April 22
NORTH CAROLINA:
6 face death penalty after suspected gang hit killed couple
6 suspected Charlotte gang members now face a possible death penalty in the
October killings of a Lake Wylie couple. 4 of those charged in the connection
with the murders of Doug and Debbie London were already in custody.
2 more suspects were arrested Wednesday after an early morning FBI raid on the
Charlotte cell of United Blood Nation, an East Coast gang with strong criminal
ties across the region.
7 UBN members were taken into custody Wednesday on a variety of charges.
Jamell Lamon Cureton, Nana Yaw Adoma, David Lee Fudge, Daquan Lamar Everett,
Randall Avery Hankins II, Malcolm Jarrel Hartley, Nehemijel Maurice Houston,
Briana Shakeyah Johnson, IBN Rashaan Kornegay, Centrilia Shardon Leach, Ahkeem
Tahja McDonald and Rahkeen Lee McDonald are the gang members listed in the
federal indictment.
The indictment said the members engaged in criminal activity including murder,
assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, firearms possession, witness tampering,
obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to commit these crimes, among others.
The 12 members listed in the indictment agreed to commit at least 2 acts of
racketeering activity for the gang, according to the document.
The indictment outlines gang activity, and what each member had to do in order
to be initiated. It outlines crimes dating back to August 2012.
2 have been implicated in a 2nd murder, the August 2013 killing in York County
of Kwamne Clyburn, whom authorities say was killed by UBN after trying to pass
himself off as a member of the gang.
1 of the 2, Jamell Cureton, is accused by federal authorities of ordering the
gang hit on the Londons from behind bars. The couple was shot to death in their
home in October.
In February, pictures found in Cureton's jail cell prompted the protection of 2
judges and Charlotte City Attorney Bob Hagemann.
Police said Doug London was the only witness to the robbery of a south
Charlotte mattress store last May. Cureton was 1 of 3 men charged in the
mattress store robbery.
Timeline of events:
--Apr. 22, 2015: FBI raids Charlotte cell of United Blood Nation, arrests seven
gang members on variety of charges. Four of those arrested are charged in
Connection with murder of Londons.
--Jan. 30, 2015: Police said that Malcolm Jerrel Hartley, 22, and Brianna
Johnson, 18, are arrested in connection with the double homicide investigation
of the Londons.
--Dec. 2, 2014: Cureton and Adoma plead not guilty in the armed robbery case,
officials said. David Fudge, who drove the getaway car, was sentenced to
probation after his guilty plea earlier in the year.
--Oct. 30, 2014: Federal prosecutors take over the armed robbery case that
accuses Jamell Cureton and Nana Adoma of robbing the Londons' mattress store.
--Oct. 23, 2014: Doug and Debbie London are found shot to death in their Lake
Wylie home.
--May 25, 2014: 2 men rob the Wholesale Mattress Warehouse on South Boulevard
owned by Doug and Debbie London. One of the robbers and Doug London exchange
gun fire, police said.
(source: wsoctv.com)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
S.C. lawmaker proposes firing squad as death penalty option ---- With
lethal-injection drugs in short supply, convicts could choose a 5-man firing
squad over the electric chair
State Rep. Joshua A. Putnam (R-Anderson) introduced a bill today that would
allow South Carolina to administer the death penalty by firing squad if lethal
injection drugs are not available. State law already provides electrocution as
an alternative to lethal injection in death penalty cases, and inmates are
allowed to pick which method of execution is used.
"You would have three options compared to two right now. That would be electric
chair, lethal injection, or firing squad," Putnam says. "And then, if you were
to have picked lethal injection, and for some reason the drugs or whatever
substance we use for that is not available to the state, then instead of
defaulting back to the electric chair, you would at least have another option
to pick." The state of Utah enacted a similar piece of legislation in March.
According to the Post and Courier, S.C. Department of Corrections Director
Bryan Stirling told the House Judiciary Constitutional Laws Subcommittee
earlier this month that the state's last set of lethal injection drugs had
expired in September 2013 and that the state had no way of executing death-row
inmates unless an inmate chose the electric chair. There are currently 44
inmates on death row in South Carolina.
Originally, counties administered the death penalty by hanging in South
Carolina. The electric chair became available in 1912, and lethal injection
became an option in 1995. Currently, convicts on death row are allowed to
choose between lethal injection and electrocution, which are both carried out
in the death chamber at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
The state has carried out 282 executions since 1912, according to the S.C.
Department of Corrections. All but 3 of the 39 executions since 1995 have been
by lethal injection.
Putnam's bill comes as state governments nationwide deal with an ongoing
shortage of drugs including sodium thiopental, an anaesthetic that is often
used 1st in lethal-injection cocktails. The pharmaceutical company Hospira
Inc., which was the only U.S. manufacturer or the drug, ceased production in
January 2011 following pressure by worldwide opponents of the death penalty.
The European Union banned the export of the drug for lethal injections the same
year.
The most recent execution in South Carolina took place in May 2011. In that
execution, for the 1st time, the state replaced sodium thiopental with
pentobarbital as the 1st drug in a 3-drug process. The Danish pharmaceutical
company Lundbeck announced in June 2011 that it would no longer sell
pentobarbital for the purpose of executions, and states including Texas have
since announced shortages of the drug.
Rep. Putnam says he introduced his bill because death by firing squad is
"probably the most humane way [of execution], above even lethal injection and
the electric chair." (As the Washington Post recently pointed out, some
evidence suggests that death by firing squad could be quicker and less painful
than lethal injection, particularly in cases where the injected drugs do not
work as intended.)
Putnam's bill would authorize the Department of Corrections to "promulgate
regulations related to procedures that must be followed in administering the
death penalty by firing squad," but Putnam says he does intend to include a few
procedures in the bill.
"What would happen is it would be 5 people, trained marksmen, the best and most
precise marksmen within the state we have," Putnam says. "Four of their rifles
would have blanks in them; only 1 rifle would have a live round. I'm sure it
would be a very high-caliber type of rifle." Blank cartridges have
traditionally been used in firing squads to prevent individual members of a
firing squad from knowing whether they fired the fatal shot.
Putnam's bill, H. 4038, was introduced and referred to the House Judiciary
Committee today. Putnam is the only listed sponsor of the bill. Tyler Jones,
spokesman for the S.C. House Democrats, has already come out against Putnam's
bill. "Since Republicans are always in a time warp, we're wondering if Rep.
Putnam will offer a death by guillotine option as well," Jones says.
Ron Kaz, a James Island resident and member of the advocacy group South
Carolinians Abolishing the Death Penalty, says he was unaware of Putnam's
proposal before it was introduced today.
"It's obviously unnecessary, and I'd like to think it's unlikely to go
anywhere, but given the nature of some of the strange things that come out of
our legislature, we'll never know for sure," Kaz says.
Putnam says he is not going to try to change anyone's mind on whether the death
penalty is right or wrong.
"I know people that are against capital punishment altogether, and I understand
where they come from, and I'm not trying to change their beliefs," Putnam says.
"We currently have capital punishment on the books, we currently do capital
punishment, and I'm trying to No. 1 find a solution to the problem the state
faces right now, and also find a more human way of doing it."
(source: charlestoncitypaper.com)
USA:
The death penalty's destructive morality exposed: "We must overcome the impulse
for vengeance" ---- Capital punishment supporters talk about victims' need for
closure. So then why are many victims staunchly opposed?
On June 11, 2001, the federal government put Oklahoma City bomber Timothy
McVeigh to death. "Today, every living person who was hurt by the evil done in
Oklahoma City can rest in the knowledge that there has been a reckoning,"
President George W. Bush declared.
Actually, some of McVeigh's victims can't rest in the knowledge that the
government took his life. Ditto for the parents of an eight-year old killed in
the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, who have pleaded with federal authorities to
spare the death penalty for convicted murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
You rarely hear voices like these amid the drumbeat for capital punishment,
which stresses victims' psychological need for "closure" after losing a loved
one. But if we listened more closely, we would see that the victims themselves
- like Americans overall - are deeply divided on the issue. And we'd question
why 1 victim's wish for a killer to die should take precedence over another's
desire to see him live.
Victims' suffering and loss lay at the heart of the death-penalty argument in
the Oklahoma City attack, which marked its 20th anniversary last Sunday. In the
sentencing phase of McVeigh's trial, jurors heard testimony from 26 relatives
of people who were killed in the attack plus 3 injured survivors. "There are
168 people, all unique, all individual," the prosecution declared, recounting
the death toll. "All had families, all had friends, and they're different."
But the families differed about whether McVeigh should get the death penalty,
too. Some said that death was too light a penalty for McVeigh, who would suffer
more if he was forced to spend the rest of his days in prison. Others said that
taking a life - even of someone as evil as McVeigh - was simply wrong.
Their leading voice was Bud Welch, who lost his 23-year-old daughter Julie in
the bombing. During the first month after that, Welch recalled, he wanted
McVeigh and his accomplices to be "fried." But then he remembered Julie's
opposition to the death penalty, and started to campaign against it.
While Timothy McVeigh was strapped to a gurney in an Indiana prison, waiting
for the lethal injection that killed him, Bud Welch was protesting outside.
Since then, he has campaigned against capital punishment in 47 states; he has
also continued to maintain a friendship with McVeigh's father, whom he met 3
years after the bombing. In short, fighting the death penalty has become Bud
Welch's way of keeping his daughter's memory alive.
To be sure, most family members of the murdered Oklahoma City victims insisted
that McVeigh should die, too. 10 of them watched his execution at the limited
spectators' space in the prison; dozens of others viewed it back in Oklahoma
via closed-circuit television, which was provided by federal authorities so
that more victims could witness it.
But in Boston, a few days ago, Bill and Denise Richard marked the 2-year
anniversary of that city's bombing by pleading for federal authorities to spare
the life of the man who killed their 8-year-old son Martin. A death sentence
for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would inevitably bring many years of appeals, the
bereaved parents wrote, which would prolong rather than relieve their own
suffering.
Then a newlywed couple who each lost limbs in the attack also asked prosecutors
to take capital punishment off the table in sentencing trial of Tsarnaev. "In
our darkest moments and deepest sadness, we think of inflicting the same types
of harm on him," Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes admitted. "However, we must
overcome the impulse for vengeance."
So do we all. Executing Timothy McVeigh didn't avenge the 168 lives he
destroyed; it simply destroyed another life, leaving 2 more parents grieving
for their lost son.
Let's not make the same mistake with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. His victims lost more
than the rest of us can possibly understand. But don't pretend that killing
Tsarnaev will bring them justice, if they say the opposite. There's no justice
in that.
(source: Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of education at New York
University----salon.com)
************************
America's death row population is shrinking----Death row population falls since
2000
America's complicated, conflicted relationship with the death penalty is once
more in the news, for a couple of reasons. First, the penalty phase for
convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev began this week. Although
Massachusetts abolished capital punishment in 1984, Tsarnaev is being tried in
federal court, where the death penalty is still an option for more than 40
federal crimes. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Glossip v.
Gross, in which 3 prisoners on Oklahoma's death row are challenging the
constitutionality of that state???s three-drug execution protocol.
While a majority of Americans continue to favor the death penalty for people
convicted of murder - 56%, according to a new Pew Research Center survey - far
fewer people are receiving death sentences nowadays than in years past. As a
result, fewer U.S. prisoners are facing the possibility of execution than at
any time in the past 2 decades.
Though the number fluctuates almost daily, there are roughly 3,000 inmates on
the nation's death rows. An annual report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics
put the total death row population at 2,979 as of Dec. 31, 2013. (A quarterly
reckoning by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund put the number at
3,019 as of Jan. 1, 2015, using somewhat different methodology.)
Either way, there are about 600 fewer prisoners now than there were at the end
of 2000, when the total death row population peaked following steady growth
since 1976 (when the Supreme Court effectively reinstated capital punishment).
Death Sentences Are Becoming RarerAbout the same time as public support for the
death penalty began to fall, so did the number of newly imposed death sentences
- slowly at first, then accelerating around the turn of the 21st century: From
2001 through 2013, an average of 126 prisoners were sent to death row each
year. In 2013, the most recent year for which data are available, just 83
inmates were sent to state and federal prisons under sentence of death, tied
for the smallest number of death row admissions since 1973 (when there were
44). Also in 2013, 45 condemned prisoners had their sentences or convictions
overturned; 39 were executed; and 31 died in prison from some other cause.
The 1990s, it turns out, were a high-water mark both in support for the death
penalty (which peaked at 78% in 1996) and in imposing it: An average of 293
people entered death row each year from 1990 through 2000.
Most of the 32 death-penalty states have fewer people on their death rows now
than they did in the peak year of 2000. The big exception is California, where
dozens of convicted criminals have been sentenced to death in recent years (25
in 2013) but no one has been executed since 2006, when court rulings forbade
the state from using its 3-drug lethal-injection protocol. According to the Los
Angeles Times, as of last month 751 inmates were on California's death row, by
far the most of any state; since the last execution, 49 of these inmates have
died in prison of other causes. As the state's main death row facility at San
Quentin State Prison nears capacity, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed spending
$3.2 million to make more cells available.
The other notable exception to the trend of smaller death rows: the federal
government. In 2000, only 20 prisoners were facing federal death sentences.
That figure has more than tripled since, to 62 as of the beginning of this
year, according to the NAACP report.
Who's on death row? According to the BJS data, 56% of prisoners under sentence
of death at the end of 2013 were white and 42% were black; 14% were of Hispanic
origin. All but 56 were men. About 2/3 had at least 1 prior felony conviction,
and 28% were on probation or parole at the time of their capital offense,
though blacks and Hispanics were more likely to have been on probation or
parole (31% and 32%, respectively) than whites (24%). On average, the inmates
had spent 14.6 years on death row.
(source: Pew Research Center)
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