May 1
OHIO:
Bans on local hiring quotas, death penalty among new bills in the Ohio
legislature
Death penalty ban
On Wednesday, Sen. Edna Brown, a Toledo Democrat, proposed legislation to
prohibit capital punishment in Ohio. Brown said in a news release that she
introduced Senate Bill 154 after meeting with death-row exonerees.
Brown introduced similar bills during the past 2 legislative sessions without
success, and her chances of success this year aren't much greater in the
GOP-dominated legislature.
(source: cleveland.com)
INDIANA:
Expert: Daniel Messel could face death penalty in Hannah Wilson's murder
The man accused of murdering IU senior Hannah Wilson could face the death
penalty, if prosecutors charge him with kidnapping.
Daniel Messel, 49, already faces a charge of murder.
"It's my opinion that the state is probably considering a death penalty count
in this murder case," said criminal defense attorney Jack Crawford, a former
county prosecutor. "It appears strongly like Hannah Wilson was abducted, that's
a kidnapping. A murder committed in the course of a kidnapping is an
aggravating ground or circumstance to seek the death sentence."
In the Brown County field where Hannah Wilson's body was found last Friday, so
was a cell phone that police say belonged to Messel. Police then found blood
and hair inside Messel's car and, when he was arrested, he was carrying a trash
bag full of clothes.
But there are apparently no witnesses to the murder.
"It's not unusual to have a circumstantial case. You let the jury put the
pieces together. And these are some big pieces," explained Crawford, who said
the prosecution in this case does not have to prove motive.
If Messel never testifies about the case, that's fine, too he can still be
convicted.
"If they connect up the DNA, if they find his DNA on or near her body, or if
they find her DNA in his vehicle, that's strong circumstantial evidence that he
committed the killing," said Crawford.
If detectives are able to show that Hannah was abducted, this could become a
capital case.
The Brown County prosecutor, so far, isn't talking about the evidence or
additional charges.
"We will remain playing this close to the vest, I don't want to make a comment
at this time," said Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams on Monday.
Hannah's father is focused on the loss and mostly, celebrating a young and
vivacious life.
"She's gone. It doesn't matter whether they find a killer or don't find a
killer," said Dr. Jeff Wilson, Hannah's father, "I think, though, the police
and the detectives have done a great job. They're on it. I'm not too concerned
about that."
(source: WTHR news)
KANSAS:
Kansas Supreme Court delays death penalty ruling
The Kansas Supreme Court announced Friday that it has delayed issuing a
decision in the death penalty case of Scott D. Cheever while the U.S. Supreme
Court considers appeals in three other Kansas cases that raise similar issues.
Cheever was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2005 killing of Greenwood
County Sheriff Matt Samuels.
Attorneys for both the prosecution and defense in the Cheever case agreed to
the stay, according to a statement from the court.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering appeals in 3 other death penalty cases
from Kansas. In each case, the Kansas high court vacated death sentences due to
procedural errors in the sentencing phase of the trials.
Those cases involve Jonathan and Reginald Carr, who were convicted and
sentenced for a brutal murder spree in December 2000 in which 4 people were
shot execution-style in a frozen field near Wichita.
The 3rd case involves Sidney Gleason, who was convicted of killing 2 people
near Great Bend in 2004 as part of an effort to prevent them from providing
evidence about an earlier robbery.
1 of the issues on appeal common to all of the cases is whether juries in the
penalty phase of the trial must be told that the defense does not have to prove
mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt.
Under Kansas law, the death penalty can only be applied if the prosecution
proves certain aggravating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt. But the law
puts no similar burden on the defense when presenting mitigating circumstances.
The Kansas Supreme Court reversed Cheever's conviction and death sentence once,
in 2013, on the basis that the court violated his 5th amendment right against
self incrimination by admitting into evidence statements he had given to
federal authorities in a separate proceeding.
But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision a few months later and
remanded it to Kansas to be considered again.
Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994, but since then the Kansas Supreme
Court has overturned virtually every death sentence it has considered and, to
date, no one has yet been executed under the 1994 law.
(source: Lawrence Journal World)
ARIZONA:
Death penalty pros and cons
Over the past couple years, I have tried to completely ignore the Jodi Arias
case. It is totally disgusting to me. If the case had not been a good looking
woman involving sex, it would have ceased to be a news story very quickly.
The real sad story here is a couple spoiled kids without any moral values that
destroyed each other.
I had someone tell me, "I would have really liked to have been on that jury."
Not me; I wanted nothing to do with the story. I did not even want to hear,
talk or read about the case.
The death penalty is one law I believe Arizona should do away with. I have
several reasons I feel the death penalty should be eliminated. 2/3 of the rest
of world has decided to eliminate the death penalty. China, Iran, North Korea,
Yemen and yes, the U.S. does conduct the majority of executions in the world. I
am not very proud to be part of that group.
It costs a lot more to execute someone than to let them rot in jail. Yes, it is
cheaper to feed them than to pay the attorney fees for 20 years' worth of
appeals.
I believe someone that commits a murder should be prevented from ever
committing the crime again, and keeping them in jail for the rest of their life
does that. Do you really believe that dying is worse than sitting in an 8-foot
box for 20 years?
Some people argue that the death penalty is a deterrent. I do not believe
someone that is thinking about committing a murder says, "Well, if the
punishment is life, I will commit the crime, but if it is death, I will not
commit the murder."
Is that fair?
We say we do not execute people with a mental illness, but I believe anyone
that commits murder has a mental illness. If you are charged with murder and
you have enough money, it is very unlikely you would ever get the death
penalty. The FBI said in the 14 states that do not have the death penalty, they
have a lower homicide rate than the national average.
Lesson: If you really believe in the death penalty, ask yourself, would I like
to witness an execution?
(source: Quentin Tolby, retired judge; The Glendale Star)
CALIFORNIA:
Lawyer claims client never deserved death penalty----Attorney: Convicted
murderer is 'not a dangerous person'
Nearly 15 years ago, Jeffrey Jens represented Paul Gordon Smith Junior, the man
convicted of killing 20-year-old Lora Sinner during a 1998 camping trip. Smith
was also convicted of an attempted murder charge while he was in the Shasta
County Jail.
This week, the California Supreme Court ruled that Smith did not get a proper
sentencing trial and therefore he is no longer on death row, for now. Jens
shared he is happy his former client's death sentence was overturned.
"I've had 350 jury trials and to have somebody on death row, it's something
that you can't quite forget and to have that overturned and have that off your
conscious at this stage in my career means a lot," Jens said about his former
client Smith.
Jens said the case never should have been a death penalty case because Smith is
not a dangerous person.
In an interview with KRCR News Channel 7 in 2002, Jens said Smith had a "far
from normal," childhood.
"He was raped by his father over and over again. He was neglected, abandoned,
abused, and then shuffled into the system. He never really had a chance. He has
a brain dysfunction. This is not the kind of person that you put to death this
is the kind of person that gets life without parole," Jens shared in 2002.
On Monday, the high court ruled that an expert was wrongly prevented from
testifying. The jury was told of Smith's several attempts to escape from the
jail and his violent attitude toward guards.
The court said a prison expert was barred from telling the jury that security
is tighter at San Quentin, which is where Smith resides currently.
Smith could face another death penalty trial or he may be sentenced to life in
prison.
The Shasta County District Attorney's office said they haven't started
reviewing the case and they have not made a decision about whether or not they
will retry the penalty phase.
(source: KRCR tv news)
WASHINGTON:
The state Supreme Court justice who stepped down to protest the death penalty
The Supreme Court's heated debate over lethal injection on Wednesday
highlighted the stark divide that remains in how the justices view the death
penalty. It was the 1st time in nearly a decade that the justices had
contemplated lethal injection, the country's primary method of execution, and
their arguments were notable for the sharp tone as much as their underlying
disagreements about what they were debating.
As Ken Armstrong at the Marshall Project points out, not long after these
arguments wrapped up, the Washington state Supreme Court was holding a memorial
service to honor one of its former justices. It seemed oddly relevant, because
that justice had specifically said he was stepping down from the court 2
decades ago to protest the state's use of the death penalty.
Robert F. Utter, who died last year at age 84, wrote in April 1995 that his
only regret about serving on the court was a failure "to provide equal access
to justice" to everybody in the state.
"I have reached the point where I can no longer participate in a legal system
that intentionally takes human life in capital punishment cases," Utter wrote
in a letter explaining his decision, which you can read in full over at the
Marshall Project. "We continue to demonstrate no human is wise enough to decide
who should die."
Utter is not the most high-profile judge to turn against the death penalty, of
course. Just a year before Utter's letter, former Supreme Court justice Harry
A. Blackmun declared that he had reversed his position on the death penalty
after almost a quarter of a century on the court. Blackmun declared that he
would no longer meddle "with the machinery of death" and decried the country's
capital punishment system as "fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination,
caprice and mistake." (Blackmun retired from the court that year.)
Still, Utter's resignation and his later comments were dramatic in a different
way, a judicial swan song reached after dissenting 2 dozen times from cases
that upheld the death penalty. His feelings on capital punishment were not with
him all of his life, though, but rather were forged in his experiences as a
young judge and strengthened over his years on the bench, as he later explained
in a series of interviews with the Washington State Legacy Project in 2009.
In these interviews, Utter recalls that while serving as a prosecutor in King
County, he asked for death sentences while working on cases. "I just felt it
was part of the law," he said. "We didn't win those cases when I was a
prosecutor in the 1950s, thank goodness."
Utter said that his views on capital punishment could be traced back to a trial
involving Don Anthony White, a young black man who had what Utter described as
"all sorts of mental problems." White had killed 2 people and been sentenced to
death, but he was granted a new trial before Utter, who was a superior court
judge at the time. Utter said White as a young man had dramatically changed
while on death row, and the jury in the new trial found him guilty but spared
his life.
"That really opened my eyes to the power of rehabilitation," Utter told the
Legacy Project.
However, he said, these were his personal feelings, and he said he could not
dissent against the death penalty without a legal basis. "But the legal reasons
against it are there in almost every case you look at," he said. Over his
nearly 23 years on the state Supreme Court, Utter said his opposition continued
to grow, until he finally decided he could do more good by stepping aside than
by continuing to dissent.
"There were 2 death penalty cases coming up in the next term," he told the
Legacy Project. "At that point I had to ask myself, 'Am I going to do more
benefit in the long term by staying on the court or by resigning and bringing
the issue to the floor?'"
A majority of Americans support the death penalty, though that level of support
has been consistently falling since about the time Utter stepped down. And a
sizable majority of people are also pretty sure that an innocent person can be
executed in the current system, an opinion that transcends race, gender and
political preferences.
Washington state has carried out 5 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court
reinstated the death penalty in 1976. It last executed an inmate in 2010, when
Cal Brown, who was convicted of raping and murdering a woman, was killed by
lethal injection. Utter spoke out against that execution, again stating that he
felt the system remained unequal and costly.
Last year, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced a moratorium on executions in the
state due to what he called an unequal and inconsistent system. "There are too
many flaws in the system," Inslee said in a statement at the time. "And when
the ultimate decision is death there is too much at stake to accept an
imperfect system."
(source: Washington Post)
USA:
There's more to executions than pain----Supreme Court must consider what the
death penalty inflicts on America's political and legal values
America's death penalty system is in crisis. Its severity was vividly on
display Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case of Glossip v.
Gross, a challenge to Oklahoma???s use of the drug midazolam as a component of
lethal injection.
On April 29, 2014, Oklahoma's botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett
brought dramatic attention to what was once believed to be a safe, reliable and
humane method of putting someone to death. Lockett died of a heart attack 43
minutes after the 1st execution drug was administered and after a series of
frantic attempts to find a useable vein. He groaned, writhed, lifted his head
and shoulders off the gurney and said "man."
The case highlighted the vain effort of states to find drugs that can be relied
on to do the business of killing humanely. So serious are the problems with the
death penalty system and with lethal injection that Dr. Jay Chapman, the
pathologist who pioneered this method of execution, now says that he has
"revised his view of capital punishment" and has serious doubts about whether
it should continue to be used.
With medical heavyweights such as Chapman criticizing the suitability of
midazolam for use in executions and with the bulk of scientific evidence now
suggesting that midazolam cannot be used "to maintain adequate anesthesia"
during an execution, Oklahoma has been forced to rely heavily on the expert
testimony of Dr. Roswell Evans, dean of the school of pharmacy at Auburn
University, to support its execution protocol and its use of midazolam.
Despite never himself having used the drug on a patient or had any experience
with anesthesia, Evans testified in the district court that first considered
the Gross case that inmates given midazolam "would not sense pain" during an
execution. Junk science reached a new low when he supported this assertion by
relying almost exclusively on citations from a consumer website, drugs.com, a
website that offers the disclaimer that it is not intended to provide "medical
advice."
The claims of so-called experts in the science of pain should warn us that the
constitutional status of the death penalty in the United States has tended to
turn on the question of whether we can know for sure whether the condemned
suffer when they are executed. But can we really answer this question? And,
even if we could, is it the right question?
"The constitutionality of capital punishment should not depend exclusively on
whether there is a painless method of execution, because that is a question we
may never be able to answer."
Does the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" require us to
depend on science to reveal the pain of those we execute? Or is the effort to
answer that question inevitably going to evince the confused rhetoric that was
on display in Wednesday's oral argument? (Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito,
for instance, went so far as to contend that the Gross case was one part of "a
guerrilla war against the death penalty," in which opponents try to deny states
the drugs that could carry out executions with little or no pain, such as those
used in assisted suicide.)
This doubt and confusion can neither be put to rest nor alleviated. Pain "has
no voice," Harvard English professor Elaine Scarry observes in "The Body in
Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World":
When one hears about another's physical pain, the events happening within the
interior of that person's body may seem to have the remote character of some
deep subterranean fact, belonging to an invisible geography.
The constitutionality of capital punishment should not depend exclusively on
whether there is a painless method of execution, because that is a question we
may never be able to answer. Rather, we must consider the damage the death
penalty inflicts on America's political and legal values. We know, for
instance, that for every 9 people executed in the U.S. since 1976, 1 person has
been falsely convicted, condemned and subsequently exonerated - and that death
sentencing has been impermissibly tainted by racial discrimination. We must
gauge how such social harm measures up to America's commitment to respecting
the humanity of all citizens and its belief that no one's worth or dignity can
be measured simply in terms of his or her own worst act, no matter how heinous.
Displacing that inquiry and focusing simply on the pain of those we execute
turns complex moral and political questions into questions of science. It
pushes people such as Evans to the forefront of our most important
constitutional controversies, where they do not belong.
Justice Elena Kagan got it right Wednesday when she asked whether it would be
constitutional to burn someone at the stake after an anesthetic with debatable
pain-killing properties. She answered her own question by saying, "Maybe you
won't feel it. Maybe you will. We just can't tell."
(source: Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence
and political science and the associate dean of the faculty at Amherst College.
He is the author of "Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's
Death Penalty."----Al Jazeera)
******************
Prall: No sense in the death penalty
The death penalty is somehow still implemented in the United States. China,
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States carried out 88 % of death
penalty executions in 2007, according to Northwestern University. These are not
countries we want to align ourselves with in terms of human rights.
So, who's even for the death penalty? A recent Pew poll found that 56 % of
Americans are in favor of capital punishment, the lowest level in 4 decades.
Besides all the states that have deemed it unethical, the United Nations has
voted 117-38 for a global moratorium on the death penalty. You'll never guess
which side the United States voted on.
As U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, "The death penalty has no place in
the 21st century. Leaders across the globe must boldly step forward in favor of
abolition. Together, let us end this cruel and inhumane practice."
There have even been reports of China re-evaluating its death penalty policy,
according to the New York Times. Germany refuses to assist in a murder case of
a U.S. serviceman because the death penalty may be involved. There has to be a
change here in the States, in every state. Oklahoma is up to bat.
Oklahoma's Supreme Court is going to hear another appeal for the abolishment of
capital punishment after the horrific incident with Clayton Lockett. Lockett
was given a state-sanctioned, untested sedative drug (midazolam) to bring about
his death in a quick and painless way. Instead, he was not sedated and writhed
in agony, fully conscious, until a he had a major heart attack.
How could the Oklahoma Supreme Court approve the use of such a drug? Justice
Sonia Sotomayor noted in the dissent that the state expert testifying on behalf
of midazolam's effects relied on the website drugs.com.
That is an absolutely incompetent job done by the highest judicial officials in
the state of Oklahoma. The justices have voted to take up the case again after
other botched executions from across the United States have made headlines.
What is actually on the table in this case is actually quite ridiculous when
considered. The justices are ruling on whether midazolam violates "cruel and
unusual punishment" in the 8th Amendment. They are also considering whether
someone who challenges a lethal-injection protocol has to find a substitute
drug that would cause less pain.
How about the state just stops killing people?
The question before them now is whether the use of midazolam violates the
Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Because this is the
death penalty, where logic often does not apply, the justices will also
consider the bizarre question of whether someone challenging a lethal-injection
protocol must identify drugs the state could use that would cause less pain.
And it isn't cheaper to use the death penalty. After a recent study the Kansas
Judicial Council concluded, "Defending a death-penalty case costs about 4 times
as much as defending a case where the death penalty is not considered." Not to
mention the appeal process which can go on for years, if not decades.
All of this is paid for on our dollar, and at the end of the day, it might be
our dollar taking a human life. Knowing that innocent men have been put to
death before is reason enough not to support the death penalty. We are not
Salem; that may be our history, but it doesn't have to be our legacy. Putting
people to death in any form has dangerous moral implications on an entity such
as the state.
(source: Opinion, Jacob Prall, The Daily Iowan)
*****************************
Death Row's Other Killers
Glenn Ford, 64, convicted of murder in 1984, spent 30 years on the death row of
Louisiana's notorious Angola prison before his conviction was overturned and he
was freed last month. Anthony Ray Hinton, 58, convicted of murder in 1983,
spent 30 years on Alabama's death row before his murder conviction was
overturned earlier this month and he was freed.
That means they've joined the growing number of individuals convicted of
capital murder and other serious crimes who've been proven innocent only after
years in prison. Their exonerations also underscore how widespread are the
terrible flaws of American's criminal justice system, and especially its
ultimate evil: the death penalty. In fact, these men - whom the nation's death
penalty advocates would have sent to their execution decades ago - are,
literally, living proof that the death penalty itself is a crime.
According to data compiled by The Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate
the wrongfully-convicted, since 1989, 329 inmates convicted of capital murder,
murder or rape charges have been exonerated via DNA testing. The exonerated had
served an average of 14 years in prison.
Equally horrifying are the conclusions of a 2014 study that determined that at
least 4 percent of the 3,000 inmates now on the nation's death row are probably
innocent; that a "comparatively low" percentage of innocent inmates have been
executed since 1973; and that there is a greater percentage of innocent people
whose death sentences have been commuted to sentences of life without the
possibility of parole.
One of that study's authors wrote: "The great majority of innocent defendants
who are convicted of capital murder in the United States are neither executed
nor exonerated. They are sentenced, or resentenced to prison for life, and then
forgotten."
Whenever I read of another death-row exoneration, 4 considerations immediately
come to mind.
The 1st is, having been convicted of a capital crime, how does it feel to sit
awaiting execution on one of America's death rows and know that you are
innocent?
How does it feel to know that men and women, inhabiting offices of power and
clad in the trappings of respectability, are going to kill you so they can keep
pretending the American criminal justice system is just? How does it feel to
know that the only thing standing between you and execution is a few people who
have the resources to help you breach the extraordinarily high barriers put in
place to help the legal system try to avoid admitting it made a mistake?
Anthony Ray Hinton's words, quoted in an April 5 article of theatlantic.com are
worth focusing on. "They didn't just take me from my family and friends," he
said. "They had every intention of executing me for something I didn't do."
The 2nd thing I think about whenever another exoneration is announced is the
studied silence of the get-tough-on-crime crowd and the death penalty advocates
who are always complaining that the appeals process of capital sentences is too
drawn out. If those now exonerated had been executed "on time," this crowd
would have declared: justice done.
The 3rd thing I think about is the injustice to the crimes' victims of these
wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project data show that in the 329 cases of
DNA-proved exoneration, less than half of the true perpetrators of the crimes
have been brought to justice.
Finally, I've come to think that all these cases prove there are 4 kinds of
souls inhabiting America's death rows. There are the correction officers, of
course. There are the men and women who actually are guilty of murder. There
are the men and women actually innocent of the crime they've been blamed for or
whose guilt was not actually proved at trial. And, finally, there are, in
spirit, the death penalty advocates, hanging around like vultures waiting for
the next execution so they can pull the tattered rags of their
self-righteousness every more tightly around them.
The death penalty is itself morally repugnant, and the growing numbers of
death-row inmates whose innocence has been proven before they could be executed
has shown that the process of capital punishment in America is shot through
with, not just the possibility, but the reality of grievous error.
So, the next time you hear a death-penalty advocate spouting off about its
validity, ask them how many state-sponsored murders of innocent people they're
willing to take responsibility for.
(source: Lee A. Daniels' new collection of columns, Race Forward: Facing
America's Racial Divide in 2014, is available at www.amazon.com;
baystatebanner.com)
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