Jan. 21
DELAWARE:
Capital punishment is 'state-sponsored murder'
Do you think Delaware should reinstate the death penalty?
No. Delaware should not reinstate the death penalty.
In a landmark decision in 2016, Delaware's Supreme Court declared the death
penalty unconstitutional. Attorneys from the Office of Defense Services had
successfully argued that giving judges final authority to impose death
sentences violated the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of trial by jury. Delaware
should not now re-instate a law authorizing the government to kill its own
citizens.
Following our Supreme Court's holding the death penalty unconstitutional, some
members of the General Assembly have undertaken an effort to revive it by
proposing a version they hope will comply with our constitution. The current
effort to reinstate the death penalty is not Delaware's 1st. In 1961, 1974 and
1977 Delaware's General Assembly passed various versions of death penalty
statutes. As it turned out, every version was later found to violate the
constitution. Simply put, every time Delaware's legislators have enacted a
death penalty statute, they have gotten it wrong.
The current national trend in criminal justice is to move away from the death
penalty. Delaware should not once again put itself on the wrong side of
history. There are no do-overs when it comes to the death penalty. The risks
and costs are too great and the benefits, too few.
Let's be clear: the problem with the death penalty is not only whether it is
constitutionally-compliant. There is another and equally troubling problem.
That is the fact that death penalty's application occurs in a broken and
inherently flawed system that is biased against the poor and people of color.
The death penalty is state-sponsored murder. It is heinous and intolerable and
there are no justifiable reasons to bring it back. Killing is wrong. That's why
it is illegal. Yet when Delaware executes one of its citizens, the state
contradicts its own morals and values. The state is doing exactly what its laws
forbid any of its citizens from doing.
Our state should be better than the worst of the worst. Delaware should not be
in the state-sponsored murder business.
If it's reinstated, how should the reduced availability of the chemical
compound used for execution be addressed?
Various states across the country - South Carolina being the most recent
example - have been unable to carry out executions. The reason? No one will
sell states the drugs needed to create the lethal cocktail used for killing
human beings.
It has been reported that Delaware's stock of the drugs needed for the lethal
cocktail is depleted. If the General Assembly reinstates the death penalty, the
state does not have the drugs needed for administering a lethal injection.
So if Delaware does not have, and cannot get, the drugs necessary for
administering a lethal injection, what can the state do?
Delaware's only other authorized method of execution is hanging. However, the
authority for hanging is limited to circumstances in which lethal injection has
been deemed unconstitutional. If a court rules that Delaware's lethal injection
is unconstitutional does Delaware want to resort to hanging? Does Delaware want
to be known as the only state in the union that hangs people?
How likely is it that an innocent person may be executed by mistake?
Delaware's application of the death penalty has been error prone, resulting in
years of costly litigation often leading to reversals of death sentences.
In 2012, a team of academics at Cornell University published a study of
Delaware's death penalty. The study found that of the 55 death sentences
imposed between 1977 and 2012, the courts had to reverse 22 of the cases for
various legal errors.
Delaware's history of wrongfully convicting people and/or erroneously imposing
death sentences continues to this day. For example, Isiah McCoy was convicted
of murder and sentenced to death. In 2017, a Superior Court Judge invalidated
his conviction and sentence and released him from prison.
The mere fact that we're asking the questions "How likely is it that an
innocent person may be executed by mistake?" should raise multiple red flags.
The death penalty business is also a very costly undertaking. Investigative,
prosecution, defense and court costs in death penalty cases are extremely high.
The total for one case can exceed a million dollars.
The idea that this is even a possibility is totally and completely
unacceptable. There are no do-overs with the death penalty.
Would a reinstated death penalty help protect the state's law enforcement
personnel?
No, it would not. A report by the National Research Council concluded that
studies claiming that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on murder rates
are fundamentally flawed and should not be used in making policy decisions.
Research done by the Death Penalty Information Center indicates that states
which have the death penalty have higher rates of violent crime than states
that do not.
According to a survey of the current and former presidents of the country's top
academic criminological societies, 88 % of these experts rejected the notion
that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder.
In my experience as a defense attorney, people who commit 1st-degree murder are
not thinking about the consequences. They do not stop and consider the pros and
cons of their actions. In every case, the perpetrator has been compromised by
mental illness, or substance abuse or himself has been victimized by others.
If the inmates charged with killing Lt. Steven Floyd in the Feb. 1 Vaughn
prison uprising were found guilty and the death penalty was reinstated, do you
approve of prosecutors pursuing execution retroactively?
Absolutely not. In 2016 the Department of Justice decided not to appeal the
Supreme Court's decision in Rauf v. State. A decision now to seek a death
sentence for crimes alleged to have been committed early back in 2017 when
there was no valid death penalty on the books is political opportunism
unsupported by law. It is an ill-conceived, legally unfounded proposal that
will cause unnecessary legal, practical, logistical and financial problems.
It's a waste of money and time for everybody involved.
Attorneys from the Office of Defense Services are representing the inmates
charged with crimes stemming from the events at James T. Vaughn Correctional
Center on Feb. 1-2, 2017. The Office of Defense Services is totally and
completely opposed to prosecutors seeking death sentences for these inmates.
(source: Brendan ONeill is the chief defender with Delawares Office of Defense
Services----delawarestatenews.net)
FLORIDA:
Records: Branch should have been in prison at time of Bay, Escambia
crimes----Eric Scott Branch was mistakenly released for his previous sexual
battery conviction from the Vanderburgh Community Corrections Complex on Nov.
1, 1992 - 5 months early.
It took only 10 days for Eric Scott Branch to progress from raping a Bay County
woman to raping and killing an Escambia college student. But it would take more
than 20 years for his fate to be sealed.
Branch, 46, received his death warrant Friday from the state of Florida. He has
been condemned to death for more than 2 decades for the rape and strangulation
of 21-year-old University of West Florida student Susan Morris, which was the
culmination of a series of sexual batteries. And despite attempts to use recent
changes to Florida's death penalty procedure to his advantage, Branch now is
scheduled for execution at 6 p.m. Feb. 22 - about 2 weeks after his 47th
birthday.
Almost 25 years ago, a series of Branch's sexual batteries reached a deadly
crescendo. He had only recently been released from an Indiana prison for the
1991 sexual battery and beating of a 14-year-old girl when he moved to Bay
County.
On New Year's Eve 1993, Branch offered to take a local woman home from a Panama
City Beach nightclub after a night of celebration, according to court records.
Instead of driving her home, though, Branch took her to a condo where he held
her against her will, attacked her and then began to sexually assault her.
The woman later tearfully testified at length before a grinning Branch that he
forced her to engage in sexual intercourse before sodomizing her with a
flashlight.
"When I started screaming, he stuck his fingers down my throat and ... he
ripped and gouged a large canal area in my mouth," she testified. "I thought I
was going to die. I thought I was never going to see my family again."
The woman said Branch only stopped after she told him she had been sexually
abused before.
"He went from having this crazed look to back to, if you can call it, normal,"
she told the jury. "He said, 'Let me help you get dressed.' He said, 'I'm sorry
that it happened to you before.'"
Branch then drove the woman home and returned to the condo. When deputies came
knocking on his door in the hours that followed, Branch fled out a window.
Court records show he was in search of a car to steal in order to flee the
state 10 days later when Morris was leaving an evening class at the University
of West Florida.
Branch attacked Morris in a parking lot Jan. 11, 1993, and dragged her into a
nearby wooded area, where he severely beat her face and head, strangled her,
sexually battered her and left her body in a shallow grave. Branch then stole
her car but was arrested in Indiana days later.
Court records show Branch should have been in jail when both crimes were
committed, but he was mistakenly released for his previous sexual battery
conviction from the Vanderburgh Community Corrections Complex on Nov. 1, 1992 -
5 months early.
Branch has been on death row since 1994, when an Escambia County jury
recommended death in a vote of 10-2, according to state Supreme Court records.
In March, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill into law that mandates a jury
unanimously recommend the death penalty in capital punishment cases. The
revised legislation came after a local case, Hurst v. State, in which defendant
Timothy Hurst claimed the 10-2 jury split in his case was unconstitutional.
Since that ruling, several death row inmates from across the state have pushed
for new penalty phases.
Branch's last attempt to avoid the death penalty sputtered out Oct. 17 after he
did not respond to the Florida Supreme Court's request for him to show why it
should not affirm a trial court decision to proceed with the death penalty. His
arguments were heard in Escambia County Court, where prosecutor John Molchan,
of the 1st Judicial Circuit, argued at the time that Branch does not fall under
the new law because his case was decided so long ago.
"(Branch's counsel) had filed an amended motion thinking he should get relief
under the Hurst ruling," Molchan said. "We took the position that based upon
prior decisions that the court has made, he's not eligible for that ... The
Hurst case is not retroactive for him."
Branch then appealed to the Florida Supreme Court after the trial court sided
with Molchan. However, he did not respond to the court's request for him to
explain why that decision should not be affirmed.
Branch's death warrant was issued amid the pending disposition.
"The record has been reviewed and there are no stays of execution issued by any
court of competent jurisdiction in this case," Attorney General Pam Bondi
wrote. "Based upon the above-referenced summary of litigation affirming the
judgements and sentences of death imposed for 1st-degree murder, the record is
legally sufficient to support the issuance of a death warrant."
(source: Panama City News-Herald)
OHIO:
Man guilty of slaying 2 at downtown Cleveland apartment, now faces death
penalty
A man now faces the death penalty after jurors on Saturday found him guilty of
slaying 2 men in a downtown Cleveland apartment building in 2016
James Johnson, 31, was convicted of aggravated murder, aggravated burglary and
other counts in the Jan. 21, 2016 slayings of Rashaad Bandy, 35, and Brandon
James, 27, in their 8th-floor apartment in the Archer building on West 9th
Street.
He carried out the killings as part of a course of conduct and while committing
aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and felonious assault, specifications
that make him eligible for the death penalty, jurors found.
The sequestered jury deliberated until after 8 p.m. Friday, and returned about
8 a.m. Saturday and deliberated for less than an hour before reaching their
verdict.
The penalty phase of the trial will begin Thursday, where jurors will decide
whether to recommend that Judge Kathleen Sutula, who oversaw the trial, should
impose the death penalty.
Johnson smile as he was led into the courtroom by deputies before the verdict.
He showed no emotion during the hearing, and saluted to a group of people
gathered seated to support him as he was led back to a holding cell after his
conviction.
Johnson and a man who has yet to be identified were let into the apartment
building about 7:30 p.m. by a friend of Bandy and James. The building manager
at the security desk wrote down that one of the men gave his last name as
"Johnson" and that he was there to see his uncle, prosecutors said.
Johnson and Bandy grew up together and were so close that Johnson referred to
Bandy as his "uncle," lawyers said.
Johnson and the unknown assailant then went to the eighth floor, burst into the
apartment, and Johnson fired a shot into the wall, prosecutors said. James took
off running, and Johnson fired a fatal shot into his back, prosecutors said.
Johnson then executed Bandy with a single shot to the back of his head,
prosecutors said.
The men then left with 2 duffel bags and everyone in the room's cellphones, but
left 6 pounds of marijuana and a loaded handgun.
Johnson then skipped Bandy's funeral and went to Michigan, where he was
arrested after leading police there on a chase and giving them a fake name.
Witnesses, including the building's manager, a man inside the apartment at the
time of the killings, identified Johnson in part because he has a lazy eye.
Another key piece of evidence was Johnson's uncle, a Cleveland fire department
arson investigator, who happened to see Johnson the morning after the killings
dump a pair of Timberland boots into a dumpster at a gas station on Cleveland's
East Side.
Johnson's DNA was also found on the door handle of an apartment down the
hallway, which prosecutors said he inadvertently opened as he tried to run from
the scene of the killing.
(source: cleveland.com)
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