Sept. 2
TEXAS:
Doubts soften embrace of Texas capital punishment
Perhaps nothing symbolizes this state's swagger over being tough on crime like
"Old Sparky," an electric chair that was used to execute 361 inmates and is now
the centerpiece of a prison museum.
It sits just minutes from the Texas penitentiary where it was forever unplugged
50 years ago this summer following the execution of Houston's Joseph Johnson
Jr. for murdering a grocer.
While the oak chair is now a capital punishment relic photographed daily by
visitors, this state's death row is undergoing what looks to be a historic
shift.
Texas forged an international reputation as it has executed far more inmates
than any other state in the nation since 1982, when it resumed capital
punishment with lethal injection. But this year, Texas just may lose its
distinction as the state carrying out the most executions annually, sitting in
a three-way tie with Missouri and Florida. Each state has executed seven people
so far this year.
In Texas, a slew of changes in capital punishment that have been trotted out
over the past decade or so and are taking hold. Those include requiring better
legal representation for people facing the death penalty, giving jurors the
option of sentencing defendants to life in prison without parole, and
increasing the use of DNA and other scientific testing. And significant to the
change is the realization by lawmakers and others that the system that condemns
someone is not bulletproof.
The state executed an average of 29 people annually from 1997 to 2007, with 40
in 2000, according to statistics maintained by the Death Penalty Information
Center. But it is now on track to have no more than 11 this year, according to
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the fewest number in 23 years.
Texas is not getting weaker on crime, but getting smarter about who is
sentenced to death by reducing the chances of condemning an innocent person,
said former Texas Gov. Mark White.
"We are starting to recognize that being tough on crime doesn't mean you have
to be tough on innocent people," White told the Houston Chronicle. "We have
learned a lot: use the cutting edge of science, and not just the fast draw of
the Old West."
He pointed to more than a dozen Texas death row inmates who were convicted,
only to years later be freed on the grounds they were innocent.
"Being tough on an innocent person, that ain't tough, that is stupid," White
said. "Being tough on crime does not mean being careless in how you find a
perpetrator."
Anthony Graves is among the innocent. He was exonerated 4 years ago in the 1992
Burleson County murder of a woman as well as her 4 grandchildren and daughter.
He had been convicted of helping Robert Carter in the murders, but from shortly
after Carter's arrest to his last declaration from the gurney moments before
his execution, Carter said Graves had no role.
Students in a University of St. Thomas journalism class worked with The
Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law Center to review the Graves
case, and Graves' lawyers later successfully argued that prosecutors elicited
false statements from 2 witnesses and withheld 2 statements that could have
changed the minds of jurors.
The district attorney conceded that Graves did not do the crime and dropped the
charges rather than pursue a new trial.
Graves said the debate should no longer be about whether it is right or wrong
to execute a person, but whether the current justice system gets it right.
"That is when you have an honest conversation about it," he said of focusing on
whether the system works properly. "To each his own. You cannot get mad at
somebody because they believe someone should be executed for a crime they
committed. That is between them and their god."
Graves said that he believes more Texans are now realizing that sometimes the
wrong person is sent to death row.
"I did not give up eighteen and a half years of my life to come out here and be
called some liberal activist against the death penalty," said Graves, who was
improperly convicted due in part to official misconduct, perjury and misleading
scientific information.
"From what I have gone through, I have seen it fail from top to bottom," he
said. "I see a failed system that wrongfully convicted me, put me on death row
and tried to murder me. There is no way in hell that I can tell you that
works."
Other exonerations have hinged on scientific work, and DNA comparisons have
grown more and more heralded each year. Michael Blair, who was wrongfully
convicted in 1993 for killing a 7-year-old girl in Collin County was freed in
2008 due in part to DNA testing.
In 2013, such testing of all biological evidence became required by Texas law
in all death-penalty cases.
Besides seeing a drop in the number of people the state executes, the number
Texas sends to death row annually also has decreased. This state now trails
Florida and California.
Defendants facing the death penalty have been required since 2006 to have 2
lawyers, and since the year before that had the possibility of being sentenced
to life behind bars.
The life sentence affords jurors a punishment option that takes into account
aspects of defendant's background, such as being emotionally disturbed.
Juan Quintero shot Houston Police officer Rodney Johnson multiple times in the
back of the head, but jurors in 2008 gave him life in prison instead of the
death penalty.
They said afterward that they considered Quintero's mental health and family
background, among other factors in sparing him.
The option of pursuing a life sentence can also be more appealing for rural
counties, as it is less expensive to prosecute than death penalty cases, which
come with years of appeals.
Steve Taylor, who was a defense attorney for 24 years and recently joined the
Liberty County District Attorney's Office, said the total cost for litigating a
death penalty case is about $2.5 million. Some say it could be much higher.
That includes costs by the prosecutors and the state, as well as the cost of
lawyers who are often appointed to represent death penalty defendants.
"Texas believes that some cases just take death," he said. "It depends on a
variety of things - what does the victim???s family want? There are lots of
reasons that go into that decision, but financial cost to a smaller county
versus a large tax based county makes a big difference."
Kathryn Kase, executive director of Texas Defender Service, an organization
that consults with lawyers and trains them for death penalty cases, said the
message is clear.
"Judges, jurors, prosecutors and certainly defense attorneys understand that we
have to be much more careful when we have a death penalty case because the
decision to kill someone, if it is carried out, is irreversible," said Kase,
who is based in Houston.
Kase said that while she supports the changes, she is not yet convinced the
trend will continue.
"I don't know that you can say those days are over," she said of the state's
nation-leading use of the death penalty. "It is a system with a lot of cogs and
wheels and it is very easy for it to go out of balance."
Still, numbers are down even in Harris County, which has sent far more people
to death row than any other county in the nation.
Harris County has sent four people to death row so far this year. That compares
with nine a decade ago and 14 in the year 2000.
"It takes a special kind of person to put the barrel of a gun to the head of a
uniformed police officer and shoot," Harris County District Attorney Devon
Anderson told jurors about Harlem Lewis III, who in July was convicted of
killing Bellaire Police Cpl. Jimmie Norman and business owner Terry Taylor.
Lewis' lawyers unsuccessfully sought to convince jurors that he should be
spared the death penalty in part because he has a low IQ and because he was
remorseful.
The next person scheduled for execution is Houston's Willie Trottie, who killed
his ex-girlfriend and her brother after she broke off a relationship with him.
He is to be followed by Lisa Coleman of Arlington, who was convicted of
beating, tying up and starving a 9-year-old boy to death.
Fascination over Texas' death row has been fueled over the years with an
appetite for details on everything from last meals to last words, and a
play-by-play of executions, from the exact time the condemned person enters the
death chamber here, to when the lethal injection begins to flow, to when they
are pronounced dead.
It has been the stuff of movies, books and documentaries.
Jim Willett, a retired warden who works part time at the Texas Prison Museum,
said streams of visitors are curious about executions and want to see Old
Sparky.
It is the main draw, said Willett, who oversaw 89 executions during his career.
The chair, which helped deliver up to 1,800 volts of electricity to the bodies
of the condemned is roped off from the public. An alarm sounds should anyone
get too close.
Leather straps that once restrained Joseph Johnson Jr. now hang limp.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center,
said change seems to be coming for Texas.
Arizona recently drew attention over an execution in which an inmate was
"gasping and snorting" for 2 hours, and Oklahoma grabbed headlines for an
execution that took 43 minutes.
"There is a perception that Texas is still Texas, and death penalty central,"
Dieter said. "I think that the numbers will change, and this year will be the
1st crack."
(source: Houston Chronicle)
OHIO:
Laundry-murder death sentence for Jeremiah Jackson upheld by Ohio Supreme Court
The Ohio Supreme Court, in a split decision, on Tuesday upheld the death
sentence for Jeremiah Jackson for the 2009 murder of Tracy Pickryl at the
laundromat on Cleveland's West Side where she worked.
The court, in a 6-1 decision, rejected Jackson's claims that the presiding
judge at trial had exhibited bias and interfered with the defense's preparation
by ordering a hearing on whether Jackson was mentally disabled, and thus
ineligible for the death penalty.
Defense lawyers had indicated they were not going to raise that issue, and in a
journal entry the presiding judge had expressed concern that the defense
"planned to under-represent the defendant and provide him with an ineffective
assistance of counsel basis for later appeal."
Justice Terrence O'Donnell, writing for the majority, said that hearing was
appropriate and noted that it could have proved to be favorable to Jackson's
defense.
"Based upon Jackson's IQ scores ..., the trial court was justified in inquiring
into whether an evaluation of Jackson's mental abilities was appropriate,"
O'Donnell said in his opinion. "No evidence was presented showing that Jackson
was mentally retarded. Thus, even assuming that the trial court overstepped its
bounds in conducting this abbreviated hearing, no prejudice occurred."
The court also rejected other claims of error raised by Jackson's attorney.
Pickryl's murder was the culmination of a string of 6 robberies in several
counties. The crime spree started June 2, 2009, when Jackson shot and injured a
friend. He robbed a coin laundry on East 63rd Street and Fleet Avenue in
Cleveland; 2 Cleveland-area bars; a Walgreens on Leavitt Road in Lorain; and
the Howard Johnson Hotel across from Cedar Point in Sandusky, which he used as
his hideout.
Pickryl, 38, was killed during a robbery June 15, 2009, at the Soap Opera
Laundry on West 25th Street in Cleveland. He took $50 and Pickryl's necklace,
but when he tried to grab her bracelet, police said, she jerked back and he
shot her in the head.
Police arrested Jackson les that a week later. He faced dozens of charges,
including aggravated murder for Pickryl's death and attempted murders of 2
other people. Other charges included aggravated robbery, felonious assault and
kidnapping.
A 3-judge panel sentenced Jackson to death in April 2010.
Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor and Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Sharon L.
Kennedy joined O'Donnell's opinion. Justices Judith Ann Lanzinger and Judith L.
French concurred in the judgment.
Justice William M. O'Neill dissented, restating his opinion that the death
penalty is constitutionally prohibited because it is cruel and unusual
punishment.
"I do not expect that the court will adopt my view that the death penalty is
cruel and unusual and therefore constitutionally forbidden anytime soon,"
O'Neill wrote. "But I do believe that at some point in the near future this
court will be forced to recognize that Ohio's death penalty reaches too far, to
too many crimes and to too many criminals."
O'Neill criticized the hearing to determine if Jackson was intellectually
disabled as one that certainly raised the question of impartiality and
interfered with the attorney-client relationship.
"Admittedly, trial courts have great latitude in managing the cases over which
they preside," he wrote. "But this hearing had one justification only: to
protect a yet-to-be-imposed death sentence from reversal in a subsequent
appeal."
And he argued that the mitigating factors in the case, including Jackson's
intelligence, his "difficult background" which included abuse and his substance
abuse should have precluded a death sentence.
(source: cleveland.com)
**********************************
Convictions upheld in Ohio death penalty case
A federal appeals court has upheld the convictions of a man found guilty of
killing 4 members of his girlfriend's family and sentenced to death in 3 of the
southwestern Ohio slayings.
A 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Monday affirmed a U.S. district
court's ruling that upheld the aggravated murder convictions of Jose Trinidad
Loza. Loza was convicted in the 1991 fatal shootings of girlfriend Dorothy
Jackson's family.
The victims were Jackson's mother, Georgia Davis; brother Gary Mullins; and
sisters Cheryl Senteno and pregnant Jerri Luanna Jackson.
Loza's attorney, Laurence Komp, says they likely will appeal to the full
appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Loza argued among other things that the trial court improperly allowed
statements Loza alleges were made amid police coercion.
(source: Associated Press)
***********************
Stargell takes stand in capital murder case
Anthony Stargell Jr. said Tommy Nickles was "reaching for the gun" and that "I
didn't want to get killed, get shot" just before Stargell shot Nickles twice in
the head, Stargell testified Tuesday.
Stargell took the stand in his own defense in his capital murder case in Judge
Gregory Singer's Montgomery County Common Pleas courtroom and described how he
and Nickles had a drug-selling agreement.
Stargell testified that the shooting came after Nickles accused Stargell of
"getting over" on him and that he had a "weird feeling" Nickles was reaching
for a gun besides the one already on Nickles' desk. Stargell also said Nickles
had just said he was done being crossed by Stargell.
Stargell, 23, of Dayton, faces death-penalty eligible murder counts for
allegedly killing Nickles at his business, Quality One Electric, 838 S. Main
St., on April 2, 2012. In all, Stargell is facing 22 charges that include
attempting to set fire to Nickles' business, grand theft auto and taking
surveillance equipment.
Stargell testified that he gave Nickles free drugs and that the business was a
front for Stargell's drug dealing business and that a two-pound shipment of
methamphetamine worth $200,000 was expected that night.
"If I'm robbing him," Stargell said, "I'm pretty much robbing myself."
On cross examination, Stargell said he pretty much "lied about everything" he
told the police because he "didn't want to go to jail." Stargell said the money
and guns he took he considered his own because they were payments taken by
Nickles for drugs.
Stargell testified that he lied then because he "didn't want to man up" like he
would now, but contended it was never his plan to shoot Nickles or rob the
business.
After Stargell's testimony, the defense rested its case, and there was no
rebuttal prosecution. Closing arguments are expected around 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Jury will be sequestered after closing arguments.
The prosecution rested its case Tuesday morning.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys replayed portions of the surveillance video
that showed Stargell shooting 2 shots into Nickles' head at close range and
also shooting Nickles' dog, Rusty. Defense attorneys have admitted Stargell
pulled the trigger but contend he did so in self-defense.
If Stargell is found guilty of aggravated murder specifications, there will be
a penalty phase for jurors to determine whether he should be put to death.
(source: WHIO news)
MISSOURI:
Kansas City Religious Leaders Ask Gov. Nixon For Death Penalty Moratorium
A group of religious leaders who oppose the death penalty deliver a letter to
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's downtown Kansas City office asking for a stay of
execution.
Kansas City faith leaders are calling on Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to halt an
execution scheduled for next week.
A dozen religious leaders met Tuesday to deliver a letter to Nixon's downtown
Kansas City office asking for a meeting with the governor to discuss a
moratorium on the death penalty in Missouri.
"Each time the state of Missouri executes, whether the person is guilty or
innocent, I am made a murderer, just like any other, and my faith convicts me
to say no," says retired United Church of Christ minister Jane Fisler Hoffman,
the organizer of the event.
Rabbi Doug Alpert of Congregation Kol Ami says the Torah allows for the death
penalty in capital murder cases. But he says the burden of proof is much higher
under Jewish law and most rabbis condemn courts that prescribe the death
penalty.
"I think it's this: I think it's a recognition of our imperfection, the
imperfection of government, the imperfection of government, the imperfection of
'we the people,'" says Alpert.
The religious leaders who signed the letter are asking Nixon to stay the
execution of Earl Ringo Jr., who is scheduled to die Sept. 10 for shooting 2
people to death at a Columbia, Mo., restaurant in 1998.
The state of Missouri has executed seven inmates so far this year even as the
drugs used to carry out lethal injections have become harder and harder to
obtain.
(source: KCUR news)
COLORADO:
Republican Governors advertise John Hickenlooper's news on the death penalty
The Republican Governors Association isn't about to let Colorado voters forget
that Gov. John Hickenlooper granted killer Nathan Dunlap a temporary reprieve
on his death sentence last year. The group dedicated to installing GOP leaders
over each state released a new video Tuesday taking sharp aim at the issue
using local TV news frotage.
As my colleague Jesse Paul and I reported on Sunday, it remains to be see
whether Hickenlooper loses any votes that he would ever gotten in the first
place. But with a surging a economy, which usually favors an incumbent, you can
bet any news that seems negative against the affable governor will be red meat
for his opponents.
Announcing the video, the RGA referenced a comment Hickenlooper made to a CNN
crew - that he could grant Dunlap clemency, if the governor isn???t re-elected,
rather than cede the decision to Republican Bob Beauprez, who has vowed to
execute Dunlap.
"Knowing his re-election prospects are dim and getting dimmer, Gov.
Hickenlooper is threatening to renege on justice and grant clemency to a
convicted murderer should he lose in November," RGA spokeswoman Gail Gitcho
said in a statement. "Colorado needs a real leader in the governor's office,
not a coward who lets politics dictate his decisions on the state's toughest
issues."
The video on Youtube is labeled "Coward." Granted, that comes from the words of
the father of one of Dunlap's victims, but it could prove an overreach with
important unaffiliated voters in Colorado, who are proud of their state. and
even many of his opponents say they like Hickenlooper as a person. It also
comes from a group based in Washington, D.C., that's led by New Jersey Gov.
Chris Christie, The video explaining the organization on the RGA website
features Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Both Christie and Walker have been
entangled in political scandals this year.
Hickenlooper has publicly explained his evolution on the death penalty, from
supporter to opponent. In an interview last Friday, his chief of staff, Roxane
White, talked about the complexity of deciding life or death and the true
meaning of justice, compared to taking a unbending position. Hickenlooper would
have done himself a political favor simply by letting Dunlap die on schedule
last year.
"It's much harder to spend weekend after weekend sitting and reading the Nathan
Dunlap files, and listening to the victims, and listening to all the
transcripts," she said. "It's easy to say yes or no to a death penalty case in
the abstract. It's much harder to look at the evidence, listen to jurors,
listen to defense attorneys, listen to prosecuting attorneys and do what what a
governor is supposed to do, which is not make a fast, hasty decision without
really ever reviewing things."
(source: Denver Post)
USA:
There's no such thing as a gentle execution ---- The country's search for a
more humane way to kill is a fool's errand
Did Joseph Wood suffer when he was executed in Arizona this summer?
Some witnesses reported that Wood gasped over 600 times during his July 23
execution by lethal injection, which took nearly two hours. But 1 official said
that Wood "appeared to be snoring," while another stated flatly that the inmate
"did not endure pain." We'll never know.
But here's what we do know: The quest for a pain-free mechanism of capital
punishment is a fool's errand. As Amherst professor Austin Sarat shows in a
terrific new book, "When the State Kills," we have spent two centuries trying
to put people to death without putting them in discomfort. And it hasn't
worked.
Start with hanging, which Englishmen brought to our shores during the colonial
era. But they did not import professional hangmen, so executions fell to
sheriffs and other local officials.
Too often, they had no idea what they were doing. Poorly tied ropes snapped,
earning the condemned a return trip to the gallows. Or sometimes the rope
wasn't taut enough, so executioners had to pull on the prisoner's legs until he
expired.
So communities erected higher gallows, in the hopes that a so-called "long
drop" would insure a quick and painless demise. They also devised pulley
systems to jerk the prisoner's head upward, instead of relying on gravity
alone.
But many inmates still gurgled and choked for long stretches of time; others
were decapitated, generating lurid newspaper headlines. So Americans turned to
the new technology of electricity, which promised to execute prisoners "in a
less barbarous manner," as New York's governor declared in 1885.
5 years later, William Kemmler would become the first American to die in an
electric chair. After he was sentenced to death "by the application of
electricity," Kemmler's lawyers tried to block the execution on the grounds
that it violated the 8th Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual
punishment.
The appeal generated its own fireworks, pitting Thomas Edison - the father of
modern electricity - against his chief competitor, George Westinghouse.
Although Edison personally opposed the death penalty, he was eager to
demonstrate the superiority of direct current - the system he devised - and the
dangers of alternating current, which Westinghouse had patented.
So Edison took the stand and testified that alternating current was much more
lethal than the direct kind, and that it would likely kill a prisoner with
speed and without pain. But William Kemmler discovered otherwise. It took the
state over 8 minutes - and shocks of 2,000 volts - to kill Kemmler, after his
sentence was upheld. White smoke wafted from his body, which heaved and
convulsed before he finally died.
Other states reported that electrocuted inmates actually caught on fire,
generating yet another innovation: the gas chamber. Its first use came in
Nevada, which executed a convicted murderer in 1924 with a poison used to
fumigate citrus trees. When railroads refused to transport the substance from
its manufacturer in Los Angeles, a warden's aide was dispatched to pick it up
in his own truck.
Over the next 2 decades, 10 other states authorized executions by lethal gas.
But prisoners retched and convulsed in the presence cyanide and other poisons.
And by the late 1940s, reports of Nazi gas chambers further discredited this
method.
So most states continued with electrocutions until 1977, when Oklahoma adopted
lethal injection as an alternative to the "inhumanity, visceral brutality, and
cost" of the electric chair, as one advocate proclaimed. Today, 32 states allow
the death penalty by lethal injection (Maryland repealed the death penalty last
year). But the inhumanity and brutality of the death penalty haven't gone away;
they just assume different forms.
Sometimes prison officials can't find a vein, so they prod inmates repeatedly
or scrape off their top layers of skin. And once drugs enter their systems,
inmates exhibit many of the same behaviors associated with earlier methods:
choking, convulsing, spitting and more.
Indeed, we really have no idea what effects the drugs will have. States used to
inject a 3-drug "cocktail," which they discontinued after manufacturers stopped
selling it to them. So Joseph Wood received an opioid painkiller and a
sedative, which would allegedly produce a timely and pain-free death.
Of course, that's impossible. Wood murdered his ex-girlfriend and her father,
so perhaps he deserved to suffer. But in that case, we'll have to abandon the
myth of a kindler, gentler death penalty. Killing is a barbarous act, period.
And there is no humane way to do it.
(source: Commentary; Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education
at New York University----Baltimore Sun)
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