Oct. 8
TEXAS:
After rare 10-month respite, Texas death row gets 1st new inmate in 2015
Death row in Texas is getting its 1st new inmate in 2015, ending a 10-month
hiatus in death sentences imposed by juries in the nation's most active capital
punishment state.
A Brazos County jury decided after 7 hours of deliberation Wednesday that
22-year-old Gabriel Hall should be put to death for an attack that left a
68-year-old man dead and his wife injured at the couple's home in College
Station.
It is the 1st death sentence imposed in Texas since last December.
Jurors rejected the option of sending Hall to prison for life with no chance of
parole - the outcome in 3 other Texas capital cases this year where the death
penalty was a possibility.
Brazos County is about 100 miles northwest of Houston.
(source: Associated Press)
CONNECTICUT:
Connecticut Court Stands By Decision Eliminating Death Penalty
The Connecticut Supreme Court is standing by its decision to eliminate the
death penalty, but state prosecutors are challenging that ruling in another
capital punishment appeal.
Justices on Thursday rejected a request by prosecutors to reconsider their
landmark 4-3 decision in August.
The majority ruled a 2012 state law abolishing capital punishment for future
crimes must be applied to the 11 men on death row for killings committed before
the law took effect. The decision came in the case of convicted killer Eduardo
Santiago.
Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane said Thursday that prosecutors have filed a
motion in the pending death penalty appeal of Russell Peeler Jr. to make the
arguments they would have made in the Santiago case, if the Supreme Court had
granted their motion to reconsider.
(source: Hartford Courant)
OKLAHOMA:
Autopsy: Oklahoma Used The Wrong Drug To Execute Charles Warner
Corrections officials in Oklahoma used the wrong drug to execute Charles Warner
back in January.
The revelation was included in Warner's autopsy report, which was just made
public by the Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. According to the
report, officials used potassium acetate - not potassium chloride, as state
protocol calls for - to stop Warner's heart.
Warner, 47, had been scheduled to die on the same night as Clayton D. Lockett.
If you remember, Lockett's 2014 execution was also botched. A report issued
after his death, found that a phlebotomist misplaced the IV line intended to
deliver the lethal cocktail of drugs directly into Lockett's bloodstream.
Instead, the cocktail was delivered to the surrounding tissue and Lockett
eventually died of a heart attack.
According to The Oklahoman, which first reported on Warner's autopsy report,
explains:
"The drug vials and syringes used in Warner's execution were submitted to the
Office of Chief Medical Examiner after his death. 2 of the syringes were
labeled with white tape '120 mEq Potassium Chloride,' his autopsy report shows.
"However, the 12 empty vials used to fill the syringes are labeled '20mL single
dose Potassium Acetate Injection, USP 40 mEq\2mEq\mL,' the autopsy report
shows."
Back in September, Gov. Mary Fallin stopped the execution of Richard Glossip,
saying that the state had received potassium acetate rather than potassium
chloride.
Following that stay, Robert Patton, Oklahoma's prisons director, told reporters
that the state's drug provider told them that the 2 drugs were interchangeable.
Medical professionals say they are 2 different drugs.
In a statement, Fallin said she had not been made aware that the 2 drugs may
have been switched during the Warner execution until she was told the wrong
drugs were procured for the the Glossip execution.
"The attorney general's office is conducting an inquiry into the Warner
execution and I am fully supportive of this inquiry," she said. "It is
imperative that the attorney general obtain the information he needs to make
sure justice is served competently and fairly."
Fallin said that until the state has "complete confidence in the system" she
will delay any scheduled executions.
Glossip's attorney, Dale Baich, said in a statement that Oklahoma cannot be
trusted to get this procedure right.
"The State's disclosure that it used potassium acetate instead of potassium
chloride during the execution of Charles Warner yet again raises serious
questions about the ability of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to carry
out executions," Baich said. "The execution logs for Charles Warner say that he
was administered potassium chloride, but now the State says potassium acetate
was used. We will explore this in detail through the discovery process in the
federal litigation."
According to the AP, Oklahoma's execution protocol does allow for some wiggle
room in the kind of drugs used in executions.
"The protocols include dosage guidelines for single-drug lethal injections of
pentobarbital or sodium pentothal, along with dosages for a 3-drug protocol of
midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride," the AP reported. "The
protocols also allow for rocuronium or pancuronium bromide to be substituted
for the 2nd drug. The protocols do not list an alternate for potassium
chloride, which is the 3rd drug used."
Of course, this case again points to the issues surrounding how and where
states are getting their execution drugs. Oklahoma and other states have
struggled to adjust to new combinations of execution drugs after manufacturers,
under pressure from critics of capital punishment, ceased providing states with
drugs they had long used.
States have turned to so-called compounding pharmacies for new drug combination
that the states and the pharmacies may know little about.
(source: NPR.org)
***************
Gov. Fallin Hires Outside Lawyer For Execution Review, Legal Advice
A familiar face will soon be back in the capitol building. Governor Mary Fallin
hired former Oklahoma U.S. Attorney Robert McCampbell Wednesday, as an outside
attorney to help investigate the state's death penalty protocol and give legal
advice, according to her office.
McCampbell specializes in election law, litigation and white collar crime. A
graduate of Yale Law School, McCampbell worked for the Department of Justice's
white collar crime division, according to his company bio. He served as U.S.
Attorney for Oklahoma???s Western District from 2001 to 2005 before returning
to private practice in Oklahoma City for FellersSnider Law Firm.
But McCampbell is no stranger to scandal. He represented former Governor Frank
Keating when he battled the state ethics Commission in the late 90s during his
trial against the Oklahoma Ethics Commission. Keating was accused of using
state transportation to attend a political event. He was acquitted of his
charges.
McCampbell also represented the now disgraced former state senator Debbie
Leftwich who was convicted of bribery in 2013. Leftwich was sentenced to 1 year
probation for agreeing not to run for re-election in exchange for a position in
the state medical examiner's office. He's also been a legal counsel for Fallin
when she was taken to court over changes to the state's workers' compensation
laws 2 years ago.
According to the governor's office, McCampbell is being brought in, apart from
Attorney General Scott Pruitt's office which is already doing an investigation
of its own into what happened during Richard Glossip's most recent
near-execution.
Fallin's spokesperson, Alex Weintz said in an email: "The governor is therefore
being represented by an independent counsel to receive legal advice and
representation from an experienced attorney who has not been directly involved
in Oklahoma's executions." He added Fallin has confidence in Pruitt's office
and her own legal team. She employs three lawyers as well as a legal assistant.
But when asked whether the Attorney General felt slighted by McCampbell's
hiring, Pruitt's press secretary, Will Gattenby said no. "It's a reflection of
how serious the situation [surrounding the protocol] is," he said.
(source: news9.com)
USA:
Death penalty murder cases create tension at the Supreme Court
Supreme court tensions over capital punishment burst into the open again on
Wednesday as rival justices clashed over a series of gruesome murders in Kansas
that could overturn 2/3 of the US state's death row cases.
The related cases before the court, Kansas v Gleason and Kansas v Carr,
challenge the Kansas state supreme court's decision to overturn death sentences
on the grounds that inadequate jury instructions were given.
Due to language used by judges in the original trials, jurors may not have
realised they were able to consider mitigating circumstances that were not
proven beyond reasonable doubt.
If the lower court decision is upheld, it could see 2 brothers, Reginald and
Jonathan Carr, who murdered 5 people in 2000 in one of Wichita's most notorious
crime sprees, removed from death row, as well as Sidney Gleason, who was found
guilty of a 2004 double murder and kidnapping.
But the prospect of these high-profile murderers escaping the death penalty
over what many believe to be a minor technicality angered conservative justices
on the supreme court, who have been clashing frequently with liberals such as
Stephen Breyer on the wider issue of whether the death penalty is
constitutional.
Asking how many death row cases there were in Kansas, Justice Antonin Scalia
said the total of 9 cases suggested "that Kansans, unlike our Justice Breyer,
do not think the death penalty is unconstitutional and indeed very much favour
it".
But Scalia came under attack too from another liberal, Sonia Sotomayor, who
ridiculed his use of Latin to argue that jurors would know not to apply a
higher burden of proof to mitigating evidence.
"I very much doubt that jurors have heard of that maxim," said Sotomayor after
Scalia used the phrase "expressio unius est exclusio alterius "to describe how
in telling jurors that exacerbating factors should be proven beyond reasonable
doubt judges should make it clear by contrast that mitigating factors need not
be.
The Kansas attorney general, Derek Schmidt, warned that 6 of the 9 prisoners on
death row in the state could have their sentences overturned if the cases
before the court were upheld.
He admitted that judges had since been told to tighten up the instructions
given to jurors but argued that the Kansas supreme court had wrongly invoked
the eighth amendment protection against "cruel and unusual" punishment in the
case.
"It's ironic that we bent over backwards to point out the heavy burden borne by
the state and because we told them that regularly, they now turn this argument
[against us]," he said.
"It certainly doesn't follow that the jury would have thought that they have to
apply some burden of proof to mercy," added Schmidt. "It's an act of grace.
That's the entire point of mercy."
But Neal Katyal, representing the Carr brothers, insisted that allowing jurors
to potentially ignore mitigating evidence, such as the abusive childhood
experienced by one of the brothers, meant they were subject to arbitrary
justice.
"A man is being put to death under jury instructions that are so confusing that
there is a reasonable likelihood that some juries would interpret those
instructions to bar consideration of the mitigating circumstances and others
would not," he said. "That ambiguity and inequity is impermissible under the
eighth amendment."
Expectations are that the US supreme court will stick to previous rulings that
have refused to get involved in state disputes of this type and strike down the
Kansas decision on the grounds that it misinterprets the eighth amendment.
But the cases, which Justice Samuel Alito described as "some of the most
horrendous murders that I have seen in my 10 years here", throw a spotlight on
growing tensions over the dwindling use of the death penalty in the US.
Last year Scalia compared so-called liberal abolitionists on the court to Marie
Antoinette for failing to understand the fear of violent crime felt by many
Americans and the deterrent effect of the death penalty.
But Breyer and others have argued the increasing unwillingness of juries to
recommend the death penalty shows that its continued use is becoming ever more
arbitrary and unjust.
(source: The Guardian)
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