Jan. 16
FLORIDA:
Ending death penalty is right in every way
There are a myriad of compelling reasons for abolishing the death penalty in
the United States. What are we waiting for?
I'm no bleeding heart. I worked in Dade County Homicide for 16 of my 30 years
on the job, and saw it all: dead babies, mutilated bodies, multiple murders,
torture deaths, random killings, and hundreds of autopsies. I arrested or
assisted in arresting hundreds of murderers and rapists.
Those who were truly guilty of the crimes deserved the harshest of punishments
and more so, to be permanently harnessed away from society.
Now, the state of Florida, after a new Supreme Court ruling, must revamp its
sentencing process in capital cases, which will entail millions of dollars in
case investigations in order to resentence over 200 cases retroactive to 2002.
It's complicated. It's heart wrenching. It's costly.
But there's another solution, less complicated, less costly. Just do what most
of the free world has already done.
Many folks (and politicians) believe being tough on crime is synonymous with
killing killers. But, is death really a punishment? Politicians must get
elected, so they politick according to how they want to be perceived. But there
are facts people might not know.
Politicians, take note:
1) Every study ever conducted on capital punishment has shown it is not a
deterrent to crime.
2) Of 196 countries in the world, the United States ranked 5th for confirmed
executions in 2015, behind China, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Good
company. Virtually all of Europe and most of the Americas no longer execute
criminals.
3) Studies have shown that the death penalty is 2-3 times more costly than if
capital punishment did not exist. Much of the cost stems from endless appeals.
4) Economic inequities often dictate the level of legal defense and thus,
fairness of criminal trials. Indigent defendants are destined to minimal
representation while wealthy or celebrity defendants have unlimited funds for
teams of lawyers and investigators.
5) The chances of innocent persons wrongly executed are too great. To date, 156
death row inmates have been exonerated and released from prison since 1973,
some had spent over 30 years on death row. Legal technicalities may have been a
factor in some dismissals, but the overwhelming majority were convicted by
tainted or false evidence. The only way to ensure no innocent person is ever
executed is to abolish capital punishment.
6) Then there is the torture factor. America considers waterboarding as
torture. Records indicate that a total of 3 terrorist suspects were
waterboarded during the Bush II years. Compare a death row cell, where 2,905
inmates dwell, 55 of whom are women. I submit that living on death row is
punishment beyond humane.
I interviewed a Florida death row inmate, Jim, 12 years ago. The conditions:
The concrete cell is 7 feet by 9 feet, dimly lit, with toilet, bed and sink.
Steel mesh is welded to the bars so an inmate cannot reach through. There is no
air conditioning and very little ventilation. Temperatures in summer reach 120
degrees and above.
Jim said he often soaks his sheet in the toilet and drapes himself to tolerate
the heat. Inmates remain in the cell 24-7, except for 2 showers a week and 2
1-hour walks in a small yard, alone. No socialization allowed except for
visitors.
If a convict is not crazy, he may likely go crazy on death row. Jim was
convicted in 1987. He's still there.
Did Jim really kill that 11 year-old girl? I think so. But to be honest, the
evidence was pathetic, flimsy and in part, false. His court-appointed lawyer
never even took depositions from key witnesses.
So what's the message? The system is too fragile and imperfect to risk anyone -
not a single person - being put to death by the state or made to suffer 24-7 in
a sweltering death row chamber for 20 or 30 years.
19 states have abolished it. What is Florida waiting for?
(source: Column; Marshall Frank is a retired Miami-Dade police
detective----Florida Today)
OHIO:
Defense: Man shouldn't face death penalty in 2014 slayings
Defense attorneys for a man accused in the 2014 shooting deaths of a pregnant
woman and 3 others in Cleveland say he's intellectually disabled and shouldn't
face the death penalty.
Cleveland.com reports (http://bit.ly/2iZO67Z ) court records filed by attorneys
for 20-year-old James Sparks-Henderson II cite school records that show his IQ
was measured at 73 in 2010.
Court records say Sparks-Henderson's lawyers found a mental health expert to
examine him last year. The report was filed under seal in November.
A judge has scheduled a March 10 hearing to decide if the case should remain a
death penalty case.
Police have said a masked gunman killed 3 people in a home and then fired into
a car, killing a woman and her unborn child.
(source: Associated Press)
WASHINGTON:
Washington state has 8 people on death row - and no plans to ever execute them
---- Family argues against reprieve for death penalty cases.
20 years ago, Dwayne Anthony Woods was convicted of murdering 2 women,
sentenced to die and sent to Washington's death row at the state penitentiary
in Walla Walla.
Claiming he was innocent, he launched a series of appeals that kept him alive
and denied the victims' families the justice they wanted. The appeals came to
an end this month when Woods, 46, died of a heart attack.
It was the only death on death row since Gov. Jay Inslee issued a moratorium on
executions in 2014. At the time of his edict, there were 9 inmates on death
row.
If Inslee has his way, the 8 who remain will also die of disease or old age.
In the broadening fight against capital punishment, his strategy for clearing
death row now plays a key role, with similar moratoriums in place in Oregon,
Colorado and Pennsylvania.
Opposition to the death penalty has grown in recent years amid concerns over
whether some innocent people have been put to death, discrimination against
African Americans in sentencing, the costs of appeals, and the methods states
use to carry out killings.
"The fact is that the death penalty is not anywhere close to being used in an
equitable measure," Inslee said at the time he announced the moratorium. "1
person gets life, the other person gets death - it depends on which side of the
county line you are."
Nationwide, the number of executions has fallen dramatically, from a peak of 98
in 1999 to 20 last year, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information
Center. There are about 2,900 people on death rows across the country, down
from a peak of nearly 3,600 in the year 2000.
Over the last decade, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, New Mexico, Connecticut,
Maryland and Delaware have abolished capital punishment, placing them among the
18 states, along with the District of Columbia, where the most severe
punishment is life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The moratoriums are a way for governors to halt executions without putting the
issue directly to voters in a referendum or to state legislatures.
Although public support for the death penalty is at a 40-year low, 56% of U.S.
residents are still in favor of it, according to a poll last year by the Pew
Research Center. Despite California's liberal credentials, voters there
narrowly rejected one ballot proposition in November to abolish capital
punishment and approved another to speed up executions.
Washington, where appeals can take 20 years, has executed just 5 people in the
last 54 years, most recently in 2010. Nonetheless, Inslee has failed to
persuade the Legislature - where Republicans narrowly control the Senate and
Democrats narrowly control the House - to abolish capital punishment.
The political risks of his stance became apparent as Inslee faced reelection
last year. His Republican challenger, Bill Bryant, made the death penalty an
issue, saying that a governor shouldn't choose which laws to enforce and vowing
that if he were elected, "so as long as it is the law in Washington state, I
will enforce it."
Inslee won with almost 55% of the vote.
The victory will allow him to delay executions through 2020, when his term
expires. It has also made him optimistic that the next governor would keep his
moratorium in place. That the state has not elected a Republican governor in
more than 30 years only bolsters that hope.
"Any Dem who follows Jay will be hard put to coming in and reversing the
moratorium," Nick Brown, Inslee's general counsel, said.
"My sense is we have ended the death penalty and will not see another execution
in Washington state," he said.
A similar dynamic is in play in Oregon, which has had only Democratic governors
over the last 3 decades.
Gov. John Kitzhaber, a doctor who saw the death penalty as a "perversion of
justice" that went against his medical oath, imposed a moratorium in 2011, and
his successor elected last year, Gov. Kate Brown, continued it. Currently, 34
inmates are on death row there.
In Colorado, where there are only 3 inmates on death row, Democratic Gov. John
Hickenlooper, citing costs and concerns about fairness, imposed a moratorium in
2013 and extended it upon reelection the following year.
In Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Wolf suspended the penalty in 2015 for the same
reasons, 186 inmates are on death row, but there have been only 3 executions in
the last 40 years, the most recent in 1999.
As effective as moratoriums can be, death penalty opponents view them as a
stepping stone to laws that offer a more permanent end to executions. That
happened in Illinois, which eliminated the death penalty in 2011 after a long
moratorium.
The moratoriums do not prevent prosecutors from seeking the death penalty,
though given the difficulties of carrying out executions, some have backed away
from it.
Inslee's effort to clear death row is a race against mortality. 6 of the 8
inmates on Washington's death row were born in the 1950s.
The youngest inmate there is 35-year-old Conner Michael Cross, who was
convicted in 2010 of killing a woman, her sister and 2 young sons.
The oldest is 65-year-old Clark Richard Elmore, who was convicted in 1995 of
raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl after she threatened to report him for
having molested her.
His appeals reached the U.S. Supreme Court in October. It chose not to hear the
case despite concerns from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
who pointed out that his defense lawyer never investigated his questionable
mental state or told the jury about his life growing up around pesticides or
handling Agent Orange in Vietnam.
With his appeals run out, Elmore was sentenced to die this month.
Under the moratorium, the governor must act to stop each execution. Inslee has
said he will not commute sentences or pardon death row inmates, and instead
will issue reprieves that keep inmates on death row but delay their executions
as long as he remains in office.
That is what he did in the case of Elmore.
Dave McEachran, the Whatcom County prosecutor who handled Elmore's case and met
with Inslee in hopes of changing his mind, said he was "disappointed that after
21 years of appeals in which the sentence of death has been upheld by the
highest courts in the state and the United States, the governor has derailed
the sentence."
Inslee issued a statement assuring that Elmore will "remain in the State
Penitentiary in Walla Walla for the rest of his life."
That will be true even if the next governor lifts the moratorium.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
*******************
The death penalty: Some crimes deserve death
Re: "Governor's quiet reprieve of death-row murderer draws ire from many
directions." (TNT, 12/31)
Our governor, Jay Inslee, has rejected the effectiveness of the death penalty.
Is that the result of decades of research, or, is it the result of cowardice on
the part of our state's justice system? Maybe it is the slowness of the justice
system that creates such a costly and undesirable procedure.
If a person is found guilty of a heinous crime, why do we take so much time to
carry out the required penalty? Decide what it means to commit a capital crime,
then perform the punishment in a reasonable time period. Stop delaying the
death penalty for years and decades.
There are 2 problems: One, the crime requires legitimate witnesses. If there
are no witnesses, there is no capital crime. Two, there must be supporting
circumstantial evidence. When witnesses and evidence agree, then there is
reason for the death penalty.
All crimes deserve full investigation. Some deserve leniency. Some deserve the
full weight of the law. Please do not reject the need for the death penalty.
Douglas Leander, Tacoma
(source: Letter to the Editor, The News Tribune)
USA:
A Racial-Justice Argument Against Killing Dylann Roof----When we grant states
the right to kill its citizens, we are accepting all forms of state-sanctioned
violence.
On Wednesday, January 11, white supremacist Dylann Roof was sentenced to death
for the mass murder he perpetrated on June 17, 2015, taking the lives of nine
innocent black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
in Charleston, South Carolina.
Many are lauding what may feel like true justice. The atrocity Roof committed
is beyond appalling. His total lack of remorse only compounds the horror. And,
in a nation where all too often white killers of black people walk free, it's
understandable that some might feel a measure of satisfaction at Roof's
receiving the ultimate punishment.
And yet, I am firmly against the death penalty for Dylann Roof. It's not a
matter of Roof's innocence or guilt - clearly, he is guilty. It's not a
question of the gravity of his crimes, or whether Roof epitomizes the "worst of
the worst." My opposition is rooted in the deep belief that as a society, we
will not be better off for executing Roof. In fact, by killing Roof, we will
have further endangered the very black and brown communities that Roof so
brutally attacked.
10 weeks before Roof committed mass murder, Walter Scott, an unarmed black man,
was killed by police officer Michael Slager. The killing of Scott (just miles
away from where Roof wreaked mayhem) illustrates the core reason I oppose the
death penalty: When we grant states the right to kill its citizens, we are
accepting all forms of state-sanctioned violence. Police killings, mass
incarceration, surveillance, immigration raids, stop and frisk, and other
methods of repressive social and racial control are part of the same
destructive system in which capital punishment is the sharpest edge.
I am aware that the families of Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance,
DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons
Sr., Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson (Roof's victims) do not hold
one opinion about Roof's sentence. Some feel justice has been served, others
have spoken out against the decision, and many are deeply conflicted. But
having been closely connected to multiple death-penalty cases (including that
of Troy Davis and Reggie Clemons), I have seen all too closely the additional
harm that the death penalty inflicts on all of the families involved.
In Roof's case, the victims' families can expect to be continually
re-traumatized as the appeals drag on. Rather than the case being closed and
healing allowed to begin, the justice they were promised will take years -
perhaps decades - to be delivered. And in the end, if the state is successful
in putting Dylann Roof to death, I dare imagine that the families - even those
who wanted this outcome - will feel the loss of their loved ones just as
acutely. Perhaps most tragically, we will be continuing on a national
trajectory that ensures more families will feel their pain, because executing
Roof will not deter future racist murderers - it will embolden them.
Though Roof is white, the system that would kill him disproportionately targets
black and brown bodies. Violence by the state, which all too often is used as a
form of racial and social control, paves the way for civilians to perpetrate
the same violence. If our society did not permit, for example, the police
killing of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a black 7-year-old who was killed while in her
bed in Detroit, vigilante George Zimmerman may not have accosted and killed
17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. Had Joseph Weekley (the officer who
killed Jones) and Zimmerman been held accountable for their actions, perhaps
Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Deborah Danner would be alive today. Perhaps
Jordan Davis, shot and killed at a gas station by Michael Dunn, would be as
well.
Capital punishment is the most premeditated form of state homicide and the most
chilling. The precise time, place, and exact method of taking a human's life is
determined in advance, and announced for public consumption. Each moment
leading up to the execution is scripted in meticulous detail. Multiple agents
of the state are involved in the killing - many of whom report symptoms of
post-traumatic stress in its aftermath.
This pinnacle of state violence has deep-reaching tentacles. It is no
coincidence that states with the death penalty have higher rates of homicide
than states without capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center. And when examining who the death penalty impacts the most
severely, the same patterns emerge as when examining other forms of state
violence: Black and poor people are disproportionately targeted. The violence
of our state is expressed towards certain communities and citizens - and is
embodied by others.
The state-sanctioned killing of Dylann Roof will enable us as a society to
breed more Michael Slagers, more Joseph Weekleys, more George Zimmermans, and
more Dylann Roofs.
(source: Jen Marlowe, The Nation)
*******************
Judge grants prosecutors their own evaluation of alleged Pa. CO
killer----Recent claims Jessie Con-ui could have a mental condition will be
vetted by federal prosecutors' own experts following a judge's ruling
Recent claims Jessie Con-ui could have a mental condition will be vetted by
federal prosecutors' own experts following a judge's ruling Friday in the
convicted killer's upcoming capital murder case. Federal prosecutors last year
announced their intention to seek the death penalty against Con-ui, 39, if he's
convicted later this year for the 2013 murder of Corrections Officer Eric
Williams, of Nanticoke, inside U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan.
Con-ui, a New Mexican Mafia gang member who was serving life behind bars for
murdering a rival gang member in Arizona, killed again when he ambushed
Williams and kicked him down a flight of stairs before he beat and stabbed him
to death, federal prosecutors allege.
Con-ui's attorneys haven't disputed that Con-ui killed Williams, but are vying
to spare him from being put to death.
In laying the groundwork for a defense against the penalty, Con-ui provided
notice he'd introduce evidence relating to a potential "mental disease or
defect" in November and has since been evaluated by multiple experts, but
prosecutors now say they want their own doctors to weigh in.
"In order to independently determine the merits of (Con-ui's) claim, and to
prepare for possible rebuttal testimony, the United States needs to have its
experts evaluate (Con-ui)," prosecutors said in the federal court motion,
granted Friday afternoon by U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo.
Con-ui's trial is slated for April 27 at the federal courthouse in
Wilkes-Barre.
Con-ui remains jailed at ADX Florence, a supermaximum federal prison in
Colorado.
(source: correctionsone.com)
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