April 11
OHIO:
OHIO'S DEATH PENALTY; Panel advises slashing list of capital offenses ----
Report also urges exempting mentally ill
The ultimate punishment under Ohio law would be reserved for the "worst of the
worst," and mentally ill people could not be executed if recommendations from a
state task force become law.
That's a big "if."
The panel, named 2 years ago by Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen
O'Connor and the Ohio State Bar Association, also calls for taking the death
penalty off the table simply because a death occurred during the commission of
a felony, such as a robbery, kidnapping, and murder. The task force wants to
open to public view elements of the state's clemency process that now occurs
behind closed doors.
Some of the recommendations would require legislative action, far from a sure
thing. Others could be accomplished through change in judicial rules adopted by
the Supreme Court.
The death penalty itself was never on trial. A moratorium on carrying out
executions during the review process was also not considered.
Instead, the task force concentrated on the application of capital punishment
in Ohio, when it would and would not be appropriate, the long-term preservation
of evidence, and racial and geographic disparities in its implementation.
The 22-member task force - consisting of judges, legislators, prosecutors,
defense attorneys, and members of law enforcement and academics - was not
unanimous in support of all 56 recommendations. A separate dissenting report
from some members, in particular prosecutors, is expected to follow.
Highlights of the recommendations include:
-- Mandatory recording of interrogations of suspects while in custody.
-- Taking the death penalty off the table for someone legally determined to be
suffering "severe mental illness" at the time of the crime or at the time of
scheduled execution. Court rulings have already found that executing the
mentally retarded is unconstitutional.
-- Removing the death penalty as an option simply because a death occurred
during the commission of certain felonies, such as kidnapping, rape, aggravated
arson, aggravated robbery, and aggravated burglary.
-- Creation of a Capital Litigation Fund to pay for all costs for the
prosecution and defense of capital cases.
-- Prohibiting the death penalty in cases lacking biological or DNA evidence,
a recorded voluntary confession, a video recording "conclusively" linking the
defendant to the murder, or other factors as determined by the General
Assembly.
-- Prohibiting the death penalty in cases where the prosecutor relied on
jailhouse informant testimony uncorroborated by other evidence.
-- Requiring the Ohio Parole Board to record clemency hearings and its private
interviews with condemned inmates with those recordings considered public
record.
-- Mandatory continuing education on racial bias for attorneys and judges
involved in capital cases.
State Sen. Bill Seitz (R., Cincinnati), a task force member, said he agrees
with most of the recommendations, but he questioned whether some may condemn
the report as a whole.
"I come at this from the standpoint of knowing my colleagues in the
legislature," he said. "The minute the prosecutors say we are not for this,
it's not going to happen. ... If you put too many controversial recommendations
in here, you're going to have the whole ... report go into the trash can."
Chief among his disagreements with the final report is the elimination of
"felony murder."
But that is one of the most important recommendations in the report, according
to Ohio Public Defender Tim Young.
"You limit the death penalty to just the most heinous murders," he said.
A running theme throughout the report was providing "adequate funding" for such
costs as public defenders for indigent defendants.
"It impacts both sides," Mr. Young said. "... The defense has always been
underfunded. Almost everywhere in every case there isn't adequate funding. ...
We have long fights to hire experts that are desperately needed. Funding has
got to go up significantly."
Judge Linda Jennings of Lucas County Common Pleas Court, a task force member,
said she generally agrees with the report and will not join in the dissent.
"It was difficult, because sometimes we would have discussions about whether or
not we should even have the death penalty," she said. "We knew we could not
even consider that. We had to just look at the [American Bar Association]
recommendations and see in Ohio where there was a problem and see what we could
recommend to make it more fair."
State Sen. Edna Brown (D., Toledo), who did not serve on the task force, has
unsuccessfully sought the end of the death penalty in Ohio.
"Decades of studies have shown that capital punishment is arbitrarily applied,
enormously expensive and wasteful, fails to deter criminal activity, and always
carries the possibility of sentencing an innocent person to death," she said.
"Unfortunately, the task force was prohibited from exploring abolishment, the
only solution that fully addresses these systemic flaws."
(source: Toledo Blade)
***********************
'With these rules, you couldn't execute Timothy McVeigh,' argues task-force
dissent
A deeply divided Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force wrapped up 2 years
of work yesterday, but odds are not all the sweeping recommendations will be
adopted. During a contentious 4-hour final meeting, the committee approved 56
recommendations in a draft report - including banning execution of the mentally
ill, creating a statewide capital-litigation fund, requiring DNA or video
evidence for a capital-murder conviction and reserving capital punishment for
the "worst of the worst" crimes.
(source: Columbus Dispatch)
******************
poll----should Ohio change its death penalty policy?----vote at:
http://www.tribtoday.com/page/polls.detail/id/2325/
(source: tribtoday.com)
TENNESSEE:
This state wants to bring back electric chair, citing shortage of lethal drugs
for executions: Justice?
Lawmakers in Tennessee are fixing to fire up Old Sparky again. That's right,
politicians in the Volunteer State are talking about bringing back the electric
chair to speed up the execution of some 81 inmates on death row.
The move by the state Senate comes as lethal drugs used in executions have
become increasingly more difficult for states to secure. This, because
international drug companies frown upon executions and U.S. pharmacies who
supply the drugs have come under pressure from death penalty opponents.
So Tennessee Senators voted overwhelming this week to reinstate the electric
chair to execute capital inmates in the event that the state is unable to
procure the necessary chemicals to perform lethal injections, Time.com is
reporting.
The Capital Punishment Enforcement Act would provide the state's Department of
Corrections with the legal backing to kill inmates with the electric chair as
an alternative, according to The Tennessean. The state House is advancing a
similar measure.
And a similar move to bring back the electric chair is underway in Louisiana,
as well.
Background according to Time: The vote follows the Volunteer State's decision
last year to use the sedative pentobarbital as the lethal pharmaceutical agent
to execute.
States that rely on pentobarbital are increasingly having a difficult time
procuring a steady source of the drug, as European pharmaceutical firms object
to supplying their products to execute inmates.
Despite the passage of the bill, activists remained hopeful that the chair will
not see active duty again in Tennessee.
Executive director for the Death Penalty Information Center Richard Dieter told
Reuters that execution by electrocution is "painful and torturous," which means
the use of the chair would likely be challenged in court on the grounds that
such a method violates the Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual
punishment.
(source: pennlive.com)
MISSOURI:
Convicted killer sick, sentencing delayed a year
A man convicted of one killing and suspected in 2 others may never face a
possible death sentence in Missouri, in part because of sentencing delays
caused by a prosecutor's stroke and the killer's own failing health.
Gregory Bowman, 62, was convicted of abducting and strangling a teenager in St.
Louis County in 1977. He was also convicted of killing a 14-year-old girl and a
21-year-old woman in Belleville, Ill., both in 1978, but the convictions were
overturned and he was never retried.
The Missouri Supreme Court upheld Bowman's conviction in the Missouri case in
2011 but ordered a new sentencing hearing. Unusual circumstances have led St.
Louis County Circuit Judge David Vincent to allow repeated delays, the latest
moving the hearing to April 2015. That hearing would determine whether Bowman
would be sentenced to life in prison without parole, or death.
Bowman's original attorney was Stephen Evans. He was convicted of federal fraud
charges last year and is serving a 15-month prison sentence.
A public defender was appointed for Bowman. But in January, the assistant St.
Louis County prosecutor handling the case suffered a stroke, said Colleen
Blake, Vincent's clerk. The judge was also informed that Bowman has a serious
and potentially fatal kidney ailment, Blake said. She did not know specific
details of the illness and a Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman
declined to comment, citing privacy rights.
Bowman's attorney, Robert Steele, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch declined to comment.
The Missouri victim, 16-year-old Velda Rumfelt, grew up in the St. Louis County
town of Brentwood before moving to Kansas City, Mo., to live with her mother.
In June 1977 she hitched a ride back to suburban St. Louis with an
acquaintance, and the 2 spent the day at the Six Flags St. Louis amusement
park.
Then she disappeared, last seen walking with an older man along a street. Her
body was found in a field the next day. She had been sexually assaulted and
strangled with a shoestring.
A year later, 2 killings shook Belleville, another St. Louis suburb. Bowman
confessed to killing 14-year-old Elizabeth West and 21-year-old Ruth Ann Jany.
West was last seen alive April 22, 1978, as she walked away from her high
school. Her body was found nearly 2 weeks later in a small creek near
Millstadt, Ill. Jany, a nurse, disappeared from a bank parking lot on July 7,
1978. Her body was found several months later.
Bowman pleaded guilty in March 1979, but recanted days later, claiming his
statements were coerced. He was convicted, but a judge granted a new trial in
2001 after a St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigation indicated that Bowman had
been denied information about police tricks that created doubt about the
confession. Bowman was briefly freed on bond in January 2007.
Meanwhile, St. Louis County police obtained Bowman's DNA profile from
Belleville investigators, and used it to connect him to the killing of Rumfelt.
He was arrested soon after his releases in Illinois, and convicted in 2009.
Illinois prosecutors said at the time they did not intend to re-try Bowman on
the Belleville killings.
In April 2011, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that during the sentencing
phase of Bowman's trial in the Missouri case, jurors improperly heard
information about the Belleville murders. The conviction stood but the court
ordered a new sentencing hearing.
Bowman is imprisoned at the Potosi Correctional Center in southeast Missouri.
(source: Associated Press)
KANSAS:
Federal prosecutor in Topeka to serve on death penalty review committee;
Committee evaluates whether to recommend AG should order prosecutors to seek
death penalty
Before a federal prosecutor can seek the death penalty against a defendant in
U.S. District Court, a tiny committee of attorneys throughout the United States
must evaluate the case.
If the Attorney General's Review Committee on Capital Cases recommends pursuing
the death penalty, the case is shipped to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder,
who makes the ultimate decision on whether to pursue capital punishment.
On April 16, senior assistant U.S. attorney Tony Mattivi, who is posted in
Topeka in the U.S. Attorney's Office, will join that group.
"I'm definitely looking forward to it," Mattivi said Thursday. "It will be a
very interesting and challenging experience for me and definitely a learning
opportunity. It will be a great chance to work with some very talented and very
smart people."
Mattivi, 49, has been a federal prosecutor for 15 years. Mattivi's regular
assignment is handling national security cases and a general caseload of
prosecuting defendants charged with federal offenses.
Mattivi grew up in Colorado Springs, Colo., worked for 10 years as a paramedic,
including during his time as a college student, graduated from Metropolitan
State College of Denver, then graduated from the Washburn University School of
Law in 1994.
Before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mattivi was an assistant Shawnee
County district attorney, then an assistant Kansas attorney general. Mattivi
also is an adjunct law professor at Washburn.
The capital case review committee is made up of senior officials from the
Department of Justice's criminal division and the deputy attorney general's
office, as well as experienced assistant U.S. attorneys. Assistant U.S.
attorneys serve 2-year terms on the committee.
For a defendant to be considered for the death penalty, the case must have 2
basic criteria.
"It has to be a federal case, and then for the death penalty to be considered,
there has to have been an intentional murder," Mattivi said.
When a potential capital case surfaces, copies of the case file are sent to
each of the 6 committee members hearing it, then you study the case, and you do
your own analysis as to whether the death penalty can and should be sought,
Mattivi said.
Then, via conference calls, committee members discuss the case and decide
whether to seek the death penalty, he said.
Committee members can expect to review several cases a month. The majority of
the committee work can be done in their offices.
The committee has 11 prosecutors, but at any given time some will be in court
prosecuting cases or otherwise tied up.
Members serve on a rotating basis and carry normal caseloads because the
assignment isn't a full-time commitment. As a prosecutor, Mattivi has presented
cases to the committee, sometimes seeking the death penalty and sometimes
making a "no-seek" recommendation. That means the prosecutor doesn't ask for
authorization to seek the death penalty.
Mattivi has been involved in death penalty cases that were resolved with plea
agreements rather than going to trial, where jurors would have to decide
verdicts and whether to impose death penalties.
Once the committee decides to seek or not seek the death penalty, that will end
Mattivi's role in a case. If Mattivi has a Kansas case that may involve the
death penalty, he won't hear the case as a member of the death penalty review
committee.
(source: Capital Journal Online)
OKLAHOMA:
Anti-death penalty group to honor Okla. legislator
An anti-death penalty group plans to honor an Oklahoma lawmaker who filed
legislation to study Oklahoma's use of capital punishment.
The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will honor Democratic Rep.
Seneca Scott of Tulsa during its 23rd annual membership meeting on Saturday.
Scott introduced a bill to propose creation of a Death Penalty Review Task
Force. Among other things, it would have examined whether prosecutors seek the
death penalty uniformly, whether the death penalty is applied randomly in the
state and the cost of capital punishment trials and appeals. The measure died
in the House Rules Committee.
Death Penalty Information Center records indicate Oklahoma has executed 110
prisoners since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted capital
punishment. Another 132 were executed by the state prior to 1976.
(source: Associated Press)
ARIZONA----female faces death penalty
Jurors mull execution for Marissa Devault
Jurors who convicted an Arizona woman of fatally beating her husband with a
hammer are scheduled to resume deliberations Monday over whether she warrants
the death penalty.
The jury at the trial of Marissa Devault has already spent 2 days considering
whether there were "aggravating factors" that would make her eligible for
execution for the 2009 death of Dale Harrell.
If such factors are found, jurors will decide whether she should be sentenced
to life in prison or to death. But if those factors aren't found, a judge will
sentence Devault to either the rest of her life in prison or life in prison
with the possibility of release after 25 years.
Prosecutors say Devault should face the death penalty because she carried out
the crime in an especially cruel manner for the purpose of collecting on life
insurance, pointing out that Devault caused a fist-size hole in Harrell's
skull.
Defense attorneys say Devault never filed any claim in Harrell's death and
added that the insurance-money theory is undermined by the fact that 1 of the 2
policies in question covered only accidental deaths - and Harrell's death
wasn't an accident.
Authorities say Devault killed Harrell in a failed bid to collect on a life
insurance policy to repay about $300,000 in loans from her boyfriend. Devault
says she killed her husband in self-defense and told investigators that he had
physically and sexually abused her in the past.
Harrell, 34, suffered multiple skull fractures in the January 2009 attack at
the couple's home in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert. He died nearly a month
later at a hospice because of complications from his head injuries.
Devault initially told investigators that her husband attacked her while she
was asleep and choked her until she was unconscious. She also told police that
when she woke up, she saw another man who lived at their home beating Harrell
with a hammer.
But authorities say Devault, 36, confessed to the killing after bloodstain
evidence showed Harrell was alone in the bed at the time of the attack.
The key prosecution witness was Devault's former boyfriend, Allen Flores, a
Yale University-educated management consultant who is 20 years older than
Devault and had loaned her $300,000 during their 2-year relationship.
Flores testified that Devault wanted to either hire someone to kill Harrell, or
kill him herself and tell police he tried to rape her after a night of
drinking.
Devault's attorneys attacked Flores' credibility, noting he was given an
immunity agreement on child-pornography allegations in exchange for his
testimony. The child pornography was found on Flores' computer during a search
that was part of the murder investigation, authorities said.
(source: Associated Press)
USA:
Defense medical expert offers new cause-of-death opinion in Williams trial
A 3rd defense medical expert is offering yet another opinion on the child abuse
beating death of 5-year-old Talia Williams.
Pediatrician and child abuse expert Eli Newberger said Thursday morning in U.S.
District Court that when Talia died on July 16, 2005 she was experiencing
multiple organ system failures liked to injuries sustained in preceding months.
He said her body would have had difficulty repairing the injuries because of
food deprivation.
Newberger, however, said he is not able to pinpoint exactly what killed the
girl. "I cannot identify a single organ system the failure of which is
associated with Talia's death," he said.
Talia's father, former Schofield Barracks soldier Naeem Williams, is on trial
in for capital murder for killing his daughter. He is facing the death penalty
for killing a child through child abuse or as part of a practice and pattern of
assault and torture.
Williams has already testified that Talia never got up from a blow he delivered
to her back, causing her to hit her head on the concrete floor of their
military family quarters at Wheeler Army Airfield.
A previous defense medical expert testified that Talia died from infection of
her blood and back of her abdominal cavity wall from injuries she could have
suffered 17 days earlier.
Talia's stepmother Delilah Williams testified that she stomped on Talia
multiple times and slammed her stepdaughter's head into a wall on June 29,
2005.
Another defense medical expert testified that the girl died from complications
of injuries to her head, chest and abdomen that could have sustained during
Delilah Williams's admitted stomping.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Kanthi De Alwis performed Talia's autopsy in 2005 when
she was Honolulu Chief Medical Examiner. Dr. De Alwis testified that Talia died
when her head hit a flat object. The impact caused Talia's brain to twist
inside her skull cutting off connections to the area of the brain that controls
breathing.
(source: Honolulu Star Advertiser)
***********************
STUDIES: Murder of Female Victims More Likely to Result in Death Sentence
A recent study by researchers at Cornell Law School found that the gender of
the murder victim may influence whether a defendant receives the death penalty.
Using data from 1976 to 2007 in Delaware, the study found that in cases with
female victims, 47.1% resulted in death sentences, while in those involving
male victims, only 32.3% were sentenced to death. The researchers looked at a
number of factors other than the victim's gender that might have affected
sentencing decisions, including the heinousness of the crime, whether there was
a sexual element to the murder, and the relationship between defendant and
victim. The study found that some of the gender effect in sentencing could be
explained by factors other than just the gender of the victim. Crimes involving
sexual violence were more likely to result in a death sentence, as were crimes
in which the victim and defendant knew one another, and victims of both of
those types of crimes are more likely to be women.
The authors concluded, "While more research needs to be done, using both larger
databases and information from other regions, our analyses suggest that victim
gender continues to influence capital sentencing decisions."
(C. Royer, et al., "Victim Gender and the Death Penalty," 82 University of
Missouri-Kansas City Law Review 429 (forthcoming, 2014)).
(source: DPIC)
******************
This has been a big week in the death house in Texas. The state executioner was
assigned to dispatch not 1, but 2, evildoers. He could put away his needle with
the satisfaction of a job well done. 5 more executions are scheduled before
summer.
Texas is No. 1 in the business, having dispatched 513 men and women (nearly all
men) since the states were freed by the U.S. Supreme Court to resume
state-sanctioned killing in 1976. Virginia and Oklahoma are 2nd, each with 110
executions (so far), but measured by executions per capita, Oklahoma, which
competes with Texas to be No. 1 in so many things, is No. 1.
Opinions on capital punishment are sharply divided and passionately held, but
the stereotype that executions are favorites of conservatives is slowly
dissolving. Young conservatives seem particularly willing to take another look
at the death business.
Roy Brown, the former majority leader of the Montana House of Representatives,
founded an organization called Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty,
and he travels the country spreading the word. He led a forum, in partnership
with the Young Americans for Liberty, last month at Georgetown University. Marc
Hayden, the group's national coordinator, says he finds conservatives deciding
the death penalty is "wasteful, unfair, error-prone and out of step with
conservative values."
No one, liberal or conservative, disputes the fact that it's a grisly business,
once universally endorsed by both church and state. There's the story that an
ancient mariner, cast ashore when his ship foundered on the rocks, looked up to
see a gallows outlined against a gray, wintry sky. "Thank God!" he cried out.
"I've landed in a Christian country." The hangman once presided over a thriving
business.
Now, not so much. Only 32 states retain the death penalty and it has been
abolished in many places overseas. The preferred chemicals used in executions
are no longer manufactured in the United States, and European manufacturers
will no longer sell to the states for executions. But capital punishment is
still popular in many places, particularly in the South.
Bill Clinton famously interrupted his 1st presidential campaign in 1994 to
return to Arkansas to preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a
mentally retarded black man. When it was time to walk the last mile, Rector
carefully put aside a piece of pecan pie, saved from his last meal, to enjoy
"later."
Capital punishment is nowhere as popular as in Texas, where swift and harsh
justice is prized. The late Joe Frank Cannon, a Houston lawyer known as
"greased lightning," was appointed to represent poor defendants so many times
that 10 of his clients were executed. Greased lightning or not, Joe Frank often
went to sleep during trials, twice when his clients were sentenced to death.
This was regarded by the courts merely as an impediment to the rocket dockets
much loved by judges, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that "the
Constitution requires a defendant to be represented by a lawyer; it doesn't say
the lawyer has to be awake." A federal appeals court disagreed, but only after
asking whether the lawyer had slept through "important parts" of the trial.
Executions can be badly botched. Witnesses to a Mississippi execution had to be
banished when they were overcome after the prisoner started banging his head on
a steel pole in the chamber, apparently to hasten death. The executioner was
drunk.
The electric chair, largely abandoned because lethal injections are less
expensive, is particularly "problematic." Prisoners occasionally catch fire,
and the sight and scent overcomes everyone watching.
DNA has rescued some innocent prisoners from death row, but states are always
loath to admit mistakes. No one should confuse the law with justice. One
governor of Illinois, deeply troubled when new evidence freed an innocent man 2
days before his scheduled execution, commuted to life the death sentences of
167 others awaiting execution because he did not think the death penalty could
be administered fairly.
Prisoners on death row are nearly all bad men (and women), who deserve no mercy
on their own merits. But killing them does not deter others; first-degree
murder is by definition a crime of unthinking passion. Death removes evildoers
from society, but at the price of coarsening and making cheap that society.
No one feels better after the state commits premeditated murder in the name of
the law. Society keeps trying new methods of execution, eager to relieve pangs
of conscience. But conscience is a stubborn overseer, and won't be satisfied
until death gets no sanction and the executioner is banished for once and all.
(source: Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times)
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