February 7
MISSOURI:
Proposed Law For Death Row Organ Donations----House Bill 630 would give inmates
on death row the chance to donate organs, but there are concerns.
The controversial bill introduced a couple of weeks ago in the Missouri House
of Representatives would give those on death row a chance to donate their
organs if they give their consent.
House Bill 630 is proposed by a representative from North of Kansas City, Dr
Jim Neely. He says this will provide a way to shorten the waiting list for
organ donations in Missouri.
"There are a few inmates who are showing some contrition and remorse. If
they're going to be executed they have apparently made the comment that, why
not donate their organs or tissues if it would help somebody else if we are
going to go the execution route," Neely says,
According to the Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty website,
there are only 25 names on death row in the state right now, which is far less
that the number of people waiting for an organ.
"There's a waiting time, and anything we can do to lessen the amount of time a
person has to wait the better off it would be," Neely says.
Tyler McClay with the Missouri Catholic Conference says not so fast. Their
group is opposed to the death penalty altogether, and he has some concerns.
"There may be influences there that render them more unable to give voluntary
consent that say the average inmate," says McClay.
He also is skeptical of the state getting involved in the business of
harvesting organs.
"The bill says that they would change the way that they way do the execution in
order to harvest the organ so it's unclear to us how exactly that's going to
work whether that's going to put the state in an awkward position."
Dr. Neely says that would be something that is in the hands of the Department
of Corrections.
"The Department of Corrections would have to promugate some rules to allow this
to go forward in the manner that would make these organs and tissues viable,"
Neely explains.
One concern could be the health of an organ that comes from a body that has
been lethally injected. Neely says they need guidance from the world of
anestheisiology on a way to make it possible.
(source: ozarksfirst.com)
COLORADO:
Death penalty repeal: Capitol Dems say ‘full steam ahead’ on legislation this
year----“A flat-out repeal of the death penalty is what we want to do,” said
Sen. Angela Williams, who plans to sponsor a bill
20 states have banned or suspended the death penalty, and this could be the
year Colorado joins them. Public support for capital punishment is declining.
And Democrats, some of whom campaigned on doing away with state-sponsored
executions, now control state government.
Sen. Lois Court of Denver will support such legislation, but she knows passage
is never assured. She recalls the painful path a similar bill took in 2013 —
one year after the deadly Aurora theater shootings, when, like this year,
Democrats held the statehouse and the governor’s mansion.
Court, then a state representative, remembers sitting in the bill’s final
committee hearing. She opposed capital punishment then, as she does now. But
back in 2013, events, public mood and perhaps politics played a role the
committee’s ultimate decision to reject the repeal bill.
Before the vote was called, Court pointed out to fellow committee members that
voters did not ask lawmakers to repeal the death penalty that year. And, she
said, the governor at the time, John Hickenlooper, was conflicted on the issue,
signaling he might veto the bill. Adding to the fraught atmosphere in the
committee room was the presence of Rep. Rhonda Fields, whose son, Javad
Marshall-Fields, was murdered in 2005. Fields, who is now a senator, supported
the prosecutors’ decision to seek the death penalty, and still does today.
You could “feel the weight” in the room, as one lawmaker put it.
When the roll was called to kill the bill, Court sighed, “yes.”
Six years later, Court says, the situation is different. Public support is
swinging against capital punishment, as evidenced by the recent election of
Attorney General Phil Weiser, who campaigned against capital punishment. So,
too, did some newly elected Democratic lawmakers. And, Court said, Gov. Jared
Polis is on board.
“The governor now says he’ll sign it,” Court said, now the Senate president pro
tempore. “Full steam ahead.”
Supporters of the repeal, who cite the high cost of prosecuting a death
sentence and racial biases in the criminal justice system, could introduce a
bill in the Senate as soon as this month.
“A flat out repeal of the death penalty is what we want to do,” said Sen.
Angela Williams, a Democrat from Denver who plans to introduce the bill in the
Senate.
Since the nationwide moratorium on death penalty was lifted in 1976, and the
punishment was reinstated in Colorado, the state has executed 1 man, Gary Lee
Davis, a murderer and rapist.
Today, there are three men on death row. They include Nathan Dunlap, who was
convicted for killing four people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in 1996.
Hickenlooper granted Dunlap a reprieve, delaying his death sentence unless
reversed by a future governor. Also awaiting executions are Sir Mario Owens and
Robert Ray, both of whom were convicted for the 2005 murders of Javad
Marshall-Fields, Sen. Fields’ son, and his fiance Vivian Wolfe, who were
scheduled to testify in a murder trial.
The issue is still very personal for Fields, a Democrat from Aurora. She argues
the death penalty can help solve crimes. For example, district attorneys can
use the threat of the death penalty to prompt a confession, she said, as they
did when a Weld County man confessed to killing his pregnant wife and 2
daughters, with the understanding that prosecutors would not seek the death
penalty in exchange. The man was later sentenced to life without parole.
Opponents of the death penalty, however, say this strategy raises ethical
concerns about forced confessions.
Williams, who is working with Sen. Julie Gonzales to draft a bill, said she
wants to introduce the legislation before lawmakers begin work on the budget,
which is likely to happen in early March. In the House, Rep. Jeni Arndt, a Fort
Collins Democrat, and Rep. Adrienne Benavidez, a Commerce City Democrat, will
work to pass the bill through the House.
Gonzales remembers when former Senator Lucia Guzman fought to pass the bill.
Gonzales, who took Guzman’s seat after she left office due to term limits, said
she wants to carry forward that legacy. She also said she has concerns about
racial bias in the criminal justice system, which might explain why the three
men on death row are black.
“Every single aspect of our criminal justice system is imbued with racial bias.
And that is also evidenced by the individuals who are currently sitting on
death row,” Gonzales said.
Sen. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat from Lakewood, who also voted against the
bill in 2013, said she plans to do the opposite this time around. The committee
vote, she said, still haunts her today. But at the time, in the wake of the
Aurora theater shooting, she said her constituents largely supported the death
penalty.
“As a leader, I think you’re elected to represent your constituents. It’s
always a kind of a balance and a tug-of-war,” she said.
But, she added, “It’s something that I fundamentally don’t believe in. So I
will be voting with my values this year and I believe that my constituents will
still support me.”
(source: The Colorado Independent)
****************
Polis Would Commute Sentences If State Lawmakers Pass Death Penalty Ban
Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said Wednesday if lawmakers pass a proposal to end
the state’s death penalty he’ll commute the sentence of convicted murderer
Nathan Dunlap to life in prison.
“If the state, Republicans and Democrats, were to say, and I were to sign, a
bill that said we no longer have the death penalty in Colorado … I would
certainly that that as a strong indication that those who are currently on
death row should have their sentences commuted to life in prison,” Polis said.
Dunlap was sentenced to death for murdering 4 people in Aurora in 1993. Polis’
predecessor, John Hickenlooper, favored the death penalty when he entered
office but later changed his mind. As a result, he delayed Dunlap’s execution,
but stopped short of commuting his sentence.
Because Democrats control both houses of the legislature, they could revoke the
death penalty without Republican votes. However, Polis predicted the measure
would win support from both sides of the aisle.
A death penalty bill is expected but hasn’t been introduced yet.
The same holds true for a proposal to tighten control over oil and gas
development. The measure is expected to make health and safety the top
consideration in state permitting decisions, and to increase local power over
the location of drilling rigs. Polis said those are both priorities he wants to
set.
(source: cpr.org)
ARIZONA:
Man's defense in double murder death penalty case: Scientology made me do it
He stands accused of using a hatchet to bludgeon his sister-in-law and her
boyfriend to death and setting the house on fire to destroy any evidence. In a
bid to escape the death penalty, he is trying a novel defense:
Scientology made him do it.
Kenneth Wayne Thompson is not arguing that Scientology turned him violent in
March 2012. But he is saying his belief in the religion of Scientology helps
explain his actions. In particular, he says, his devotion to Scientology's
tenets led him on a 24-hour plus drive from his home in rural Missouri to the
eventual murder scene in Arizona.
Prosecutors say the marathon drive helps show Thompson committed the crimes
with premeditation, an element of the 1st-degree murder convictions they are
seeking. On each, the state of Arizona will ask for the death penalty.
Thompson's attorneys will argue to the jury that the act was rational, if
understood through the lens of Scientology. Thompson felt he needed to rescue a
child, a nephew to his wife, because the boy's spiritual well-being was at
risk.
Neither the boy nor his sister were in the house at the time of the killings.
Raising the defense will make the Scientology belief system part of the court
case.
Attorneys for Thompson have already subpoenaed records from the Florida-based
church. They have also asked for testimony from Scientology experts, including
the actress Leah Remini, who has produced documentaries critical of the
religion.
The defense has listed the Scientology "tone scale," a chart that purports to
diagram all human emotions,among its evidence.
Potential jurors were asked their thoughts about the religion. Tom Cruise's
name was mentioned during opening arguments.
Prosecutors had tried to get the judge to disallow the Scientology defense. In
a brief filed before the trial began, the state said followers of any religion
believe the theology to varying degree and it would not be clear to what extent
Thompson hewed to Scientology's.
Prosecutors also warned that the trial risked veering down a Scientology rabbit
hole.
"Presentation of evidence would have to be proceeded by a complex explanation
of exactly what...followers of Scientology believe," prosecutors wrote in a
March 2018 argument to the court.
Yavapai Superior Court Judge Patricia Trebesch, who is presiding over the
proceedings, ruled in January that the Scientology defense would be allowed.
The role of a religion
Scientology was developed in the 1950s by L. Ron Hubbard, then a science
fiction writer. The first meetings of Scientologists were held at Hubbard’s
home at the base of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix.
The religion is based on humans being able to achieve spiritual growth by
walking a set path and reaching particular milestones. Critics of the religion
say those milestones come with a hefty price tag that involve buying books and
paying for sessions of introspection called auditing.
Gundracker suggested that Scientology may have played a part in the killings.
In opening arguments last week in Prescott, Kenneth Thompson's defense
attorney, Robert Gundacker, asked the jury to see the events that led to the
killings through the eyes of Thompson, a devoted Scientologist.
Thompson became a Scientologist as a child, the attorney said, following his
mother's marriage to a devotee.
Gundacker told the jury that Thompson had heard that his wife's nephew was
undergoing mental health-related treatment, which was anathema to his beliefs
as a Scientologist.
"One of the central tenants, and it was core to the whole wider system of
beliefs, is that psychology is evil, probably the most evil thing on planet
earth," Gundacker told jurors. "Think back to Tom Cruise."
Cruise, the movie actor and Scientologist, famously railed against psychology
during an interview on NBC's "Today" show in 2005.
Thompson, as a Scientologist, would have thought that the medication the child
was being given subjected him to irreparable harm, his attorney said. In court
motions, his defense team has said Thompson thought the child's eternal soul
was at risk.
"This is Kenny's mindset," Gundacker said.
Once at the home, his attorney argued, Thompson acted in the heat of passion in
killing the victims, not with a murderous intent. Gundacker asked the jury to
eventually return a verdict of manslaughter, not 1st-degree murder.
Prosecutors presented a different theory of the case. Yavapai Deputy County
Attorney Steve Young told jurors they would see evidence that showed Thompson's
intent, including his marathon drive, his purchases of the hatchet and knife
used in the killings and his attempts to cover his tracks by burning the house
and telling false stories to police.
Prosecutors did not mention Scientology at all.
Psychology is 'evil and a scam'
Gundacker did not dispute the bare facts of the case. At times, it seemed as if
his argument could be used by the prosecution.
Thompson drove from his rural Missouri home to Arizona in a little more than a
day. He entered the Prescott Valley home of his sister-in-law and her boyfriend
and killed them both, using a hatchet and a knife he had purchased that
morning.
He poured acid over the bodies and used flares and diesel fuel to set the house
on fire. He got back on the freeway and headed east toward Missouri.
But all of this, Gundacker said, sprang from an innocent motive. Thompson
wanted to bring his sister-in-law's 2 children back home with him.
Thompson's wife had cared for their children while their mother was in prison,
Gundacker told the jury. And she and Thompson fretted about their fate once
they were back in custody of their mother.
"Kenny Thompson cared so much" about his niece and nephew, Gundacker told
jurors, "that he came all the way from Missouri to get them out of that
situation. By persuading their mother, not by killing their mother."
Gundacker told jurors that Thompson made the drive on impulse, fueled by worry
about the damage being done to one of the children at the hands of mental
health professionals at Phoenix Children's Hospital.
"(Scientologists) think psychology is evil and a scam," Gundacker told jurors.
"They believe psychology does not only not cure people, it causes mental
illness. They think psychological medicines are central to this evil.
"They are part of the scam, and they are particularly bad when they are given
to children," he said.
A change of plans, a bloody scene
Thompson did not tell his wife about his plans. She had thought he was on his
way to Memphis, Tenn., to deal with issues involving his parents' estate.
Instead, Gundacker told the jury, Thompson arrived at an Interstate 40 junction
and decided on a whim to head west not east, toward Arizona to get the children
from their mother.
He rested at a hotel overnight, court records show, before taking a taxi to the
home of his sister-in-law, Penelope Edwards, and her boyfriend, Troy Dunn, the
morning of March 16, 2012.
What happened next is not clear. But within an hour, according to a timeline
laid out in the opening arguments of both prosecutors and the defense, both
Dunn and Edwards were dead.
Edwards’s body was found with 22 wounds to the head and neck, police said, some
showing evidence of chopping. Her jugular vein was severed, according to court
documents.
Dunn also suffered multiple head wounds caused by something sharp, police said.
A freeway stop and a search
Around 4 p.m., Thompson was driving eastbound on I-40 on his way out of
Arizona. A Department of Public Safety trooper monitoring traffic from the
median thought there was something unusual about the driver.
He would write in his report that Thompson was “staring straight ahead with
both arms locked out and gripping the steering wheel.”
He decided to follow behind him on the freeway, the trooper, Matt Bratz, told
jurors in his testimony on Wednesday.
Thompson was driving the exact speed limit, but the trooper eventually found a
reason to pull him over, Bratz testified.
“It was a journey of more than 1,400 miles. Thompson drove it in about 25
hours.”
The trooper said he detected the smell of a solvent in the car and spotted a
red gas can. He also told jurors that he thought Thompson was acting nervously,
his chest heaving and his hands shaking as he handed over his license.
The trooper asked Thompson if could walk his drug-sniffing dog around the car.
There is dispute, records say, about whether Thompson gave consent. The dog
seemed to hit on something in the trunk and, Bratz said, he told Thompson that
gave him license to search the vehicle.
While waiting for a backup officer, Thompson asked he could retrieve a water
bottle from a backpack in the car, the trooper testified.
He also volunteered a tale that, according to the trooper, seemed a
non-sequitur: He had stopped by a wildlife park around feeding time and as a
worker flung meat into the cages, he ended up getting blood splattered on his
clothes and had to change pants.
In the search of his car, troopers found a pair of pants with blood on them,
Bratz testified. They also found a hatchet covered in both blood and what
appeared to be long human hair.
Bratz told jurors the backpack did not contain the water bottle that Thompson
said he wanted to retrieve but did contain a handgun.
Bratz said he radioed dispatch to see if there had been unusual activity in the
area and was told that police officers and firemen had responded to a house
fire in Prescott Valley. Two bodies were found inside hacked to death and
neighbors reported a white car leaving the scene.
Thompson was driving a white Ford Taurus.
'Freaked out' at the crime scene
Handcuffed and waiting by the side of the road, Thompson, according to the
trooper’s report, asked if Arizonaprisoners were grantedconjugal visits.
Jurors in court were shown photos of the hatchet as well as the bodies of the
victims, burned both with fire and acid. 2 women, escorted by an official from
the victim's services unit, left the courtroom while some of the more graphic
photos were shown.
Thompson, dressed in a dark suit, aqua shirt and blue tie, appeared to show no
emotion throughout the opening day of his trial. Occasionally, he would write
notes to his attorneys on a yellow legal pad in front of him.
Following his arrest, Thompson spoke with detectives for more than 2 hours.
He told the detectives, one of whom testified last week, that when he arrived
at the house, he was met with 2 people strung out on heroin and he acted in
self-defense. He initially told police that it was Dunn who was attacking his
girlfriend with a hatchet and he intervened.
Thompson told police that he poured acid over the bodies to destroy any DNA
evidence. But, fearing that wasn’t adequate, he set the home on fire, records
say.
Thompson's attorney, in his opening argument, said Thompson's actions after the
murder showed panic, not a calculated plan.
Gundacker said Thompson was "completely freaked out." He imagined for jurors
the thoughts that went through Thompson's head. "I was here and the people are
dead."
Neither child that Thompson purportedly aimed to rescue was at the home,
something prosecutors contend in court filings that Thompson knew. One child
was spending spring break with a friend in Bisbee; the other was at Phoenix
Children’s Hospital being treated for behavioral issues.
Thought process fits with beliefs
It was that hospitalization that made Thompson worried for the child’s “eternal
soul,” according to a filing from Gregory Parzych, one of his attorneys.
Parzych, in a court filing, wrote that he will not argue that Thompson has
diminished mental capacity. He will argue that being raised with the beliefs of
Scientology, coupled with his diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, made his
thinking “linear and concrete.”
Given that mindset, Thompson’s cross-country drive was understandable, his
attorneys plan to argue. It also helps explain why he didn't try to have the
discussion about the children by phone with his sister-in-law.
Scientology teaches that “what people will not discuss over the phone, or even
during a scheduled face-to-face meeting, they will agree to discuss if you show
up cold at their door,” Parzych wrote in a December court filing. “Hence, this
choice made perfect sense to Mr. Thompson.”
The court docket lists one expert who has agreed to testify about Scientology:
Susan Raine, a professor at McEwan University in Alberta, Canada. Raine has
researched and written about how science-fiction motifs influenced Scientology.
Raine, in an e-mail, declined to comment on the case.
Parzych filed a potential witness list in September 2017 that included the
actress Remini and several other Scientology experts. One of them was Tony
Ortega, the former Phoenix reporter for the New Times newspaper and former
editor of New York’s Village Voice. His website, The Underground Bunker, is
devoted to exposing Scientology and first carried a story about the Thompson
case in January.
Parzych seemed to have a difficult time finding a Scientology expert who would
agree to testify in the case.
An April e-mail from Parzych, included in the docket by prosecutors, notes that
he had reached out to a few experts with little success.
“(W)e have had contacts with a number of individuals who refuse to help once
they find out this is a capital case,” he wrote. “Again, we are frantically
reaching out to individuals.”
Was he really practicing?
Prosecutors, in pretrial briefings arguing that the Scientology defense not be
allowed, noted there appeared to be no evidence that Thompson practiced
Scientology at all.
Thompson's grandmother, Eva Harvey, said during a phone interview from her
Doniphan, Mo., home, that though Thompson was raised in Scientology from the
time he was about 5, he shed the religion as an adult.
"I don't think he really believed it," she said.
Thompson, who until his arrest lived in a house on the same property as his
grandmother, was an occasional churchgoer, Harvey said.
But those services were Baptist, she said.
Harvey said she has not been called to testify.
(source: azcentral.com)
MONTANA:
Montana lawmakers asked to revise, abolish death penalty
A Montana lawmaker wants to require prosecutors to provide indisputable
biological proof that a person committed a capital crime before that person can
be sentenced to death.
The House Judiciary Committee is set to hear a bill Wednesday by Rep. Brad
Hamlett, D-Cascade, that would require there be DNA or other biological proof
that a judge finds conclusively establishes the defendant's guilt before they
can be sentenced to death.
The measure would save the state money because fewer people would be sentenced
to death, creating fewer appeals and reducing court costs, Hamlett said.
"Whether you agree with the death penalty or not, I think we can all agree we
don't want innocent people being executed, period," Hamlett said Tuesday.
Montana is 1 of 30 states with the death penalty, but it can't execute anybody
because of a judge's ruling that the Department of Corrections doesn't have
access to the specific lethal injection drugs that are allowed under state law.
The most recent execution in Montana was in 2006.
Republican Rep. Mike Hopkins of Missoula is sponsoring a separate bill seeking
to abolish the death penalty entirely - including the sentences of the 2 men on
death row. Hopkins' bill also has been assigned to the House Judiciary
Committee, although a hearing date has not been set.
State lawmakers have rejected efforts to repeal the death penalty for at least
the past two decades. Hopkins said the time is now.
"If you're a person that just generally believes the death penalty is wrong,
then the death penalty is wrong and it should be abolished," Hopkins said. "If
you're a person that believes in fiscal responsibility or the concept that
policy should actually do what the policy says, then the death penalty should
be abolished because we have a death penalty under which nobody dies."
William J. Gollehon faces the death penalty for killing a fellow inmate during
a 1990 riot at the state prison. He was already been serving a life sentence
for killing a woman in Billings in 1985.
Ronald Allen Smith was sentenced to death in March 1983 for killing two
hitchhikers in August 1982.
The state has had to pay for special attorneys to defend Gollehon and Smith and
file appeals on their behalf as well as defended lawsuits challenging the
constitutionality of the penalty and the protocol used to carry it out, Hopkins
argued.
Montana's neighbor to the south, Wyoming, also is considering abolishing the
death penalty. A repeal bill passed the state House last week and is now
pending in the Senate.
Last year, Washington state's supreme court ruled the death penalty there is
unconstitutional, and Delaware's high court did the same in 2016. Nebraska
lawmakers repealed the death penalty in 2015, but it was reinstated by voters
the following year.
New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland have all repealed the death
penalty in their states over the last decade, while governors in Oregon,
Colorado and Pennsylvania have declared moratoriums in their states.
(source: Associated Press)
IDAHO:
Idaho draws down the shades on capital punishment
As far as the Idaho Department of Correction is concerned, there is nothing
public about a public execution.
What it does not want you to learn about capital punishment, it will not
disclose — unless, of course, someone such as University of Idaho law professor
Aliza Cover insists.
Given how difficult it’s become for states to obtain the chemicals required to
kill someone through lethal injection, Cover bored into Idaho’s system with a
public records request. That’s a relevant question these days. As death penalty
states turn to new protocols and drugs, witnesses have been reporting instances
of executions requiring an unusually long period of time — in one case up to
one hour and 40 minutes — as well as inmates displaying signs of pain.
So thanks to Cover, Idahoans are learning:
l The department hides records. At first, it decided Cover was entitled to a
manual detailing its policies and nothing more.
Even when she sued, the agency barely relented, releasing heavily redacted
documents. To others, including reporter Chris McDaniel, the department
professed the records in its possession did not exist.
-- Unable to procure drugs through pharmaceutical companies, states are
turning to compound pharmacies — with uncertain standards of quality. Idaho was
among the states that contacted an India-based middleman, identified as Chris
Harris. That detail was among the information the state withheld from McDaniel.
-- The state maintains 3 sets of financial books about its executions.
The 1st set minimized expenses and was handed out in response to public records
requests. The 2nd set, detailing more costs, was issued to “hopefully appease”
someone persistent enough to insist on more information. “And the 3rd set,
testified former correction department purchasing agent Joanne Sooter, “was the
actual set of books that would actually represent the expenses.”
-- In the 2012 execution of Richard Leavitt as well as the Paul Ezra Rhoades
execution that preceded it in 2011, administrators at the correction department
spent $26,000 in cash on details “that were going to come up at night or on a
weekend that were just unusual expenditures and difficult,” testified
correction employee Theo Lowe.
Nor is the Cover public records request the 1st instance of Idaho pulling down
the blinds around the death penalty.
Given its way, the Department of Correction would have sanitized what reporters
saw during Leavitt’s execution. Decreed the state: All you needed to see was
Leavitt already on a gurney, hear him make a last statement and watch a lethal
dose of chemicals flow into his veins.
What it did not want viewed or reported was the invasive part of the execution:
How would Leavitt arrive in the chamber? Would he be heavily sedated? Would he
struggle? Would the execution team easily find a vein or not?
In other words, any trace of human suffering or error would be scrubbed from
public exposure.
Only the intervention of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals preserved full
access to the public’s proxies.
Some 20 states, including Washington, have banned capital punishment.
Fewer death sentences are being imposed and being carried out.
Americans are turning away from the death penalty because they see its flaws —
questions of wrongful convictions, expense, fairness and whether the practice
is both cruel and unusual.
Of course, if Idahoans have no way of knowing how their state conducts
executions in their name, how are they supposed to judge? Leave the state of
Idaho to its own devices and they never will.
(source: Editorial, The Lewiston Tribune)
WASHINGTON:
Bill would end death penalty in state
Legislators propose replacing the moribund death penalty with the mandatory
imposition of life imprisonment without parole.
The Senate Law and Justice committee heard public testimony on Senate Bill 5339
sponsored by Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D-Seattle).
“It’s been a long public discourse the last 10 to 15 years in our state and in
our country about this issue,” Carlyle said. “I think the result of that civic
discourse in the last number of years has been a growing recognition that the
data shows that the death penalty is applied in a way that is not consistent.”
In October, the state Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was being applied
in an arbitrary and racially biased manner. The court converted all death
penalty sentences to life in prison without parole. Gov. Jay Inslee signed a
moratorium on imposing the death penalty in 2014.
“I respectfully suggest that closing the books on this chapter is a responsible
public policy step given where the courts and our state have come and that it
really solidifies our statute in a way that makes it clear and unequivocal for
years to come,” Carlyle said.
Sen. Mike Padden (R-Spokane Valley) said Washington effectively no longer has a
death penalty, and that given the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s ruling
last year, it would be difficult to craft death penalty legislation that would
satisfy the court.
Former state Department of Corrections Secretary Dick Morgan testified in
support of the bill, speaking on behalf of several other previous DOC leaders.
Morgan said hundreds of prisoners have committed similar crimes and were
sentenced to life without parole yet from a management viewpoint they pose no
greater risk than those on death row.
“They are from a managerial standpoint indistinguishable from one another, yet
the cost of managing those sentenced to death is extraordinarily high for the
department,” Morgan said.
Preparing for an execution takes significant additional personnel and is done
on a voluntary basis. Morgan noted that it’s common for personnel who have
participated in an execution to not wish to do so again.
Since 1904, 78 people have been executed in the state, according to the
Department of Corrections. The 2010 execution by lethal injection of Cal Brown,
who was convicted of strangling and stabbing a woman to death in 1991, is the
most recent death sentence carried out.
A house bill proposed by Rep. Carolyn Eslick (R-Sultan) would allow the death
penalty to continue in specific circumstances. House Bill 1709 would ensure the
imposition of the death penalty on inmates charged with 1st degree murder
committed while serving a prison term. This legislation is in response to the
murder of correctional officer Jayme Biendl in 2011 by an inmate serving life
in prison, Padden said.
A companion bill to remove the death penalty, House Bill 1488, which would also
eliminate the death penalty, is not scheduled for public testimony. It is is
sponsored by Rep. Tina Orwall (D-Des Moines).
SB 5339 is scheduled for executive action by the Law and Justice Committee on
Thursday, Feb. 7.
(source: North Coast News)
**************
Catholic Bishops to support death penalty repeal
The Catholic Bishops of Washington State submitted a testimony today in support
of Senate Bill 5339.
The bill seeks to repeal the death penalty and require that life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole become the sentence for aggravated 1st degree
murder convictions.
In a press release the The Washington State Catholic Conference (WSCC) on
behalf of the Catholic Bishops of Washington, stated that because the Catholic
Church has a consistent belief is that every human life is sacred from
conception until natural death it has energized the Bishops’ to abolish the
death penalty for decades.
“Our country’s legal system is far from perfect when it comes to imposing the
death penalty,” said Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle. “This past fall,
our state’s Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional as
it had been implemented in an arbitrary and racially-biased manner. Senate Bill
5339 removes the unconstitutional language and moves Washington state towards
greater justice and respect for life at all stages.”
The release also stated that the Bishops have long been on record as opposing
capital punishment, while stating their deep concern for families and loved
ones of victims of violent crimes.
“All citizens have the right to be protected from those who commit the crime of
murder,” said Archbishop Sartain. “The act of murder cries out for an
appropriate punishment, but the death penalty merely adds violence to violence,
perpetuating an illusion that taking one human life for another can somehow
balance the scales of justice.”
The Catholic Bishops of Washington State are Archbishop J. Peter Sartain and
Auxiliary Bishops Eusebio Elizondo and Daniel Mueggenborg of Seattle, Bishop
Thomas Daly of Spokane, and Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima.
(source: KIMA TV news)
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