June 1
OKLAHOMA:
Court upholds death sentence for man in Oklahoma City bus station stabbing
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the murder conviction and
death sentence of a man who stabbed his estranged girlfriend to death at an
Oklahoma City bus station.
The court on Thursday rejected numerous appeals by 28-year-old Isaiah Tryon,
who was convicted of killing 19-year-old Tia Bloomer in March 2012. Bloomer was
stabbed numerous times in front of several witnesses inside the Metro Transit
station in downtown Oklahoma City in an attack that was caught on security
video.
Tryon's appeals included improper jury selection, failure to dismiss a juror
for misconduct, improper evidence and that the death penalty is
unconstitutional.
Prosecutors say Bloomer had recently ended her relationship with Tryon and
threatened to accuse him of assaulting her.
(source: Associated Press)
NEBRASKA:
Death penalty controversy continues on eve of decision
The fight over what drugs are being used in Nebraska to carry out capital
punishment is being debated before a 2 time convicted killer finds out if he'll
be put to death or not.
Patrick Schroeder will be back in Johnson County District Court on Friday with
a decision in his death penalty case. Schroeder is convicted of killing a
farmer in 2006, and his cellmate in 2017 at the Tecumseh Prison. He represented
himself and didn't say anything in his defense at the hearing in April.
This month, a judge heard the arguments in the case over the release of what
death penalty drugs the state has purchased. The ACLU is suing Governor
Ricketts, the Nebraska Attorney General, and NE Department of Corrections
because, they say, the state developed flawed execution protocol without
reviewing it publicly.
Matt Maly with Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty says citizens
voted to bring back the death penalty but didn't vote for experimentation and
secrecy in the process.
"The death penalty is a huge mess right now in Nebraska. The fact of the matter
is we still don't know where these drugs have come from, we don't know if
they're going to work, it is a cocktail that's never been used before," Maly
explained.
Lethal injection was adopted in Nebraska years ago, but no executions have been
carried out by that method in the state.
A Lancaster County District Court judge has taken the legal challenge under
advisement.
(source: KMTV news)
SOUTH DAKOTA:
Death penalty appeal seeks to protect suspects from homophobic jurors----But
"[n]o politician has ever proposed constructing a wall to keep homosexuals out
of the country," opponents argue.
A South Dakota man sentenced to death in 1993 by a jury that fretted a life
sentence would only gratify his homosexuality hopes the Supreme Court will
spare him.
The jury's ugly prejudices were clear to the original sentencing court at the
time. As they deliberated sentencing, jurors sent a list of questions to the
judge that centered on concerns that he might somehow enjoy prison.
The questions included "whether he would be allowed to 'mix with the general
inmate population,' 'create a group of followers or admirers,' 'brag about his
crime to other inmates, especially new and[/]or young men...,' 'marry or have
conjugal visits,' or 'have a cellmate,'" his attorneys write in their petition
for Supreme Court consideration.
They argue that the court's logic in a 2017 ruling that states must consider
evidence of racially biased jury deliberations should extend, here, to evidence
of homophobic bias among jurors in a capital case. That claim prompted South
Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley (R) to invoke President Donald Trump's
(R) signature campaign pledge in his reply brief, in a bit of
rhetorical-ideological ping-pong.
"No politician has ever proposed constructing a wall to keep homosexuals out of
the country," the state's brief says. "No civil war has been fought over
[sexual orientation]. No nationwide pogrom has been perpetrated for the
enslavement or eradication of homosexuals."
Many of the death penalty appeals that gain national traction from both
reporters and abolition activists hinge on the idea of a wrongful conviction. A
recent New York Times investigative column delved into such a case in
California, where a black man appears to have been used as a patsy by police
who not only neglected but intentionally destroyed evidence pointing to other,
likelier suspects. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, while governor of Texas, sent
Cameron Todd Willingham to the electric chair despite overwhelming scientific
evidence that arson investigators had botched the case against him.
But process appeals from an admittedly guilty man, as in this newest case, are
a steeper climb than exoneration cases. Jackley's brief for the state leans
heavily into not just the lack of an innocence argument but detailed physical
and psychological claims about the murder.
A question of bias, not innocence
Charles Rhines was 35 when he bound and stabbed dead a man who walked into the
previously-empty donut shop he was robbing. Rhines had been laid off at the
Rapid City donut shop a few weeks before. Police said he stabbed the courier,
who he knew, twice with a hunting knife before tying him up and putting the
knife through the back of his neck.
Rhines' appeal makes no contention of innocence, wrongful prosecution, or
inadequate assistance from defense counsel (though one of his earlier appeals
made that latter claim, unsuccessfully).
Instead, the question justices would face if they accept his petition is
whether or not jurors' avowed "disgust" with homosexuality, and multiple
jurors??? reported admissions that it played a key role in their sentencing
decision, should force the courts to reconsider whether the punishment had been
properly ordained.
The court ruled last year that racial bias among jurors in reaching a guilty
plea should moot their verdict. Rhines' last-gasp appeal asks the justices to
extend that logic both from race to sexuality, and from conviction to
sentencing.
Even if the sentencing judge didn't pick up on the prejudiced misconceptions -
about both sexual orientation and prison life - that was plain in those
questions, Rhines' team says jury members have since come forward to make the
realities in the room clear. The petition cites interviews with 3 jurors who
said that some on the panel had specifically based their decisions to send him
to death row on their orientiational bias.
One said several jurors "thought that he shouldn't be able to spend his life
with men in prison" when they were deciding whether he should be put to death
or locked up until he died, according to Rhines' legal team. Another remembered
a peer commenting "that if he's gay we'd be sending him where he wants to go."
(South Dakota's responding brief to the court disputes these statements and
accuses a group of Pennsylvania-based anti-death-penalty lawyers of harassing
aging jurors into giving false statements, accusations which Rhines' team in
turn disputes.)
South Dakota's argument takes pains to remind Supreme Court justices that
Rhines makes no contention he is innocent. The state's brief is heavy on the
emotional language you'd expect to hear from a prosecutor at trial, or maybe a
paperback novelist. The storeroom where Rhines killed Donnivan is termed
"dingy," the murdered man was "screaming and writhing in pain," and his killer
was "[u]naffected by the screams and blood and death" when he left the
building.
These film-noir flourishes shouldn't factor into the high court's decision,
though, Rhines' supporters argue. This is purely a question of whether the laws
governing racial bias in the justice system should be portable to questions of
sexual orientation bias.
"[T]here is no principled distinction between racial bias and the anti-gay bias
that infected Mr. Rhines's sentencing decision," the Death Penalty Information
Center wrote in a release. At a more technical level, the argument is that
jurors lied when they pledged they could give a gay man a fair hearing. But the
meat of the question the Supreme Court would answer, if it accepts Rhines'
petition, is whether the legal system should acknowledge similar societal
prejudices against LGBTQ community members as those it has acknowledged against
people of color.
Justices from the high court are expected to decide on his petition on June 14.
(source: thinkprogress.org)
MONTANA:
Republican Senate Candidate "Supports the Death Penalty for Illegal Aliens Who
Commit Murders"
Montana hasn't executed anyone in more a decade, and it's unlikely to carry out
a death sentence anytime soon. But you wouldn't know that from watching the
state's US Senate race. In the hotly contested primary to take on incumbent
Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, one Republican candidate - former Judge Russ Fagg -
has decided to make capital punishment a cornerstone of his campaign.
"The death penalty in this case is being used as a vehicle to talk about one of
the biggest issues to Republican primary voters."
Using television ads, media appearances, and campaign events, Fagg has hammered
state Auditor Matt Rosendale, the presumed GOP frontrunner, over Rosendale's
opposition to capital punishment. In 2013, Rosendale, who is Catholic,
co-authored an op-ed calling to end Montana's death penalty. "Those who support
the death penalty usually use the same, tired arguments: It saves money. It
deters crime. Everyone who gets the death penalty is guilty and deserves to
die," he wrote. "We're here to say those arguments are wrong, wrong and wrong."
(Rosendale is correct. States without the death penalty have lower murder rates
than states that do carry out executions, and a number of former death row
inmates have been exonerated.)
Rosendale's views have become more popular in recent years, as even some GOP
officials have joined Democrats in calling for criminal justice reform. Last
fall, support for the death penalty fell to a 45-year low, with 55 % of
respondents nationwide telling Gallup they favored it. (Death penalty support
peaked at 80 % in 1994.) In 1999, the United States executed 98 people. By
2017, that number had fallen to 23.
But among rank-and-file Republican voters, support for the death penalty
remains strong - and Fagg has sought to exploit that fact by linking it to
another powerful wedge issue: immigration.
"Judge Russ Fagg has made the tough decisions to protect our families. That's
why Judge Russ Fagg supports the death penalty for illegal aliens that murder,"
declares one ad from the Fagg campaign. "Matt Rosendale opposes the death
penalty. Worse? Rosendale says it???s time to get rid of it."
"This has every bit to do with immigration," says Erik Iverson, the former
chair of the Montana Republican Party. "The death penalty in this case is being
used as a vehicle to talk about one of the biggest issues to Republican primary
voters."
Unauthorized immigration is nearly non-existent in Montana. According to the
American Immigration Council, in 2014 there were fewer than 5,000 undocumented
immigrants there. But in a state Trump won by 20 points, each GOP candidate is
trying to align himself with the president. Immigration is a topic that gets
voters to listen. Trump has frequently portrayed undocumented immigrants as a
threat, highlighting crimes committed by migrants and demanding tougher
enforcement measures. Trump is also an outspoken proponent of capital
punishment. He has repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug dealers and
individuals who kill police officers. Following the 1989 rape of a woman in New
York's Central Park, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the
reinstatement of the death penalty.
The Montana GOP primary, which will take place on Tuesday, is a 4-way contest
between Fagg, Rosendale, businessman Troy Downing, and state Sen. Al Olszewski.
Rosendale is widely considered the favorite, and many Republicans see him as
their strongest candidate against Tester. Outside conservative groups have
already spent more than $1 million supporting Rosendale, and he's secured
endorsements from high-profile Republicans, including Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas),
Mike Lee (Utah), and Rand Paul (Ky.) .
Fagg's ads are an attempt to hurt Rosendale's appeal with the state's GOP base.
The idea, Iverson believes, is to convince voters that if Rosendale is "soft on
the death penalty, he's going to be soft on immigrants who commit violent
crimes."
The Club for Growth, an independent conservative group supporting Rosendale,
has hit back at Fagg, criticizing his judicial record and calling him "soft on
crime" and "lenient on criminals." For his part, Rosendale is also running an
anti-immigration campaign - just without the death penalty component. "Liberals
from California to Washington are fighting President Trump on illegal
immigration," he says in one recent ad. "I'll stand with President Trump. We'll
get tough, and we'll build that wall."
Using capital punishment as a pillar of a 2018 campaign is a surprising move.
Since 1976, Montana has executed just three people; none were immigrants. The
last person to be executed in the state was convicted murderer David Dawson,
who was put to death in 2006. There are currently 2 people on the state's death
row; 1 of them is a Canadian who killed 2 men while visiting Montana. They are
unlikely to be executed any time soon - like most states that allow capital
punishment, Montana is facing a shortage of drugs used for lethal injection.
Over the past several years, an increasing number of pharmaceutical
manufacturers and wholesalers have refused to sell execution drugs to prisons.
This has left states scrambling for viable alternatives. In its previous
executions, Montana used sodium pentothal, a barbituate that can no longer be
purchased in the United States. In 2015, a federal judge ruled that Montana's
proposed replacement drug wasn't acceptable, effectively placing a moratorium
on executions in the state.
Fagg's campaign says that he will use his "expertise as a district court judge
for 22 years' to help state lawmakers craft a new execution protocol. "The
Montana Legislature has full authority to modify Montana law to allow
flexibility in which drugs we use to perform lethal injection," said Karli
Hill, a Fagg spokesperson, in an email.
It's unclear how Fagg would use his role as a US senator to shape state
legislation in Montana. Moreover, specifically targeting undocumented
immigrants for execution could raise serious constitutional issues. "Subjecting
a person to the death penalty because of who they are is unconstitutional,"
said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center,
in an email. "It is even more clearly unconstitutional when racial stereotyping
is involved. There is no evidence that undocumented immigrants are more
violence-prone than others - the data indicates they may actually commit fewer
violent offenses."
Asked about the constitutional objections, Hill told Mother Jones, "We...agree
that merely being in the country illegally isn't grounds for the death penally
in and of itself in cases of murder. Russ supports the death penalty when
appropriate, unlike Matt Rosendale who doesn???t support it at all."
Despite the fact that Montana is unlikely to execute undocumented immigrants in
the near future, some observers think Fagg's message could resonate. "Death
penalty and law and order?" Iverson says. "Those are always going to be good
issues for Republican primary voters."
(source: Mother Jones)
ARIZONA----new death sentence
Death sentence for Phoenix man who bound, gagged, burned pregnant girlfriend
A Phoenix man has been sentenced to death for the murder of his pregnant
girlfriend in July of 2012.
Dwandarrius Robinson, 27, was found guilty for the murder of 21-year-old
Shaniqua Hall and their unborn child. Hall was 9 months pregnant at the time of
the murder.
On July 18, 2012, Robinson called 911 saying that he had gotten home to his
apartment and found that it was on fire. Robinson told police he was unsure
whether Hall was still inside.
When firefighters entered the apartment, they found Hall's body handcuffed and
bound with duct tape with a rag shoved down her throat inside the couple's
bedroom.
Investigators found that the fire was intentionally set and an accelerant had
been used.
"The callous and inhumane killing of his girlfriend and their unborn child is
the worst example of a man utterly failing those who counted on him for love
and support," said Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery. "The jury's
verdict accurately and properly imposes the death penalty as a just and
proportionate punishment for these despicable crimes."
Robinson was found guilty of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, 1 count of arson
and 1 count of kidnapping.
The jury found 7 aggravating factors in this case rendering Robinson to be
eligible for consideration for the death penalty.
During the penalty phase, the jury heard presentations of evidence from both
the defense and prosecutors before making a decision to sentence Robinson to
death.
(source: azfamily.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Man's Conviction Upheld for Rape, Murder of 43-Year-Old Mother in Long Beach
The California Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence of 1 of 3 men
convicted of the December 1998 rape and beating death of a mother of 3 who was
attacked while walking to a store in Long Beach.
In a 6-1 ruling, the state's highest court rejected the defense's contention
that there were errors in the trial of Warren Justin Hardy, who was found
guilty in December 2002 of the December 29, 1998, sexual assault, robbery and
slaying of Penny Sigler, who was also known as Penny Keprta.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Goodwin H. Liu wrote that he felt the judgment
against Hardy should be reversed.
"As a result of the prosecutor striking every black juror she could have
struck, the black defendant in this capital case, charged with raping and
murdering a white woman, was tried by a jury that included no black person,"
Liu wrote, adding that his inquiry "leads me to conclude that, more likely than
not, the jury that convicted Hardy and sentenced him to death was not selected
free of improper discrimination."
Hardy's half-brother, Jamelle Armstrong, and a 3rd man, Kevin Pearson, were
charged along with Hardy in the woman's killing. They were tried separately and
also sentenced to death.
Automatic appeals filed on behalf of Armstrong and Pearson are still pending.
The 43-year-old victim was walking to a store about 11:00PM when she was
attacked under an overpass for the San Diego (405) Freeway in Long Beach. She
suffered 114 injuries, including at least 10 skull fractures that appeared to
have been inflicted before her death, according to the California Supreme Court
majority's opinion.
The woman's body was found by Caltrans workers - 1 of them thought the body was
a mannequin - on a freeway embankment on the northbound 405 Freeway near
Wardlow Road and Long Beach Boulevard.
"The victim was moved to the embankment before being raped, from which the jury
could infer that defendant and his co-defendants kidnapped her with the intent
to rape in addition to the intent to kill," Justice Ming W. Chin wrote on
behalf of the majority.
The panel also noted that there was evidence that Sigler had been given food
stamps, that an empty food stamp booklet was found at the scene of the crime
and that food stamps bearing that serial number were used at a nearby market,
and that the store's owner testified that Hardy had used food stamps to buy
items around that time.
"This evidence was sufficient to support the conclusion that defendant took the
victim's food stamps and used them. This conclusion, in turn, supported the
robbery finding," Chin wrote.
In a 2012 ruling that cited the trial court's "improper excusal of a
prospective juror because of her views on capital punishment," the California
Supreme Court unanimously threw out Pearson's 1st death sentence. The 2nd jury
to hear the penalty phase against Pearson recommended in April 2013 that he be
sentenced to death, and he was formally sentenced again to death in June 2013.
At Pearson's 2nd sentencing in 2013, Superior Court Judge Tomson T. Ong said
the attack "started out as a crime of opportunity' against a woman who was
dragged into a dark area and attacked while walking alone at night.
The noise of the nearby freeway precluded anyone from hearing her screams
during the attack, the judge said then, noting that the 5-foot-2-inch,
110-pound woman was outnumbered 3 to 1 and that Pearson was an "active
participant" in the crime.
(source: Long Beach Post)
********************
Leave no evidence behind in Cooper case
In 1983, Kevin Cooper was convicted of a brutal quadruple murder in San
Bernardino County and sentenced to death.
In the years since, the chain of events that led to his conviction has come
under fire from law enforcement veterans, a U.S. federal judge, the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and even some of the original jurors
for his trial.
"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man," wrote Judge
William Fletcher, of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a blistering
dissent against the court's decision not to hear Cooper's appeal.
The discrepancies in the Cooper case are deeply disturbing. Yet all Cooper has
asked for is a reprieve of his execution and a new investigation into his case,
including modern DNA testing.
There is reason to believe a new investigation could clear him of the murders.
There is no reason for Gov. Jerry Brown to continue holding off on ordering a
new test.
The murders for which Cooper was convicted are the stuff of nightmares. Doug
and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, and an 11-year-old house guest were
hacked to death with a hatchet in their home in Chino Hills. Cooper, who had
escaped from a nearby prison where he was serving a burglary sentence and was
hiding in a home close by, looked like an obvious suspect.
Yet the then-8-year-old Josh Ryen, who survived being stabbed in throat,
originally communicated to a social worker that he'd seen 3 or 4 white men
attacking him and his family. Cooper is black.
Another potential witness told officers that her boyfriend, a convicted
murderer named Lee Furrow, had clothes and a hatchet that matched descriptions
of items at the murder scene. Police destroyed a pair of Furrow's bloody
coveralls without testing them.
Other problems with the case, including questionable forensics, all point to
the need for new testing.
Cooper came within hours of execution in 2004. One of the major reasons he's
still alive is an unrelated court challenge to the state's death penalty
procedures. Legal experts are anticipating a resumption of California's death
penalty soon.
Our editorial board has long argued that reasonable doubts about the Cooper
case should stop the state from executing him.
There's new pressure on Gov. Brown to allow advanced testing, thanks to
California's presumed resumption of the death penalty and to New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof, who recently pored over the case and argued that
Cooper probably was framed by the San Bernardino sheriff's office.
Last week, California's Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, who ignored Cooper's
pleas when she was state attorney general, came out in favor of new DNA
testing.
The governor should do the same.
Brown's office says the case is very complex, which it is. The governor
received a clemency petition from Cooper's lawyers in February 2016, and his
office says it's under review.
The governor has had years to make a decision on this case. Time is running
out.
Brown has been proudly opposed to the death penalty for decades. If his
opposition is sincere, he'll stop hesitating. What's at stake is the life of a
man who could be innocent.
(source: Editorial, San Francisco Chronicle)
USA:
Death by Nitrogen Should Not Be America's New Capital Punishment Method
Ever since the 1st recorded state punishment, when the Jamestown colony
executed a Spanish spy by firing squad more than 400 years ago, Americans have
tinkered with the technologies used to kill condemned prisoners.
There have been 1,476 executions since 1976 (0-98 per year), with lethal
injection being used 88% of the time. Thirty-one states have death penalty
statutes, though several have gubernatorial moratoria in place.
Since 2015, three states, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi, trying to improve
upon the current methods of execution in America - gas chamber, hanging and
lethal injection - have added nitrogen gas asphyxiation to their capital
punishment arsenals.
Nitrogen, which makes up about 78% of the air we breathe, is a colorless,
odorless, tasteless gas used in a broad commercial range that includes ceramics
manufacturing and steelmaking. While it is not poisonous, breathing in pure
nitrogen keeps the brain from getting enough oxygen, which itself is directly
fatal.
In fact, a number of lethal industrial accidents involving inhaled nitrogen are
reported every year. Though its potential use in executions has not been
formally studied, advocates have already suggested legal death via nitrogen
inhalation would be quick, peaceful, and humane.
We need to ask three questions about the possible use of nitrogen in capital
punishment cases. Would it work? Does it offer advantages over current methods?
And, is it cruel and unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution? The answers are yes, maybe, and we don't know (but probably yes).
Though it has not yet been used in a death penalty case, there is no doubt
using nitrogen to execute prisoners would be highly effective. Placed into a
pure nitrogen environment, the convict would be unconscious within a minute
(possibly even after a breath or 2) and would be dead soon after. Its failure
rate, that is, cases in which the prisoner survives, would likely be much lower
than what we see with current death penalty methods.
The 2nd question, whether or not using nitrogen is better than what we
currently do, is harder to answer. We need to be cautious in adopting new
methods for use in capital punishment cases. Every technique embraced to date,
no matter what advantages they were thought to offer in theory, has been
fraught with real-life shortcomings, ranging from modest to heinous.
Convicts in the electric chair have burst into flames, or required multiple
jolts. The gas chamber, adopted by 12 states as being humane, fails in 5 % of
cases, with some prisoners observed to gasp for air for prolonged periods.
Others have convulsed.
Lethal injection, the go-to procedure in every state with a capital punishment
provision, has the highest fail rate of any method, exceeding seven percent. It
can require multiple needle pokes to access veins in prisoners scarred from
drug abuse or chronic illness, and one recent botched execution attempt in
Alabama reportedly led to profuse bleeding and a punctured bladder.
Finally, multiple companies manufacturing the drugs for intended medical use
have condemned death penalty use and limited distribution of their product to
prisons, making lethal injection unreliable.
There are many unanswered questions on what could go wrong with nitrogen use.
If prisons forced the convicts to wear a tight fitting mask, would this
increase the feeling of suffocation? Could they still leak? Or, would an entire
room need to be filled with pure nitrogen? Would accidental dilution with
oxygen-containing room air (mask or room) slow or even prevent death, leaving
prisoners in comas or brain-damaged?
Also, nitrogen use isn't medically regulated, and it's hard to imagine much
quality control would be applied to inspecting the gas used in death penalty
cases. What happens if prisons buy contaminated product? Finally, would the
nitrogen manufacturers take their cue from those making medications used in
lethal injection and restrict sales to penitentiaries?
The most important question, though, is whether or not killing prisoners with
nitrogen is cruel and unusual, the constitutional threshold for death penalty
implementation.
Humans normally breathe in life-sustaining oxygen and breathe out carbon
dioxide produced during respiration. Choking victims, who cannot get enough
oxygen, say it is agonizing. Supporters of using nitrogen in capital punishment
cases believe the feeling of suffocation actually comes not from lack of oxygen
(known as hypoxia), but from the buildup of carbon dioxide. Since prisoners
could still blow off carbon dioxide while breathing pure nitrogen, advocates
say they wouldn't suffer from air hunger.
What if they are wrong? Some studies suggest that fatal low oxygen levels alone
do cause anxiety and the fear of suffocation. And, it wouldn't actually matter,
even if they are right. Hypoxia itself can cause severe nausea, disorientation,
confusion, dizziness, inability to move, and seizures, regardless of what the
carbon dioxide levels are doing.
Nitrogen gas doesn't put people to sleep as do the medicines used in
anesthesia, so prisoners could be painfully aware. To be sure, sedating them
first would prevent any distress from the hypoxia, but it would leave all the
other problems associated with lethal injection.
It should be noted that nitrogen was previously used to kill animals, but it's
not a method that's used anymore - the American Veterinary Medical Association
does not recommend nitrogen euthanasia because evidence suggests gassed dogs
and cats can actually suffer horribly before dying.
Determining in advance whether or not nitrogen asphyxiation offers a "peaceful"
death is impossible. We don???t have a lot of interviews with survivors of
industrial nitrogen accidents, and experimentation is unethical - we can't
partly gas convicts and ask them how it went.
If our old-fashioned methods are not ideal, and nitrogen asphyxiation is not
proven humane, are there other alternatives? Yes. I testified in hearing where
the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama recently
ruled in the case of Doyle Lee Hamm that oral drugs used medically in states
allowing terminally ill patients to take their own lives - "death with
dignity". This method could lawfully be employed in capital punishment cases.
Though Alabama still ultimately tried (unsuccessfully) to use standard
intravenous injection following the legal action spawning that ruling,
medications given by mouth are under consideration in death penalty cases
elsewhere in the south.
The question on the table isn't whether or not the U.S. should maintain capital
punishment. Although some states previously allowing it have abolished or
suspended its use, the United States remains the only Western nation
authorizing legal executions, with about 3,000 convicts currently on death row.
Capital punishment remains constitutional, and it isn't going away any time
soon. However, our Supreme Court has ruled the death penalty cannot involve
unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain, and that there must be a
constitutional means of applying it.
We need to put more thought into the methods used, especially since there are
no means to scientifically test in advance whether or not they violate the
Eighth Amendment. We don't and can't know that nitrogen asphyxiation would be
painless, and it simply doesn't qualify as an acceptable means of carrying out
a death sentence.
(source: Opinion; Charles Blanke, M.D., is an oncologist and professor of
medicine at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine----Newsweek)
*********************
Nick Tartaglione's long wait for decision on death penalty not unusual
Nearly a year and a half after former Briarcliff Manor police officer Nicholas
Tartaglione was charged in a quadruple homicide, federal prosecutors have yet
to signal whether they will seek the death penalty in the case.
The lapse between indictment and a decision on capital punishment is not out of
the ordinary, though, as a review of recent cases shows. In the 6 cases in
which the U.S. Department of Justice has approved seeking the death penalty
since December, the average time it took to decide was about 15 months, with 2
of the cases taking more than 21 months.
Tartaglione was arrested in December 2016. The following day, authorities
recovered the bodies of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector
Gutierrez on property the ex-cop had rented in Otisville, in Orange County.
The men disappeared 8 months earlier after going to meet Tartaglione at a bar
in Chester run by his brother. Authorities said Martin Luna owed money from a
drug deal. He brought the others - 2 relatives and a family friend - along with
him but they had nothing to do with the drug deal, authorities said.
Federal prosecutors have said that Martin Luna was killed 1st but the autopsy
could not determine how. They have said that the other 3 men were fatally shot
after Tartaglione left to take Luna's body to his former property.
6 months after Tartaglione's arrest, Joseph Biggs was also charged in the case
although his alleged role in the killings has not been publicly revealed.
Biggs, of Nanuet, was a security guard at the Greenburgh Graham school in
Hastings-on-Hudson.
Tartaglione's lawyers have compiled a mitigation package that they hope will
convince prosecutors not to seek execution. They have declined to discuss
details of what they submitted and did not return phone or email messages.
Biggs is also awaiting a decision on whether he will face capital punishment.
His lawyer, George Goltzer, declined to discuss details of the case or say
whether he has submitted Biggs' mitigation material.
Feds pushing harder now
In the first 11 months of Trump's presidency, federal prosecutors filed just 1
notice of intent to pursue the death penalty, and that was in a decade-old
case. But in the 5 months since then, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has opted
for capital punishment in 6 cases - involving 7 defendants - around the
country.
These are those cases, including how long it took for prosecutors from the time
of indictment to the announcement they were seeking the death penalty:
Efrain Rodriguez-Mendoza, Texas, 80 months -- Rodriguez-Mendoza is charged in
the 2006 deaths of 2 smuggled Honduran men who were beaten after they set a
fire to escape from a warehouse in Houston.
Jarvis Madison, Florida, 11 months -- Madison is accused in the 2016 kidnapping
and murder of his wife.
Billy Arnold, Michigan, 24 months -- Arnold is charged in the deaths of 2 rival
gang members in Detroit.
Brendt Christensen, Illinois, 4 months - Christensen is charged in the
kidnapping and slaying of a visiting Chinese student in June 2017.
Kirby Cleveland, New Mexico, 9 months -- Cleveland is accused of killing a
Navajo Nation tribal police officer who responded to a domestic violence call
in March 2017.
Brandon Council, South Carolina, 7 months -- Council allegedly killed 2 women
during a bank robbery in August 2017.
Edwin Mills and Carlo Wilson, Michigan, 21 months -- Mills and Wilson are gang
members accused in the December 2015 shooting deaths of a man and a teenage
girl.
Both President Trump and Sessions in March signaled a push to step up use of
the death penalty when they argued that major drug dealers should face capital
punishment.
"I strongly encourage federal prosecutors to use these statutes when
appropriate to aid in our continuing fight against drug trafficking and the
destruction it causes our nation," Sessions wrote in a memo directing
prosecutors "to use every lawful tool at their disposal" to combat the
country's opioid epidemic.
Tartaglione and Biggs are charged with 2 of the 4 crimes Sessions cited -
murder in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise and use of a firearm
resulting in death during a drug trafficking crime.
Federal death-row executions rare
Only 3 federal death-row inmates have been put to death in the 30 years since
capital punishment was restored on the federal level, and the last execution
was in 2003.
According to records listed by the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel,
during the administration of President George W. Bush, federal prosecutors
filed an average of 29 notices to seek the death penalty each year. That was up
from 20 per year under the Clinton Administration. The figure dropped to 9 per
year during the Obama administration, although in Obama's entire 2nd term only
14 such notices were filed.
The 6 notices filed in the first 5 months of 2018 are more than in any of those
last 4 years of Obama's presidency.
(source: lohud.com)
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