May 18
NEW JERSEY:
Death penalty still supported by majority of NJ residents
It's been over 7 years since New Jersey abolished the death penalty, and a new
poll released Monday shows the majority of residents still support it.
In December 2007, New Jersey abolished its death penalty after legislation was
passed and signed by former Gov. Jon Corzine to replace the death penalty with
life without the possibility of parole.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 32 states have the death
penalty and 18 have abolished it. In 2013, Maryland became the last state to
abolish the death penalty.
A poll that was taken in 2006 by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind
asked Garden State residents their opinions on the death penalty. 8 years
later, the same question was asked and it received almost the same responses.
"Right now, 57 % of Garden Staters say they favor the death penalty for certain
crimes with 36 % who are opposed. Back in 2006, support came in at 54 %," said
Krista Jenkins, director of PublicMind and professor of political science.
Partisanship, gender and racial divides are evident in the survey.
"Support is the strongest among Republicans, whites, men and Gen Xers with
clear majorities of all these groups saying 'yes' to the ultimate penalty,"
Jenkins explained. "Support is considerably less among Democrats, people of
color and millennials."
65 % of the white poll respondents are in support of the death penalty while 35
% of black New Jerseyans say the same. More than 3/4 of Republicans favor
capital punishment, but less than 1/2 of Democrats agree.
Other breakdown percentages included:
52 % of Independents favor the death penalty;
64 % of men support it;
51 % of women are unopposed;
48 % of those ages 18 to 34 favor the death penalty;
61 % of those ages 35 to 59 support it;
60 % of New Jersey residents 60 and older are unopposed.
After a spate of botched executions across the country, the U.S. Supreme Court
is now considering the constitutionality of the death penalty.
The poll was conducted by telephone from April 13 to 19, 2015 using a randomly
selected sample of 1314 adults in New Jersey, including an oversampling of 403
African-Americans.
(source: nj1015.com)
*****************
FDU Poll: Majority support remains for death penalty
With the Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev being sentenced to death, and a
number of botched executions attracting the attention of the U.S. Supreme
Court, the death penalty has been in the headlines recently. The most recent
survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind finds support for the
death penalty virtually unchanged from when the same question was asked in
2006. 57 % of respondents say they favor the death penalty for certain crimes
with 36 % opposed. In 2006, support measured 54 % with 31 % opposed.
"With the Supreme Court decision on lethal injections looming, and another
federal defendant sentenced to death, sentiment in New Jersey is squarely on
the side of allowing the practice to continue. A majority would undoubtedly
agree with the decision to sentence the Boston bomber to the ultimate penalty,"
said Krista Jenkins, director of PublicMind and professor of political science.
She went on tos say "It's not really a state issue, as New Jersey is among
those states who abolished the death penalty in 2007. It's more of a federal
issue, given the difficulty that many states are having in getting the drugs
needed for the legal injection cocktail. Right now Garden Staters are about
where the nation is in regard to the question. Other polls have national
support at 56 %, another sign that New Jersey is really a microcosm of the rest
of the nation."
Not everyone embraces this form of punishment: Support is the strongest among
Republicans, whites, men, and Gen Xers - with clear majorities of all of these
groups saying yes to the ultimate penalty. There is considerably less support
among Democrats, people of color, women, and Millennials - all of whom oppose
the death penalty in numbers almost reaching or exceeding a majority.
Partisanship and race are the 2 biggest dividers in attitudes toward the death
penalty. Among whites, approval approaches 2/3, but among blacks support
plummets thirty points to 35 %. 3/4 of Republicans favor this form of
punishment with fewer than half of all Democrats.
The Fairleigh Dickinson University poll of 1314 adults, including an oversample
of 403African-Americans, in New Jersey was conducted by telephone with both
landline and cell phones from April 13 through April 19. The margin of error is
+/- 3 % points.
(source: politickernj.com)
NEBRASKA:
Conservative Support Aids Bid in Nebraska to Ban Death Penalty
The Nebraska Legislature will decide in the next several weeks whether to do
what no other conservative state has done in more than 40 years: Abolish the
death penalty.
In the latest sign that vigorous support for capital punishment can no longer
be taken for granted among Republicans, a coalition of Republican, Democratic
and independent lawmakers has backed a bill that would replace capital
punishment with life imprisonment. Its members cite reasons that range from
fiscal and practical to ideological.
On Friday, the unicameral Legislature voted in favor of the bill, 30 to 16,
after four hours of debate. A final vote is likely this week, and if the
lawmakers approve the measure again, as is expected, it will go to Gov. Pete
Ricketts, a Tea Party Republican and strong supporter of capital punishment.
The governor has said he would veto the bill, setting up a potentially fierce
campaign to override him.
In a statement after the vote, Mr. Ricketts said the repeal vote "puts the
safety of the public and Nebraska families at risk."
"The death penalty in Nebraska remains an appropriate tool in sentencing the
most heinous criminals," he added.
But the Republicans who support repeal say they are part of an emerging group
that has changed positions on the death penalty, forming what they hope is a
compelling conservative argument against it.
Those Republicans have argued that the appeals process for inmates sentenced to
death has left the state with unnecessary costs, money that should be spent
elsewhere. They have spoken of the botched execution in Oklahoma last year and
the difficulty in procuring the drugs for lethal injections. (The electric
chair was outlawed in Nebraska in 2008 when the State Supreme Court declared
the method unconstitutional.) Some lawmakers have also pointed to the fact that
Nebraska has not executed an inmate since 1997, leaving family members of crime
victims waiting interminably for resolution. 11 inmates are on death row.
Senator Colby Coash, a conservative who is a sponsor of the bill, said he had
come to believe that opposing capital punishment aligned with his values as a
Republican and a Christian conservative.
"I'm a conservative guy - I've been a Republican my whole life," he said in an
interview. "A lot of my conservative colleagues have come to the conclusion
that we're there to root out inefficient government programs. Some people see
this as a pro-life issue. Other people see it as a good-government issue. But
the support that this bill is getting from conservative members is evidence
that you can get justice through eliminating the death penalty, and you can get
efficient government through eliminating the death penalty."
But other Republicans, dismayed over what they see as a deviation from the
party's core beliefs, have vowed to fight the measure. Senator Bill Kintner,
who opposes repeal, said a filibuster had been discussed to try to stop it.
Those lawmakers in his party who favor the bill, Mr. Kintner said, have lost
their way. "Conservatives have always been the bedrock of law and order," he
said in an interview in his office in the Capitol. "We want to make sure our
streets are safe."
Yet even some lawmakers who ultimately voted against the bill on Friday said
they had lost sleep trying to decide. "I have struggled with this issue,"
Senator Dave Bloomfield said. "At the end of the day, I will be voting to keep
the death penalty on our books as an alternative to the most heinous crimes."
Mr. Ricketts, in a last-minute attempt to shore up Republican opposition to the
bill, announced on Thursday that the state had acquired "all 3 drugs" necessary
to carry out lethal injections. But Senator Ernie Chambers, an independent from
Omaha, who introduced the bill, questioned whether the state had procured those
drugs.
"The governor is going to have to show and establish where these drugs come
from," Mr. Chambers said during debate. "They don't have them in their
possession. The timing of this announcement is very problematic."
Lawmakers in other conservative states have made their own efforts this year to
abolish capital punishment. In Montana, a bill to ban the death penalty passed
the Senate but encountered opposition in the House. A vote there ended in a
tie, 50 to 50, effectively killing the bill.
A bill introduced in the Kansas Legislature this year is in committee, and it
is unclear whether it will advance to a vote.
The Midwest has historically been a stronghold of opposition to the death
penalty, which has been outlawed in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota and
Wisconsin.
18 other states have banned the death penalty, and Nebraska has tried before.
In 1979, a bill to do so passed the Legislature but was vetoed by the governor,
and lawmakers failed to override his veto. In 1999, the Legislature passed a
moratorium on the death penalty, citing concerns that it had been applied
unfairly. That bill was also vetoed by the governor.
The measure was approved on Friday in a preliminary vote. The governor has
promised a veto. Credit Andrew Dickinson for The New York Times "This year,
there apparently are conservatives on the national level who have finally
acknowledged the truth of what those of us who are against the death penalty
have been saying," said Mr. Chambers, the longest-serving member of the
Nebraska Legislature, which is officially nonpartisan. "But it has more impact
coming from them. The arguments are being presented by people whose
presentation carries far more weight than mine. If I say it, it's, 'Ho-hum,
he's been saying that for 40 years.'"
Supporters of the bill in Nebraska say they are encouraged by the erosion of
support for the death penalty on a national level. Last year, a Washington
Post-ABC News poll found that support for it in the United States had slipped,
with 52 % of Americans favoring life without parole over the death penalty.
"It's a broken government program that produces no tangible benefits," said
Marc Hyden, the director of the national group Conservatives Concerned About
the Death Penalty. "More and more conservatives are increasingly seeing this as
just another program that is antithetical to our conservative ideas."
Some conservatives, like Senator Coash, say they now see the death penalty as
anti-Christian. 22 % of Nebraskans are Catholic, according to the 2008 American
Religious Identification Survey, and studies have revealed that Catholic
support for the death penalty is decreasing as Pope Francis denounces it
strongly. A Pew poll released in April showed that 42 % of Catholics in the
United States opposed the death penalty, compared with 36 % 4 years ago.
Stacy Anderson, the executive director of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the
Death Penalty, said this was the closest Nebraska had ever been to having a
veto-proof majority on a bill to eliminate capital punishment, leaving her
"cautiously optimistic" that it would succeed.
"We're hearing across the board from Republicans and Democrats that the system
is broken, there's no way to fix it, and it's time to move on," Ms. Anderson
said. "Republicans have been saying that this is a pro-life issue for them.
They believe in the sacredness of life across the board. And for fiscal
conservatives, the math just doesn't make sense, especially when we aren't
getting any benefit from it."
In Nebraska, bills must be approved 3 times before they reach the governor's
desk, and the intense lobbying in advance of Friday's vote, the 2nd, signaled
that much more fighting is in store as the bill heads toward its final vote.
Opponents and supporters of repeal have been bombarding lawmakers with phone
calls and emails, and the governor has been pushing Republicans who support
repeal to change their minds, arguing that the measure would provide "no cost
savings" to taxpayers.
Repealing the death penalty, the governor said on Friday, "is out of touch with
Nebraska citizens that I talk to on this issue."
(source: New York Times)
CALIFORNIA:
Son who swore vengeance against his mother's killer at 6 years old when
testifying against him meets him after 20 years on death row - and now vows to
save his life
Clifford O'Sullivan was just six when he appeared in a California court at the
trial of his mother's killer, Mark Scott Thornton
He gave a stirring sentencing testimony during which he asked for the 'bad man'
to be killed
Thornton has spent the past 20 years sitting on death row as California hasn't
executed a single prisoner since 2006
O'Sullivan says he has now changed his mind and he doesn't want Thornton to die
A son, whose mother was murdered in 1993, has come face to face with the killer
who has spent the past 20 years on death row and has vowed to fight to save the
man's life.
Clifford O'Sullivan was just 6 years old when he appeared in court at the trial
of his mother's killer and gave a stirring sentencing testimony asking for him
to be killed.
'All I think is that what the bad man did to my mom should happen to him,' he
told the court.
Kellie O'Sullivan, Clifford's mom, was kidnapped in Malibu and murdered on
September 14, 1993 as she drove to collect her son from daycare.
Mark Scott Thornton, who was wanted at the time on a juvenile-probation arrest
warrant, abducted Kellie - a nurse - and drove her to a remote area off
Mulholland Highway, where he shot her once in the chest and twice in the back.
At his trial, a jury convicted Thornton of 1st-degree murder. During
sentencing, Clifford was given the chance to take the stand and give us
thoughts.
'It's really sad for my family 'cause she was one of the greatest mothers I've
met,' he said.
Now 26, O'Sullivan - who works in a Nashville emergency room - has changed his
mind and no longer believes that the death penalty is the right punishment for
Thornton.
O'Sullivan's change of heart comes partly from his own experience of just how
damaging the death penalty system is to victims' families.
'You don't heal,' said O'Sullivan, who as a 15-year-old was caught with cocaine
and arrested for assault.
At 20, Scott Thornton become the youngest inmate on death row when he was
sentenced to die in 1995.
He was admitted to San Quentin State Prison, where California houses its male
death row inmates, but since 2006 the state hasn't executed a single prisoner.
With California unlikely to ever execute Thornton, O'Sullivan has said that he
- and many other victims - are not given closure.
'The process goes on,' O'Sullivan said, 'delayed for years in a way that is
torturous.'
With his strong belief that the capital punishment system doesn't do what it is
supposed to, O'Sullivan decided to write to his mother's killer asking if he
could visit him.
Last September - some 22 years after his mother's death - O'Sullivan flew to
California to meet with Thornton and the 2 men spoke for 5 hours.
'It was the greatest gift he could have given me,' O'Sullivan said.
When O'Sullivan told Thornton that he no longer thought he should be killed he
was surprised at the killer's response
Rather than talk about his own future, Thornton wanted instead to make peace
over what he had done all those years ago.
'Let us focus on making sure that the next 20 years are not a reflection of the
past 20 years,' he said. 'Let's find meaning in this, for your sake, for mine
and for your mother's.'
It was not the response O'Sullivan expected, but he maintains that he longs
wants Thornton to die.
'If they put him up for a date I would stop it, just like I started it,' said
O'Sullivan.
(source: Daily Mail)
USA:
GOP Consultant: Death Penalty Supporters Will Be Like Gay Marriage Opponents
Republican strategist Matthew Dowd says opponents of the death penalty will be
as outmoded as gay marriage opponents in 20 years.
Dowd told a This Week panel he didn't understand the conservative support for
the capital punishment, which is back in the news thanks to the jury that
handed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a death sentence last week.
"20 years from now, people that are for the death penalty are going to be in
the same place as people that are against gay marriage," Dowd said. "The death
penalty is going to go the way of opposition to gay marriage."
"I find it amazing that conservatives are all for the death penalty and
government involvement in the taking of a life, but they're not for government
involvement in health care, and the saving of a life?" he asked. "I don't get
the disposition on this."
(source: Fox News)
********************
Chechen Leader Says Tsarnaev Death Sentence Is Part Of US Intelligence
Plot----In an Instagram post, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev got the death sentence because "US intelligence agencies had to find a
victim"
The leader of the Chechen Republic lashed out at the U.S. Sunday over the
jury's decision to give Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the death penalty for his role in the
Boston Marathon bombing. In a post on his Instagram acccount, Ramzan Kadyrov
accused U.S. intelligence agencies of using Dzhokhar and his older brother to
hide their own involvement in the grisly 2013 attack.
Kadyrov is one of the most powerful figures in Russia, and a close ally of
President Vladimir Putin. Under their unwritten pact, Kadyrov keeps order in a
region that has been notoriously unstable, and in return, he gets free rein to
be heavyhanded with any local opposition to his own rule. Some worry that the
Chechen leader is transforming the republic into a place where dissenters are
punished and Islamic law is used for oppression rather than religion.
At one point in his Instagram post on Sunday, Kadyrov says: "US intelligence
agencies, who were accused of involvement in the Boston tragedy, had to find a
victim. Tsarnaev was handed to them as a victim." Later, speaking about
Dzhokhar and his older brother Tamerlan, who died in the police chase following
the bombing, Kadyrov writes: "If they actually did that attack, I don't believe
the US special intelligence services didn't know about it." Kadyrov is close
ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Dzhokar is from a family of ethnic Chechens who were forcibly removed from the
Russian province in the years after WWII and resettled in the then-Soviet
republic of Kyrgyzstan. In 2002, his immediate family gained political asylum
in U.S. They had sought to return to Chechnya, but Russian authorities
prevented them from returning to the Russian republic, which was ravaged by war
and had become a hotbed of radicalism. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had made two visits to
Chechnya in the years leading up to Boston bombing, and some believe those
trips fed his growing radicalization.
After 3 months of testimony, a jury on Friday sentenced Dzhokar, 21, to death
for the 2013 bombings, which killed 3 people, injured hundreds more and deeply
scarred the city of Boston. His appeals are expected to take years.
(source: vocativ.com)
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