May 5
TEXAS----impending execution
Derrick Charles of Texas Scheduled to be Executed on May 12, 2015
Derrick Dewaye Charles' execution scheduled to occur at 6 pm CDT, on Tuesday,
May 12, 2015, at the Walls Unit of the Huntsville State Penitentiary in
Huntsville, Texas. 32-year-old Derrick is convicted of murdering 77-year-old
Obie Lee Bennett, 44-year-old Brenda Bennett, and his 15-year-old girlfriend
Myiesha Bennett, on July 2, 2002, in their Harris County, Texas home. Derrick
has spent the last 11 years on Texas' death row.
Derrick had a difficult birth and childhood. He was born prematurely to a
mother who had schizophrenia. As an infant Derrick suffered from at least 2
seizures. Throughout his life he had a history of depression. Derrick grew up
in poverty and, due to his mother's mental state, was not always provided with
food and clothing. Life at home was turbulent. Due to his mother's mental
illness, Derrick was never able to receive proper treatment for his depression
growing up. He was violent at school and expelled at least 4 times due to his
violence and disruptiveness. During the limited treatment he received for his
depression, Derrick was uncooperative. Derrick was arrested several times as a
juvenile and spent time in the Texas Youth Commission, where it was frequently
documented that he misbehaved.
On July 2, 2002, Derrick Charles was hiding in the closet of his underage
girlfriend, Myiesha Bennett. After she and her mother left, Charles exited the
closet and was surprised to find Myiesha's grandfather, Obie, still in the
house. Charles beat the elderly man with his fists, a lamp, and 2 trophies
before strangling him to death.
Charles then waited for over 3 hours for Myiesha and her mother to return home.
Once they returned home, Charles beat Myiesha with stereo speakers, dropped a
television on her head, and strangled her. She did not survive. Charles also
killed Brenda, Myiesha's mother. Charles put her in a tub of water and threw a
plugged-in television in with her. He then dragged her throughout the house and
raped her before strangling her to death. Allegedly, Charles was upset with
Brenda because she had told the police that he was sleeping with her daughter.
Charles was arrested the following day. At the time of the murders, Charles was
on parole for a burglary conviction. Charles confessed to the 3 murders. He was
sentenced to death on May 27, 2003.
Please pray for peace and healing for the Bennett family. Please pray for
strength for the family of Derrick Charles. Please pray that if Derrick is
innocent on grounds that he lacks the mental competency to be executed, that
evidence will be presented prior to his execution. Please pray that Derrick may
come to find peace through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, if he has
not already found one.
(source: theforgivenessfoundation.org)
**********************
Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----6
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----524
Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #
7-----------May 12--------------------Derrick Charles------525
8----------June 3--------------------Les Bower------------526
9-----------June 18-------------------Gregory Russeau------527
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Ayotte Statement on NH Supreme Court Upholding Death Penalty for Michael
Addison
U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) released the following statement regarding the
New Hampshire Supreme Court's unanimous ruling upholding the death penalty for
Michael Addison, who was convicted in 2008 of murdering Manchester police
officer Michael Briggs. Ayotte prosecuted the Addison case as New Hampshire's
attorney general.
"I believe the New Hampshire Supreme Court made the right decision in upholding
the death penalty for Michael Addison. The sentence was the appropriate and
just punishment for a violent career criminal who was responsible for the
murder of Michael Briggs, a decorated Manchester police officer who dedicated
his life to serving the community. My thoughts and prayers continue to be with
Officer Briggs' wife Laura, their sons Mitchell and Brian, his parents Lee and
Maryann, and the entire Briggs family, as well as the men and women of the
Manchester Police Department."
(source: Political News)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Governor Tom Wolf stands by death penalty moratorium
The state Supreme Court is deciding whether Governor Tom Wolf was within his
right to issue a moratorium on the death penalty.
The governor say he's hoping a bipartisan commission studying the death penalty
in Pennsylvania can provide him with certain answers. Wolf is awaiting
recommendations from the legislative task force, which was supposed to finish
its work in December 2013. But, the panel has repeatedly extended its timeline.
The agency putting together a final report now says it may need until next
year.
The governor says he's aware his decision has upset some people.
"I have a lot of good friends who are prosecutors who disagree with me on
this," he says. "But if I'm going to be the person to sign a death warrant, I'm
going to want to make sure that we're doing this fairly and that it's the right
thing to do."
Among the groups seeking to overturn Wolf's decision are the Pennsylvania
District Attorneys Association and the Philadelphia district attorney's office.
(source: WITF news)
**************************
Nun made famous by movie advocates against death penalty in Doylestown
A Louisiana nun begins corresponding with an inmate on death row. Even when she
learns he was convicted of murdering a teenage boy and girl, she agrees to be
his spiritual adviser and tries to have his death sentence changed to life
imprisonment. Unable to stop the execution, the nun becomes a renowned advocate
of abolishing the death penalty nationwide.
If this sounds like a movie, it was - the 1995 film "Dead Man Walking."
Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote the book on which the movie was based, told
more than 200 people at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church in
Doylestown on Monday night that her campaign against the death penalty
continues 20 years later.
"Every life has dignity - not just innocent life but guilty life as well,"
Prejean, 76, said during her hourlong talk. She was the final speaker in a
yearlong series of lectures on the American justice system sponsored by the
church's Peace and Justice Ministry.
Although she looks nothing like Susan Sarandon, who won the Best Actress Oscar
for her portrayal of Prejean, the short-haired nun captivated the audience with
her charisma and passion for her cause.
Pointing to the large sculpture of Jesus on the Cross behind the altar, Prejean
said the crucifixion symbolizes her position that the death penalty is
incompatible with Christianity and a just society. One arm represents criminals
who have committed horrible acts and the other arm innocent victims who have
suffered, but both are part of the body of Christ.
Prejean, a sister of the Congregation of St. Joseph, rejected the contention
that opposing the death penalty means one does not care about murder victims
and their families. She has started several support groups for victims.
"This is about who we are going to be as a people," said Prejean, who has
witnessed executions at prisons in Louisiana, Texas and Virginia. Besides
religious and moral arguments against the death penalty, Prejean said it is
racially discriminatory, arbitrary and can result in the execution of innocent
defendants.
Her 2nd book, "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful
Executions," related how she wrote to Pope John Paul II disagreeing with his
position that the death penalty could be carried out in cases of absolute
necessity. The pope subsequently declared the death penalty should be abolished
outright.
"We should never leave it up to the state. They will always claim it's an
absolute necessity," said Prejean, a former Catholic school teacher who has a
master's degree in religious education from St. Paul University in Ottawa,
Canada.
Prejean said she was not socially conscious in her early years as a nun,
believing her role was to pray to God to take care of the world's problems.
Her outlook changed in the early 1980s after she began visiting convicted
murderer Patrick Sonnier on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
"I couldn't believe how human he was," she said, although he and his brother
(who was sentenced to life imprisonment) had viciously murdered a 17-year-old
boy and an 18-year-old girl.
Prejean met the parents of the victims at the final hearing before a pardon
board, at which she was the only one to argue against Sonnier's death sentence.
The board voted to uphold the sentence, and Prejean attended the subsequent
execution.
She was taken aback when the father of the murdered boy asked her to come to
his church and pray with him, which she did. The father taught her that
forgiveness is not a sign of weakness, but a way for the families of victims to
heal.
"I believe God wakes us up when we're ready," Prejean said. "When we do wake
up, we act. I've found action is the most liberating thing."
(source: The Intelligencer)
GEORGIA:
How Transparent Will Death Row Clemency Be?
Georgia has just passed into law rules that dramatically increase transparency
into last ditch efforts by inmates on death row to save their own lives.
Or maybe it hasn't.
The processes in question are clemency proceedings in which defense attorneys
argue before the State Board of Pardons and Parole that the inmate has changed
since conviction to the point that they don't deserve to die. Prosecutors
alternatively argue that the jury got it right and the execution should
proceed.
Up until now, the Board of Pardons and Parole has never explained why they
bought either argument.
Georgia House Bill 71 was introduced after a rare granting of clemency, only
the 9th in almost 40 years. Now it is law and legislators say the public will
know how these things happen.
Unless they won't. That a grant of clemency will be explained under the law
seems like a sure thing. An explanation of a denial of clemency is another
thing altogether.
Linda Jellum teaches statutory interpretation at the law school at Mercer
University. Think of her as the legal version of your high school grammar
teacher. When she looked at HB71 in March, she believed it would require
transparency only when death sentences were commuted. After looking at what is
now law, she has a different interpretation.
"It appears to me to apply both directions,' Jellum said.
That's to say that the Board of Pardons and Paroles would have to explain
itself after any decision involving a clemency hearing.
Robert Dunham heads the Death Penalty Information Center. He said if that's
true, it would be a really big deal.
"Georgia would be close to alone, if not alone in requiring the entity that
makes the actual decision, to require that it state the reasons for its
actions," Dunham said.
But Dunham says that's not the whole story.
"First of all it isn't true. The plain language of the statute says they will
be requiring the board of pardons to explain their reasons if clemency is
granted," Dunham said.
And so it goes in trying to understand HB71. No 2 readings are the same.
State Senator Jesse Stone helped move HB71 to the Governor's desk. He is clear
on which decisions would be public under the law.
"It said 'Any decision relating to a request for pardon or commutation'," Stone
said.
What Stone referred to is the section of the law that reads "a written decision
relating to a pardon for a serious offense or commutation of a death sentence
shall Include the board's findings...."
Stone says that subsection of the law was where legislators massaged the legal
language. He believes it's key to transparency. That's the section that
persuaded Linda Jellum.
But Robert Dunham zeroed in on the preceding subsection of the law.
It reads "A grant of clemency, pardon, parole, or other relief from sentence
shall be rendered only by a written decision."
Critics point at the lack of the word "denial" in that passage. They say it
makes the law one sided.
So between the broad provisions of "relating to" clemency and the specificity
of a grant, but only a grant, of clemency forcing a written opinion, what is
the Board of Pardons and Paroles supposed to do?
After reconsidering both subsections of the law, Linda Jellum backtracked.
"If they deny a request to commute a death sentence, they are free to withhold
that information. As I read this bill as currently written, they are free to
withhold that information from the public," Jellum said.
Jesse Stone says the intent of the bill is to aid understanding of both up or
down votes on clemency requests. But Linda Jellum says legal intent doesn???t
count for much in court when making sense of Georgia law.
"Georgia generally says, 'Look, this is the bill as it was finally passed. We
don't care what the legislature might have been trying to do, what the senate
might have been trying to do, what the house might have been trying to do. we
don't care, this is what it says. So we have to go with what it says,'" she
said.
Jesse Stone says if the Board doesn't comply with the intent of the law, the
General Assembly might take the issue up again next year.
Linda Jellum says there's a quick, 2 word fix if they do.
"Under subsection 2, change the word grant to grant or denial," she said.
The 1st true test of the law's intent will come before Georgia???s next
scheduled execution.
(source: Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles News)
OHIO:
Murder victim's family upset by decades of execution delays
Nearly 31 years after Mary Jane Stout's life was ended by 3 .25-caliber
bullets, the man charged with her murder had an execution date set Monday by
the Ohio Supreme Court.
Stout's family will have to wait nearly 3 more years for the execution of John
David Stumpf on Jan. 3, 2018.
Chris Stout, a son of Mary Jane and Norman Stout, was furious when informed at
another delay in what is already one of Ohio's oldest pending capital
punishment cases, beginning when Ronald Reagan was president.
"It's the same old song and dance," Stout said in an interview with The
Dispatch. "3 years! What's the hold up? This is nothing but torture for the
victims. He (Stumpf) is going to die of old age before this happens," he added.
Stout said he plans to attend Stumpf's execution "if I'm still alive."
Stout, a former Ohio prisons guard, said he and his brother, Chuck, plan to
file a lawsuit against Ohio elected and prison officials over what he said are
unacceptable delays in the death penalty process.
Executions in Ohio have been halted and won't resume until Jan. 2016, because
of problems with obtaining drugs for lethal injection. The last execution was
Dennis McGuire on Jan. 16, 2014.
In the interim, the General Assembly passed a new law permitted the Department
of Rehabilitation and Correction to secretly contract with "compounding
pharmacies" to obtain specially mixed drugs for executions. The public and
media are prohibited from learning the source of the deadly drugs.
The Stump case has been through the legal gauntlet. His death sentence was
overturned only to be reinstated. It has been to the U.S. Supreme Court and the
6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals twice apiece. At one point, the federal appeals
court made a mistake, announcing it would reconsider an earlier ruling, when it
fact it had no plans to do that.
The murder happened May 13, 1984 when Stumpf and his companion, Clyde Wesley,
knocked on the Stouts' door just off I-70 in Guernsey County. After gaining
entry under the pretense of having car trouble, Stumpf held the Stouts at
gunpoint while Wesley searched for money, guns and valuables, according to
court records.
Norman Stout, a Korean War veteran, lunged at Stumpf and he fired at him,
striking him between the eyes and on top of the head. Moments later, he shot
Mrs. Stout 3 times in the head, killing her. Her husband survived, but was
disabled by the attack.
The Supreme Court also set 2 other execution dates. Douglas Coley is scheduled
to die March 14, 2018, for the 1997 murder of Samar El-Okdi, of Toledo. Stanley
Fitzpatrick's execution date was set for May 30, 2018, for a 2001 triple murder
in Hamilton County of Doreatha Hayes, Shenay Hayes and Elton Rose.
(source: The Columbus Dispatch)
MICHIGAN:
The day Michigan became 1st state to ban death penalty
On May 4th 169 years ago, Michigan lawmakers voted to put down the death
penalty, becoming the 1st state to ban capital punishment -- indeed, it was the
1st English-speaking government in the world to outlaw executions.
On May 18, 1846, the Legislature passed an act banning capital punishment,
setting the maximum penalty for murder in Michigan at "solitary confinement at
hard labor ... for life." Yet many of those serving that sentence went insane
in solitary, leading to a new law in 1861 that gave greater leeway in
sentencing murderers.
So who was the last person executed in Michigan? Well, not counting federal
executions, that would be on Sept. 24, 1830, when Michigan was still a
territory. Detroit was a dusty town of only about 2,200 people. The killer was
Stephen Simmons, a tavern keeper who had been convicted of murdering his wife
during a drunken quarrel. He was sentenced to die.
Within days, gallows were erected not far from Campus Martius, near Farmer
Street and Gratiot, by the downtown library and the Compuware Building. There
was a viewing section for the execution, a stage for a band and even a
concession area. Detroit, it seemed, was throwing a party for the occasion.
As Simmons stood on the gallows, he was asked whether he had any final words.
Instead of speaking, or so the story goes, he sang "Show Pity, Lord, O Lord,
Forgive":
"Show pity Lord, O Lord forgive/Let a repenting rebel live.
"Are not thy mercies full and free?/May not a sinner trust in thee?
"My crimes are great, but cannot surpass/The power and glory of thy grace.
"Great God thy nature hath no bounds/So let thy pardoning love be found."
Whether moved by the hymn, the distaste for the spectacle that accompanied the
hanging, or the sight of him swinging from the noose, a big push soon began in
the territory to do away with capital punishment. Religious leaders in Detroit
decried executions as being un-Christian. Newspapers sounded off on the
barbarism. Then, a few years later, it was learned that a Detroit man had been
executed in Windsor for a crime he didn't commit. Another man confessed to the
crime after the innocent man had been put to death
. All of this helped lead the Legislature to pass the law outlawing capital
punishment in the newly minted state. The law took effect March 1, 1847, 10
years after Michigan had joined the union.
In 1881, a movement to reinstate the death penalty grew. That June,
abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who lived in Battle Creek, spoke to the
Legislature: "It shocked me worse than slavery. I've heard that you are going
to have hanging again in this state ... Where is the man or woman who can
sanction such a thing as that? We are the makers of murderers if we do it."
The last person executed in Michigan under the federal death penalty was
Anthony Chebatoris, who was hanged July 8, 1938, at the federal prison in Milan
after he was convicted of killing a bystander during a bank robbery in Midland.
(source: Detroit Free Press)
LOUISIANA----new death sentence
Guilty verdict reached in CarQuest killings, Lee Turner Jr. eligible for death
penalty, reports say
Lee Turner Jr., 25, was found guilty Monday, May 4, of shooting two men in 2011
during an alleged robbery. Turner is facing the death penalty.
Lee Turner Jr. will face the death penalty, after he was convicted Monday by a
jury of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the killings of 2 co-workers at a
CarQuest auto parts store in Baton Rouge.
WBRZ reported that the jury's decision came quickly: They received jury
instructions before lunch, and had reached a verdict just after 1 p.m.
Turner, 25, was robbing the store where he worked when he shot coworkers Randy
Chaney and Edward Gurtner. According to WAFB, he left the store with $350.
The penalty phase of the trial, where the jury will decide if Turner will be
executed for his crimes, begins Tuesday at 9 a.m.
The case is Baton Rouge's 1st death penalty case in 5 years.
(source: Times-Picayune)
ARKANSAS:
State Seeks Death Penalty For Couple Accused of Killing Son
The state is seeking the death penalty for Mauricio and Cathy Torres in
connection to the death of their son, Isaiah.
Both Mauricio and Cathy pleaded not guilty in a Benton County courtroom Monday
morning.
On March 29, police say Isaiah was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at
Mercy in Bella Vista, where he was pronounced dead. The medical examiner later
ruled the death a homicide.
His parents were arrested and charged the next day.
Investigators say Isaiah was homeschooled, which may have allowed the abuse to
go unnoticed.
Court documents also state Isaiah was treated for chemical burns on his back at
Arkansas Children's Hospital last year.
(source: ozarksfirst.com)
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