Dec. 31
FLORIDA:
Reasons why death penalty must end in Florida
On Dec. 14, the Death Penalty Information Center released its annual report
analyzing the trends and patterns with the death penalty in 2017.
Death sentences and executions were the 2nd lowest in a quarter century. Also,
public support for the death penalty fell to its lowest level in 45 years.
It is clear that the death penalty is falling out of favor. While Florida did
account for 1/4 of the nation's executions, the Supreme Court's ruling in Hurst
vs. Florida ended the state's outlier practice of non-unanimous jury decisions.
This reform mandates unanimous jury decisions in capital punishment cases and
has the potential to end Florida's disproportionate rates of death sentencing.
Florida's unjust jury practice has ended, and it seems the end of capital
punishment is not far behind.
Historic low levels of public support, including a 10 % drop for those who
identified as Republican, further highlights the looming end of the death
penalty. This year has left no doubt.
Clearly, those who we are executing are not "the worst of the worst" but are
some of society's most marginalized. Jesus invites us to care for them.
The Catholic Church has long been against the death penalty, and as Pope
Francis reminded us in October, our use of the death penalty "heavily wounds
human dignity."
My brother bishop in Florida, Frank J. Dewane of Venice, chairman of the U.S.
Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, stated on Good
Friday that the death penalty has no place in a country that has other means of
bringing justice.
Catholic Mobilizing Network, the national organization working to lift up this
need for mercy and justice, invites all people of faith and goodwill to
educate, advocate and pray to end the death penalty by signing The National
Catholic Pledge to End the Death Penalty.
I encourage readers to join us in this work of life and end the death penalty.
Most Reverend Felipe J. Estevez,
Bishop, Diocese of St. Augustine
(source: Letter to the Editor, The Florida Times-Union)
ALABAMA:
How Alabama chooses who to execute on death row next
This story is a part of Ask Alabama, where you ask the questions, you vote to
decide which questions we answer, and then we investigate.
This week we're answering a question submitted by a reader from Hamilton who
asked:
How does the state of Alabama decide the next death row prisoner to execute?
John Palombi knows a thing or two about death row. 4 of 5 of his clients make
up the entirety of executions in Alabama since Christopher Eugene Brooks was
put to death in January 2016 for the rape and murder of Jo Deann Campbell in
1992. Before that, it had been 2 1/2 years since a death row inmate had been
executed.
"It can be a difficult job sometimes. It has its fair share of ups and downs,"
said the assistant federal defender with the Office of the Federal Defender for
the Middle District of Alabama.
But the process to get to the stage where an inmate is strapped to a gurney in
the execution chamber inside Holman Prison in Atmore can often take decades.
The process is arduous and complex, as Palombi explains.
"Once someone gets sentenced to death there's an automatic appeal in the state
court system," he said. "Then after that it goes to the Alabama Supreme Court
for the next part of the appeal, and then a person can ask the U.S. Supreme
Court to take a look at their case. That's very, very rare. That's at the end
of what we call direct appeal."
After that comes the next stage, known as the state post-conviction appeal,
also known as collateral attacks on the conviction, according to the Alabama's
Death Penalty Appeal Process manual, a state-issued document that explains how
appeals work. That's where the defense team look to find new evidence,
instances of juror misconduct, or the most common thing is what's known as
ineffective assistance of counsel, which is a claim that your initial attorney
didn't do a good job defending you at trial.
Then it moves on to the federal portion of the process. This is where Palombi
comes in.
"Once it hits federal court any issues that were raised way back during the
direct appeal and any issues that were properly raised in the state portion of
the collateral attack can now be raised again in federal court as long as they
are federal constitutional issues." This is where the petitioner argues that
the conviction should be overturned as it was obtained in violation of the
inmates federal Constitutional rights. According to the Constitutional Rights
Foundation, those could be the prospect of "cruel and unusual punishment" not
having access to the due process of law, the promise of equal protection of the
laws, and a fair trial.
It's at this stage that the inmate becomes eligible for an execution date.
Some of his clients went from trial to execution in as "little" as 15 years.
And some take up to 25 years. In one anecdote, Palombi said that one of his
clients was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, but because sentencing
errors were found at the appeal stage the entire process was delayed further.
"We sent it back and he got another hearing, but then we found another mistake
in the sentencing paperwork," he said. "So we sent it back for a 3rd time.
These issues can add years to the timeframe."
The average wait time for execution is about 14 years, according to statistics
from the Alabama Department of Corrections.
To bring down the time frame and prevent the process from slowing down, which
has primarily come from legal challenges, Alabama introduced the Fair Justice
Act in May 2017. The new law reduces the appeals time in capital cases by
requiring convicted persons to file post-conviction claims at the same time as
appeals, according to the ACLU. This means that two processes at the state
stage are combined.
So in all there are a maximum of 10 stages that a death row inmate will go
through before execution. After that, the individual becomes eligible for an
execution date.
"It's at this stage, after all appeals are exhausted where the Attorney General
of Alabama asks for an execution date from the Supreme Court of Alabama,"
according to Palombi. "So it's less about the state choosing the next inmate
and more about the completion of the process."
(source: al.com)
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