Nov. 25
CALIFORNIA:
Tracking led to confession in deaths of 4 prostitutes, officials say
Old-fashioned detective work and high-tech data gathering led investigators to
track down the 2 men now charged with killing at least 4 female prostitutes who
were swept off the streets of Orange County, according to grand jury testimony.
The body of the final victim was found on a conveyor belt at a trash sorting
facility. Items found with the body pointed Anaheim police to an industrial
garbage bin where they believed the woman had been dumped, the testimony
revealed.
From there, police used the GPS tracking devices of registered sex offenders
and the cellphone records of the missing women to help identify 2 career
criminals as the possible killers.
The phone records of the men themselves - mostly rapid-fire text messages -
offer a gruesome play by play leading up to the final victim's death last
March, a phone records analyst told the grand jury.
"Bye-Bye, kitty," one of the suspects texts the other the night it's believed
the woman was killed, according to testimony.
Franc Cano, 28, and Steven Dean Gordon, 45, are now charged with raping and
murdering four women and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Hundreds of pages of grand jury testimony made public Monday outline the case
that detectives built against the pair of convicted child molesters who police
say prowled the streets of Santa Ana and Anaheim looking for women. The men are
set to appear in court Jan. 16 for a pretrial hearing.
The crimes date back to the fall of 2013, when Kianna Jackson, 20, vanished
shortly after speaking to her mother while taking a bus to Santa Ana to keep a
court date.
20 days later, Josephine Monique Vargas, a 34-year-old mother of 3, left a
relative's birthday party to walk to a market and never returned.
And 20 days after that, Martha Anaya, 27, asked her boyfriend to pick up their
child from school so that she could work - which, when she was desperate for
cash, sometimes meant looking for customers along East 1st Street, relative
said.
Though Santa Ana police investigated the cases, the women were never found,
their disappearances never explained.
It was the discovery of Jarrae Estepp's battered body at the Anaheim trash
facility, identified by a tattoo of her mother's name on her bruised neck, that
caused detectives to conclude the cases were related, and most likely the work
of a serial killer.
"The whole thing unravels and becomes the case that we have here today," Deputy
Dist. Atty. Larry Yellin told jurors.
Scanning the GPS monitoring devices for all registered sex offenders in the
area, detectives testified that they found only one person who was near the
Beach Boulevard location when Estepp used her cellphone for the last time and
at the trash bin when it's believed her body was dumped: That was Franc Cano.
His GPS data also matched the place and date of disappearance for the other 3
women, according to the grand jury testimony.
Police set up around-the-clock surveillance on Cano, according to testimony,
and lured him to the police by saying he needed to do his monthly check-in,
required of registered homeless sex offenders. On his way, undercover officers
said they saw Cano toss out a piece of chewing gum that they quickly gathered
up as possible DNA evidence. During the meeting, they also took a mouth swab.
Prosecutors said there was a match with DNA found on Estepp's body.
After identifying Steven Dean Gordon as a possible second suspect, he was taken
into custody and confessed during a 13-hour interview, according to testimony.
Det. Julissa Trapp said that during the interview, Gordon picked all 4 women
out of a photo lineup and carefully put them in the order they disappeared.
Trapp testified that he knew roughly when each had been killed and pointed out
to her that a 5th victim appeared to be missing from the lineup. That person
has never been identified.
At first, Gordon left Cano's involvement out of his account, Trapp said. But
she said he later revised his story and described Cano as an active, aggressive
participant in the killings.
Recounting his exchange with the first woman, Kianna Jackson, Gordon allegedly
confessed that he picked her up on Harbor Boulevard with Cano hiding in the
back seat and took her to an industrial area the two were known to frequent.
Gordon said he decided to strangle her when he realized that her street name
"Kayla" was the same as his daughter's, Trapp testified.
Trapp testified that Gordon told her that hearing the name "triggered him."
One by one, he continued through his account of each of the killings, according
to the testimony. Vargas "was kind of crazy" and pulled on the car's steering
wheel, he told Trapp. Anaya was "the one that put up the most fight."
After the men allegedly picked up Estepp in Anaheim and drove her to the
industrial area, testimony showed the men exchanged a long series of text
messages that seemed to show they were hesitant and tentative with what to do
with the 21-year-old:
"I can't hurt this cat. I just can't," Gordon texts Cano at 10:28 p.m. on March
14 of this year.
"Then get rid of her," Cano texts Gordon at 11:55 p.m.
"How?" Gordon asks.
"Happy Hand," Cano replied, a phrase prosecutors interpreted to mean
strangling.
"Bye-bye, Kitty," Gordon texts Cano at 12:13 a.m.
Trapp said that at one point Gordon asked Estepp to stay with him, to quit the
life of working the streets, but she refused.
"That's when Cano grabbed her, and she pulled out mace and maced Gordon first
and then maced Cano, and that's when they proceeded to assault her, assault her
as Gordon is punching her, as Cano is strangling her," Trapp told jurors.
They pulled her from the car, undressed her and Gordon leaned down to kiss her
and tell her he was sorry, the detective said Gordon told her.
"And then," Trapp concludes, "they discarded her in the trash can."
(source: Los Angeles Times)
USA:
If Oregon Can Give Death With Dignity, Why Can't Death Row?
This week, the Utah state legislature approved a bill that would allow the
state to impose the death penalty by firing squad if the drugs approved for
lethal injection are not available. Meanwhile, Ohio legislators proposed a bill
that would ensure the anonymity of independent compounding pharmacies that
provide lethal drugs to the state's prisons. Many pharmacies are reluctant to
sell drugs to used for capital punishment, fearing public backlash.
At the same time, a forceful public debate about physician-assisted death for
terminally ill patients and laws such as Oregon's Death With Dignity Act (DWDA)
has developed, which I have previously weighed in on. Observers might wonder
how doctors can help terminally ill patients gently, painlessly, and quickly
end their lives, while prison officials seem hard-pressed to do the same for
inmates sentenced to death. For example, in Arizona earlier this year, Joseph
Wood took nearly 2 hours to die by lethal injection, though prison officials
had previously estimated that he would die within about ten minutes. In April,
Oklahoma prisoner Clayton Lockett's execution took over 45 minutes.
Why can't prisons use the same drugs that doctors in Oregon use? The answer is:
they often do. Why then don't Death With Dignity Act patients experience the
same sorts of complications that some capital offenders have? The answer is:
they often do.
In Belgium and the Netherlands, where active euthanasia has been legal since
2002 and 2001, respectively, the standard protocol advises injections of the
barbiturate sodium thiopental, followed by pancuronium bromide (a paralytic
agent). Until recently, most state executions in the United States used a
standard 3-drug combination for capital punishment: sodium thiopental or
pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride (which causes
cardiac arrest). So, for years the drug protocol was, indeed, extremely
similar.
Beginning in 2011, the European Union placed an embargo on sodium thiopental
and other drugs used in the standard lethal injection protocol in U.S. prisons.
The European Commission also added "short and intermediate acting barbiturate
anaesthetic agents" like pentobarbital and sodium thiopental to its Regulation
on Products used for Capital Punishment and Torture. In response, prisons
scrambled for alternatives to commercial drug manufacturers. States began
ordering pentobarbital and other lethal drugs from FDA-unregulated compounding
pharmacies. 9 states have either used or intend to use compounding pharmacies
to obtain their drugs for lethal injection.
14 states also began using a simpler single-drug protocol of pentobarbital.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 4 of the 6 executions
carried out in various states in January 2014 used the drug by itself.
Unfortunately, when Oklahoma officials used pentobarbital in the execution of
Michael Lee Wilson, witnesses reported the inmate saying aloud that he could
feel his "whole body burning" during the execution process. Tanya Greene of the
ACLU called pentobarbital's use "basically an experiment on human beings; the
risk of extended, painful death is very high."
Why don't prisons use whatever concoction doctors prescribe to terminally ill
patients then? Well, according to the state of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act
2013 Annual Report, in 2013, 90.1% of patients prescribed lethal medication
under the DWDA received . . . pentobarbital.
Most of us wish for ourselves and those we love a peaceful, graceful exit from
life. When our final moments inevitably come, we want to see our family and
friends gathered round us, letting us know that we are loved and that we won't
be forgotten. Some patients' wishes may come true. Others, though, will vomit
(before or after losing consciousness), seize, and gasp. Some will pass in
minutes from waking, to unconsciousness, to death. Others will remain conscious
for much longer and will remain alive for longer still. Some others, a small
but notable minority, will regain consciousness after taking the supposedly
lethal medication.
Witnesses at executions are sometimes horrified by an inmate whose execution
does not proceed as quietly or smoothly, or whose death does not come as
quickly, as expected. Lethal drugs don't necessarily spare patients seeking
physician assisted death from similar complications, unfortunately.
Research from the Netherlands, where active euthanasia has been legal since
2001, reports patient self-administration of physician-prescribed lethal
medication did not work as expected in 16% of cases. In an additional 7% of
cases, patients experienced unexpected side effects. The study describes
patients regaining consciousness after ingesting the drugs, vomiting, and
gasping for breath, and seizures. In 6% of cases, patients either regained
consciousness or took significantly longer to die than expected. In the
Netherlands, times between drug administration and death varied considerably,
with a median range of 3.8 hours.
In Oregon between 1998 and 2012, 5 out of 681 DWDA patients regained
consciousness after ingesting the lethal DWDA medications. (Their numbers are
included in the metrics for patients receiving and ingesting DWDA drugs, but
they are not included in tallies for DWDA deaths.) In 2005, a patient regained
consciousness 65 hours after taking the medication, subsequently dying from the
underlying illness 14 days after awakening. In 2010, 1 patient regained
consciousness 88 hours after ingesting the medication, subsequently dying from
underlying illness 3 months later. Another patient the same year regained
consciousness within 24 hours, subsequently dying from underlying illness 5
days following ingestion. In 2011, a patient regained consciousness
approximately 14 hours after ingesting the medication and died about 38 hours
later. Another patient briefly regained consciousness after ingestion and died
from the underlying illness 30 hours later. One 2004 prescription recipient
became unconscious 25 minutes after ingestion, then regained consciousness 65
hours later. Oregon Public Health reports that the patient "did not obtain a
subsequent prescription and died 14 days later of the underlying illness (17
days after ingesting the medication)."
Would you ask for a refill of pentobarbital if this happened to you? Talking
about an idealized version of euthanasia or physician-assisted death is
comforting. Drinking prescribed poison, slipping into what you believe will be
your final rest . . . then waking up? Not so comforting.
In Judge Alex Kozinski's dissent in Joseph Wood's case, Kozinski chastises the
government for continuing to carry out the death penalty but insisting upon
lethal drugs instead of "more primitive - and foolproof - methods of execution"
such as the guillotine or the firing squad. Kozinski writes, "Sure, firing
squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should
not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood. If we,
as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by
firing squad, then we shouldn't be carrying out executions at all."
Perhaps we need to be as clear-sighted about voluntary, physician-assisted
death as Judge Kozinski urges us to be about involuntary, penal system-imposed
death. The methods are similar. The complications are similar. If we, as a
society, cannot stomach the thought of physicians employing more foolproof -
even if more primitive - methods of aiding their patients' deaths, then perhaps
we shouldn't enter this arena either. Clear vision about voluntary death need
not necessarily lead to firing squads for leukemia patients and guillotines for
grannies, but it would prevent us from misunderstanding the process and its
consequences. The upshot for both voluntary, physician-assisted death and for
capital punishment is that death is difficult. Our sentimentality may lead us
to romanticize it, but our social consciences should never allow us to sanitize
it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(source: Tamara Tabo is a summa cum laude graduate of the Thurgood Marshall
School of Law at Texas Southern University, where she served as Editor-in-Chief
of the school's law review. After graduation, she clerked on the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She currently heads the Center for Legal
Pedagogy at Texas Southern University, an institute applying cognitive science
to improvements in legal education----abovethelaw.com)
************************
Inside the Mind of a Killer; On the night of the Boston Marathon attacks,
Tamerlan Tsarnaev watched his handiwork on television - and laughed.
It was the evening of April 15, 2013, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a happy man. At
a messy, 3rd-floor apartment on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, the 26-year-old
was in his living room alongside his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, watching the news
on TV. Nearly every channel was running nonstop coverage of the chaos and
carnage on Boylston Street: the smoke, the screaming, the severed limbs
scattered in the street. Blood was everywhere. In the apartment, a laptop
streaming CNN also played the endless chaos and heroic rescue efforts.
Spectators used their belts, shirts, and shoelaces as tourniquets to tie off
the mangled limbs of strangers; doctors who ran the marathon sprinted to
operating rooms; former New England Patriots offensive lineman Joe Andruzzi
carried an injured woman to safety.
Then came a knock at the door.
"Open!" Tamerlan shouted.
In walked Khairullozhon Matanov. Tamerlan had been expecting him.
Matanov, a 23-year-old cab driver from Quincy, was a fellow Russian-speaking
immigrant with a scrawny frame and floppy black hair. The 2 had met years
earlier at a mosque on Prospect Street in Cambridge, part of the Islamic
Society of Boston, and became friends. They attended Friday prayers together
and went to the mosque on holidays such as Id al-Fitr, the highest of Muslim
holy days. Tamerlan, a New England Golden Gloves champion, gave Matanov boxing
lessons, and they played weekly pickup soccer games together in Cohasset.
Matanov had even met the Tsarnaev family matriarch, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who
cooked chicken and salad for him at their home. One time, the 2 friends climbed
Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, where Tamerlan talked about the mujahedeen.
All of these details - and many more - are contained in FBI proffer reports
obtained exclusively by Boston magazine. The proffer reports are an FBI agent's
written account of multiple interviews with Matanov, whom the feds have charged
with obstruction of justice in connection with the Boston Marathon
investigation. Agents first interviewed Matanov in May 2013 and arrested him 12
months later. According to one of the reports, Matanov and Tamerlan "did not
have secrets."
On the night of the bombings, Matanov allegedly told the FBI, he was rattled.
But he repeatedly insisted that he had no idea the Tsarnaev brothers were
behind the bombings. It was mere coincidence, he claimed, that at 3:31 p.m.,
some 40 minutes after the explosions, Matanov called Tamerlan, who said he was
in a store buying milk. "During this conversation they discussed the bombings
in Boston," the FBI report states. "Matanov suggested that maybe something blew
up in a kitchen near the finish line, to which Tamerlan responded: 'Maybe,
maybe not.'" The 2 made plans for dinner.
It was sundown by the time Matanov walked into the Norfolk Street apartment.
The Tamerlan that greeted him that day looked more like the old Tam. Gone was
the beard he'd grown after returning from a 6-month trip to Russia in July
2012. Instead, his face was freshly shaved. Wearing sweatpants and boxing
shoes, he more closely resembled the handsome party boy who once frequented
Boston nightclubs and smoked pot with his friends. Neither Tamerlan's wife,
Karima, nee Katherine Russell, nor their toddler daughter, Zahara, were home.
After greeting the brothers, the FBI report says, Matanov commented that the
bombings were very bad and voiced his concerns that the public might direct its
outrage at Muslims. He plopped down on the couch next to Dzhokhar, who was
stroking the family cat. Matanov also expressed sympathy for 8-year-old Martin
Richard, who died in the 2nd blast. According to the report, "Tamerlan
responded by asking whether Matanov thought the U.S. drones that dropped bombs
in Pakistan and Afghanistan did not kill any children."
"So what if a kid dies," Tamerlan said. "God will take care of him."
As Tamerlan watched the coverage on TV, he smiled. There was 1 image that every
newscast replayed over and over again: 78-year-old marathoner Bill Iffrig being
hurled to the ground after the 1st bomb exploded, his bright-orange tank top
juxtaposed against the gray billowing smoke behind him. He lay prone on the
ground, stunned, just yards away from the finish line. Half a dozen Boston
Police officers sprang toward Iffrig and stood around him in a protective
huddle as chaos erupted behind them. A blue-and-yellow-clad volunteer helped
him to his feet.
There was something about that old man on the ground...Tamerlan loved it. When
he saw the shot of Iffrig falling as the smoke rose in the background, Tamerlan
laughed. Matanov told the FBI that "Tamerlan expressed glee over the bombings
and called them the biggest thing since 9/11.... Specifically, Tamerlan laughed
at images of an old man running from the blast."
The image of Iffrig crumpled on the ground became emblematic of the pandemonium
and bloodshed near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. A child was dead,
along with 2 young women. In all, the bombs injured more than 260 people; 16 of
them lost 1 or more limbs. And at that time no one knew why.
Except for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Inside the apartment, Tamerlan disappeared into his brother's room, and Matanov
tried to engage Dzhokhar in conversation about what had happened. Matanov said
that the bombings were going to be a big problem for Muslims because innocent
people were killed. For the 1st time that night, according to the FBI report of
Matanov's account, Dzhokhar responded; he said that for some people the
bombings were a good thing, for others they were a bad thing.
Dzhokhar was always a quiet kid, Matanov told the FBI, but that night his
demeanor was particularly aloof. Maybe he was concentrating on the tweet he
transmitted from his account @J_Tsar at 5:04 p.m. that day: "Ain't no love in
the heart of the city. stay safe people." Dzhokhar also marked another tweet,
from an account called "Death," at @GMCoderGoddi. It read, "The ultimate
sacrifice is within you, The battle within is defined by the word jihad."
When they were finally ready for dinner, Matanov told the FBI, he and the
Tsarnaev brothers climbed into his cab and went for kebabs at a storefront
eatery in Somerville called Man-O-Salwas, a little less than a mile away.
The FBI first interviewed Matanov on May 31, 2013, nine days after his former
roommate Ibragim Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent in an Orlando
apartment. Agents were interviewing Todashev, 27, regarding his role in an
unsolved triple homicide in Waltham, and Todashev had, according to Florida
authorities, begun to write a confession. The victims were 3 young men found
with their throats slashed, their heads nearly decapitated and marijuana
sprinkled over their mutilated bodies - a grisly bloodbath that fell on
September 11, 2011, the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. At
least 1 of the victims, Brendan Mess, knew Tamerlan, who was also a suspect.
The motive, Todashev had begun to explain, was robbery.
"I wanna [sic] tell the story about the robbery me and Tam did in Waltham,"
Todashev wrote on a legal pad. But before he could finish the confession,
according to a Florida state attorney's report, Todashev, who had a long
history of criminal violence, flipped over a table and lunged at a
Massachusetts state trooper with a metal pole. Aaron McFarlane, an FBI agent
assigned to the Boston field office, shot Todashev 7 times. The FBI later
cleared McFarlane of any wrongdoing.
The horrendous unsolved murders in Waltham have been used by Dzhokhar's defense
team - in conjunction with Todashev's unfinished confession - to argue that the
older Tsarnaev brother was a menacing, dangerous man who acted as a "corrupting
influence" on their client. In a court motion filed last fall, Dzhokhar's
defense attorneys referred to an "identified witness [who] would be prepared to
testify" for prosecutors that their client was well aware that his big brother
had committed the Waltham atrocities - and that Dzhokhar was afraid of him.
In January, Dzhokhar is expected to go on trial in federal court, charged with
using and conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder has said that prosecutors will seek the death penalty. But whether
Dzhokhar lives or dies may hinge on his defense attorneys' ability to convince
a jury that the younger Tsarnaev was, in some way, under the sway of his older
brother.
Of course, dead men tell no tales. Todashev couldn't finish his confession from
the morgue - and Tamerlan was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m. on April 19, 2013,
after a wild firefight with police in Watertown.
In response to Dzhokhar's defense team, the government denies that their
alleged "identified witness" exists, saying only that there is a 3rd party who
claimed that someone might say Dzhokkar was aware of Tamerlan's involvement in
the Waltham murders. The government recently claimed it has no evidence linking
Tamerlan to the Waltham murders, so there is nothing to produce in court - a
stance that contradicts many earlier statements tying Tamerlan and Todashev to
the crimes. In fact, the same FBI interviews of Matanov that detail the
brothers' reactions to watching TV news coverage of the bombings on April 15
also refer to questions Matanov was asked concerning the Waltham murders and
the movements of his roommate, Todashev.
Matanov told conflicting stories at first, but eventually confirmed that
Todashev was at their shared home on September 11, 2011, the night of the
murders. He told agents that he came home from driving his cab to find his
roommate in the shower. Hours later, Todashev packed up his belongings, save
for a pair of boxing gloves, and drove with another Russian-speaking immigrant
to Florida.
After initially interviewing Matanov in May 2013, agents have testified, the
FBI followed Matanov sporadically for a year - during which time, according to
the Patriot Ledger, investigators deployed a noisy, low-flying plane to track
him. They arrested him on May 30.
Despite Matanov's claims that he expressed sympathy for the child who died in
the bombings, the federal indictment paints him as far more cold-hearted. It
claims that after Matanov had dinner with the Tsarnaevs on April 15, he
returned to his Quincy apartment and told his roommate - who is now a
government witness - that the bombings were justified if they were "done in the
name of Islam."
In the days following their dinner together, Matanov stayed in cell-phone
contact with Tamerlan and even made 1 more visit to Tamerlan's apartment in
Cambridge during the week leading up to the Watertown shootout. Matanov also
tried 6 times - in vain - to call Dzhokhar. His last attempt was made at 7:17
a.m. on April 19, when, according to the indictment, the suspect "was still
evading law enforcement."
After Dzhokhar's capture, Matanov desperately tried to erase the memory on his
own computer, according to the indictment, and deleted photos that showed him
alongside Todashev and the Tsarnaev brothers during happier times: going to the
beach in Quincy, celebrating Id al-Fitr at the mosque. In 1 of the pictures,
Matanov posed alongside Tamerlan in front of a black flag imprinted with a
sword and the shahada phrase - often described as "the black flag of jihad" -
taken, according to 1 of the FBI reports, at a Massachusetts mosque.
Federal prosecutors accuse Matanov of deleting files from his computer and of
lying to investigators about his interactions with the Tsarnaev brothers in the
days after the bombings. Today, Matanov is being held without bail at the
Plymouth County Correctional Facility - in notorious gangster James "Whitey"
Bulger's old cell. Federal prosecutors have argued that Matanov is a flight
risk: a man who speaks 7 languages, has no family here, has changed jobs and
residences several times, and has made multiple money transfers to parties
overseas using various aliases.
Matanov's attorneys, Edward Hayden and Paul Glickman, insist that their client
is innocent of any crimes, including any involvement in the Waltham murders,
pointing out that he has voluntarily cooperated with investigators. "It's not a
federal crime to be friends with someone," Hayden says.
On April 19, hours before Dzhokhar was captured, Matanov gave a voluntary
interview to the Braintree police. When asked how he met the brothers and what
he thought about them, Matanov said what any neighbor or casual acquaintance
might say: "They were like so, so nice people."
(source: Boston Magazine)
*********************************
Death Penalty Fast Facts
Here's a look at the death penalty in the United States.
Facts:
Capital punishment is legal in 32 U.S. states.
Connecticut, Maryland and New Mexico have abolished the death penalty, but it
is not retroactive. Prisoners on death row in those states will still be
executed.
As of October 2014 there were 3,035 inmates awaiting execution.
Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court,
1,389 people have been executed. (as of October 2014)
Japan is the only industrial democracy besides the United States that has the
death penalty.
Federal Government: (source: Death Penalty Information Center)
The U.S. government and U.S. military have 69 people awaiting execution. (as of
October 2014)
The U.S. government has executed 3 people since 1976.
Females: There are 57 women on death row in the United States. (as of October
2014)
15 women have been executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in
1976. (as of October 2014)
Juveniles:
22 individuals were executed between 1985 and 2003 for crimes committed as
juveniles aged 16 and 17.
March 1, 2005 - Roper v. Simmons. The Supreme Court rules that the execution of
juveniles is unconstitutional. This means that 16 and 17-year-olds are
ineligible for execution. And reverses two 1989 cases in Kentucky and Missouri.
Clemency:
Clemency Processes around the Country.
275 clemencies have been granted in the United States since 1976.
For federal death row inmates, the president alone has the power to grant a
pardon.
Timeline:
1834 - Pennsylvania becomes the first state to move executions into
correctional facilities, ending public executions.
1838 - Discretionary death penalty statutes are enacted in Tennessee.
1846 - Michigan becomes the 1st state to abolish the death penalty for all
crimes except treason.
1890 - William Kemmler becomes the 1st person executed by electrocution.
1907-1917 - 9 states abolish the death penalty for all crimes or strictly limit
it. By 1920, 5 of those states had reinstated it.
1924 - The use of cyanide gas is introduced as an execution method.
1930s - Executions reach the highest levels in American history, averaging 167
per year.
June 29, 1972 - Furman v. Georgia. The Supreme Court effectively voids 40 death
penalty statutes and suspends the death penalty.
1976 - Gregg v. Georgia. The death penalty is reinstated.
January 17, 1977 - A ten-year moratorium on executions ends with the execution
of Gary Gilmore by firing squad in Utah.
1977 - Oklahoma becomes the 1st state to adopt lethal injection as a means of
execution.
December 7, 1982 - Charles Brooks becomes the 1st person executed by lethal
injection.
1984 - Velma Barfield of North Carolina becomes the 1st woman executed since
reinstatement of the death penalty.
1986 - Ford v. Wainwright. Execution of insane persons is banned.
1987 - McCleskey v. Kemp. Racial disparities are not recognized as a
constitutional violation of "equal protection of the law" unless intentional
racial discrimination against the defendant can be shown.
1988 - Thompson v. Oklahoma. Executions of offenders age 15 and younger at the
time of their crimes are declared unconstitutional.
1989 - Stanford v. Kentucky, and Wilkins v. Missouri. The Eighth Amendment does
not prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed at age 16 or 17.
1994 - President Bill Clinton signs the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act that expands the federal death penalty.
1996 - The last execution by hanging takes place in Delaware, with the death of
Billy Bailey.
January 31, 2000 - A moratorium on executions is declared by Illinois Governor
George Ryan. Since 1976, Illinois is the 1st state to block executions.
2002 - Atkins v. Virginia. The Supreme Court rules that the execution of
mentally retarded defendants violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and
unusual punishment.
January 2003 - Before leaving office, Governor George Ryan grants clemency to
all of the remaining 167 inmates on Illinois's death row, due to the flawed
process that led to the death sentences.
June 2004 - New York's death penalty law is declared unconstitutional by the
state's high court.
March 1, 2005 - Roper v. Simmons. The Supreme Court rules that the execution of
juvenile killers is unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision tosses out the death
sentence of a Missouri man who was 17-years-old when he murdered a St. Louis
area woman in 1993.
December 2, 2005 - The execution of Kenneth Lee Boyd in North Carolina marks
the 1,000th time the death penalty has been carried out since it was reinstated
by the Supreme Court in 1976. Boyd, 57, is executed for the 1988 murders of his
wife, Julie Curry Boyd, and father-in-law, Thomas Dillard Curry.
June 12, 2006 - The Supreme Court rules that death row inmates can challenge
the use of lethal injection as a method of execution.
December 15, 2006 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush suspends the death penalty after
the execution of prisoner Angel Diaz. Diaz had to be given 2 injections, and it
took more than 30 minutes for him to die.
December 15, 2006 - Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court in San Jose
rules that lethal injection in California violates the constitutional
prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
December 17, 2007 - Governor Jon Corzine signs legislation banning the death
penalty in New Jersey. The death sentences of 8 men are commuted to life terms.
September 2007 - The U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case of Baze and Bowling
v. Rees, in which 2 Kentucky death row inmates challenged Kentucky's use of a
3-drug mixture for death by lethal injection.
December 31, 2007 - Due to the de facto moratorium on executions, pending the
Supreme Court's ruling, only 42 people in the U.S. are executed in 2007. It is
the lowest total in more than 10 years.
April 14, 2008 - In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court upholds Kentucky's use of
lethal injection. Between September 2007, when the Court took on the case, and
April 2008 no one was executed in the U.S.
March 18, 2009 - Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico signs legislation
repealing the death penalty in his state. His actions will not affect 2
prisoners currently on death row, Robert Fry, who killed a woman in 2000, and
Tim Allen, who killed a 17-year-old girl in 1994.
November 13, 2009 - Ohio becomes the 1st state to switch to a method of lethal
injection using a single drug, rather than the 3-drug method used by other
states.
2010 - Execution by firing squad is used for the last time in Utah, with the
death of Ronnie Lee Gardner.
March 9, 2011 - Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announces that he has signed
legislation eliminating the death penalty in his state, more than 10 years
after the state halted executions.
March 16, 2011 - The Drug Enforcement Agency seizes Georgia's supply of
thiopental, over questions of where the state obtained the drug. U.S.
manufacturer Hospira stopped producing the drug in 2009. The countries that
still produce the drug do not allow it to be exported to the U.S. for use in
lethal injections.
May 20, 2011 - The Georgia Department of Corrections announces that
pentobarbital will be substituted for sodium thiopental in the 3-drug lethal
injection process.
July 2011 - Lundbeck Inc., the company that makes pentobarbital (brand name
Nembutal), the drug used in lethal injections, announces it will restrict the
use of its product from prisons carrying out capital punishment. "After much
consideration, we have determined that a restricted distribution system is the
most meaningful means through which we can restrict the misuse of Nembutal.
While the company has never sold the product directly to prisons and therefore
can't make guarantees, we are confident that our new distribution program will
play a substantial role in restricting prisons' access to Nembutal for misuse
as part of lethal injection." Lundbeck also states that it "adamantly opposes
the distressing misuse of our product in capital punishment."
July 7, 2011 - Humberto Leal Garcia, Jr., a Mexican national, is executed by
lethal injection, in Texas for the 1994 kidnap, rape and murder of Adra Sauceda
in San Antonio. Despite pleas from the U.S. State Department and the White
House, Texas Governor Rick Perry does not grant clemency and the U.S. Supreme
Court does not intervene.
November 22, 2011 - Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon grants a reprieve to Gary
Haugen, who was scheduled to be executed December 6. Kitzhaber, a licensed
physician, also puts a moratorium on all state executions for the remainder of
his term in office.
April 25, 2012 - Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signs S.B. 280, An Act
Revising the Penalty for Capital Felonies, into law. The law goes into effect
immediately and replaces the death penalty with life without the possibility of
parole. The law is not retroactive to those already on death row.
June 22, 2012 - The Arkansas Supreme Court strikes down the state's execution
law, calling the form of lethal injection the state uses unconstitutional.
August 7, 2012 - The Supreme Court allows the execution of Marvin Wilson, 54, a
Texas inmate with low IQ.
November 6, 2012 - A measure to repeal the death penalty in California fails.
May 2, 2013 - Maryland's governor signs a bill repealing the death penalty. The
legislation goes into effect October 1.
June 26, 2013 - Texas executes its 500th prisoner since 1982, Kimberly
McCarthy, for the 1997 murder of Dorothy Booth. McCarthy is the first female
executed in the U.S. since 2010.
November 20, 2013 - Missouri executes white supremacist serial killer Joseph
Paul Franklin for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon. He was blamed for 22
killings between 1977 and 1980.
January 16, 2014 - Ohio executes inmate Dennis McGuire with a new combination
of drugs, due to the unavailability of drugs such as pentobarbital. The state
used a combination of the drugs midazolam, a sedative, and the painkiller
hydromorphone, according to the state corrections department. According to
witness Alan Johnson of the Columbus Dispatch, the whole execution process took
24 minutes, and McGuire appeared to be gasping for air for 10 to 13 minutes.
February 11, 2014 - Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announces that he is issuing a
moratorium on death penalty cases during his term in office.
May 22, 2014 - Tennessee becomes the 1st state to make death by electric chair
mandatory when lethal injection drugs are unavailable.
May 28, 2014 - A judge in Ohio issues an order temporarily suspending
executions in the state so that authorities can further study new lethal
injection protocols.
July 23, 2014 - Arizona uses a new combination of drugs for the lethal
injection to execute convicted murderer Joseph Woods. After he was injected it
took him nearly two hours to die. Witness accounts differ as to whether he was
gasping for air or snoring as he died.
September 4, 2014 - The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety issues a report on
the controversial April execution of inmate Clayton Lockett. Complications with
the placement of an IV into Lockett played a significant role in problems with
his execution, according to the report. An autopsy confirmed that Lockett died
from the execution
(source: CNN)
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