #--------scheduled execution date-----name---------Tx. #
254-------------January 29----------------Kimberly McCarthy---493
255-------------February 20---------------Britt Ripkowski-----494
256-------------February 21---------------Carl Blue-----------495
257-------------February 27---------------Larry Swearingen----496
258-------------March 21------------------Michael Gonzalez---497
259-------------April 10------------------Ribogerto Avila, Jr.--498
260-------------April 16------------------Ronnie Threadgill---499
261-------------April 24------------------Elroy Chester--------500
262-------------July 31-------------------Douglas Feldman----501
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
VIRGINIA:
A turning point for death penalty?
In 2012, a Louisiana man was freed from death row after an extensive
investigation and DNA evidence showed he was innocent.
In Missouri, officials are reviewing evidence of prosecutorial misconduct in
the case of a man who has been on death row for 19 years, a man who maintains
that police beat him until he confessed to a rape he didn't commit. And in
Texas, new evidence shows that a man executed in 2004 did not murder his
children, as a jailhouse informant had testified.
This year, as officials around the country confront the myriad problems with
capital punishment, the numbers of executions and death sentences have
mercifully declined, according to a report by the Death Penalty Information
Center.
33 states still have the option to impose capital punishment for murder, but
that number has dropped by 5 in the past 5 years. Connecticut repealed its
death penalty this year, joining 16 other states that previously did away with
the punishment.
Only 9 states executed people in 2012, and four states -Texas, Oklahoma,
Mississippi and Arizona - carried out 33 of the 43 executions. 78 people were
sentenced to death this year, a 75 % decrease from 16 years ago, the center
said. Remarkably, neither Virginia nor North Carolina executed anyone or
imposed a single death sentence.
In California, which has not carried out an execution in nearly 7 years, voters
rejected by a 52-48 margin a constitutional amendment abolishing the death
penalty.
But a growing chorus of law enforcement leaders across the country are
concluding that execution shouldn't be an option because the chances are too
great that the state will kill an innocent person. Said former Los Angeles
District Attorney Gil Garcetti: "I changed my mind on the death penalty when I
understood that it serves no useful purpose, that spending $184 million
annually on it is obscenely expensive, and that some of California's condemned
are likely to be innocent."
Multiple studies have shown the death penalty does not reduce crime. The money
could be better spent preventing crime and solving unsolved cases. "In a time
of grave fiscal concerns, the high cost of the death penalty is providing an
additional rationale for its reconsideration," the death penalty center report
said.
Life in prison without the possibility of getting out protects society from
killers. It allows for the possibility of errors, even those discovered a
decade later. The death penalty serves the basest instinct of society:
retribution.
As the report indicates, society is increasingly understanding that the
ultimate penalty has been too often carried out on the wrong people. It should
stop.
(source: Editorial, The Virginia-Pilot)
COLORADO:
Rep. Fields wants Colorado voters to decide death penalty question
A lawmaker who saw her son's killers sentenced to die says Colorado voters -
and not 100 lawmakers under the state Capitol's golden dome - should decide
whether to abolish the death penalty.
As state Rep. Rhonda Fields' Democratic colleagues attempt to gather support
for ending capital punishment through legislation, she has started work on a
bill that would put the death-penalty question on the 2014 ballot, she said.
Her counterproposal sets the stage for a political showdown on a traditionally
touchy topic at the Capitol, where some key officials' stances against
abolishing the death penalty have recently softened.
"Colorado lawmakers should not slam the door on justice for those who commit
heinous crimes," Fields said. "I believe that society must be protected, and
the voters should decide the fate of capital punishment."
Colorado has executed one man since the death penalty was reinstated in
Colorado in 1975. 3 men currently wait on death row.
2 of them - Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens - were responsible for shooting
Javad Marshall-Fields to death in 2005 to prevent him from testifying against
them in a previous murder case. Marshall-Fields' fianc???e, Vivian Wolfe, was
also killed .
Already sentenced to life in prison by the time they went to trial for the
murders of Fields' son and would-be daughter-in-law, the killers would have
faced no additional penalty had capital punishment been repealed, Attorney
General John Suthers pointed out.
"For killing the witness in your case, you're going to get no more serious
consequence than if they'd testified against you?" Suthers asked. "Life
imprisonment is not an adequate societal response."
Owens and Ray are in the midst of lengthy and costly appeals.
State Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, said that while she has not yet drafted 2013
legislation to end the death penalty, she has no plans to undo the sentences of
men already on death row.
She pointed to the number of exonerations nationwide, research showing that
Colorado's death penalty is applied arbitrarily and the increasing number of
states abandoning capital punishment.
"There is a growing consensus that the death penalty is a failed policy that's
outlived its time," Levy said.
So far, she has been joined by Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, who has
said publicly that while he has no moral objection to the death penalty,
lengthy and complex litigation and appeals are a drain on resources better
spent elsewhere.
One of the state senators who helped kill a similar bill Levy carried in 2009 -
Senate President-elect John Morse, D-Colorado Springs - said recently that he
has rethought his position. And Gov. John Hickenlooper, who told The Denver
Post in 2010 that he opposed repealing the death penalty, now says his mind is
not made up on the topic.
Fields' proposed referred measure would add some uncertainty to the mix.
For lawmakers, it could take away the risk of appearing soft on crime by giving
them the option to send the death-penalty question to their constituents.
A 2008 poll by RBI Strategies found Coloradans evenly split on the most
appropriate punishment for murder, with 45 % favoring death and an equal
portion favoring life without parole.
Nationwide, support for the death penalty fell to a 39-year low - 61 % in favor
of it - in 2011, according to the most recent Gallup polling on the topic.
But neither survey takes into account the effect that recent horrific murders -
such as the Aurora theater shooting, the slaying of 10-year-old Jessica
Ridgeway and the Newtown, Conn., massacre of schoolchildren - may have had on
the public or lawmakers.
When given the option to repeal capital punishment in 1966 - under
circumstances in some ways similar to today - voters opted to keep it,
according to a history of capital punishment in Colorado published in the
University of Colorado Law Review by sociology professor Michael Radelet.
Then, too, a referred measure was proposed in the wake of a number of failed
bills to abolish capital punishment.
But in the months running up to the 1966 election, the public was bombarded
with a series of unusually brutal crimes - the bludgeoning death of a woman on
a college campus and the mass shooting from a tower on the University of Texas'
campus in Austin among them.
The events "arguably affected the vote more than any statements for or against
the death penalty," and voters rejected repeal by nearly a 2-to-1 margin,
Radelet writes.
No one can predict how the public's mood might change by November 2014 - or if
Fields' measure will be on the ballot that year.
But if it is, Fields said, at least the matter will be decided by a broad array
of people, some who have been affected by crime like she has.
And should the vote go against her?
"That," she said, "is a decision I could live with."
(source: The Denver Post)
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