July 1
FLORIDA:
Penalty phase begins for man who killed Winter Park caregiver----Scott Nelson
could face death penalty in slaying of Jennifer Fulford
The penalty phase in Scott Nelson's murder trial will begin Monday at the
Orange County Courthouse.
Nelson was found guilty Friday of killing Jennifer Fulford after the jury spent
4 hours deliberating.
Fulford was a caretaker in Winter Park and was slain in September 2017.
Nelson's lawyers are expected to do everything they can to keep Nelson off
death row, bringing in more evidence and the doctors who evaluated Nelson.
Prosecutors are expected to argue that mental illness is not a factor in the
case.
Nelson was also found guilty of carjacking, kidnapping, and robbery.
(source: clickorlando.com)
TENNESSEE:
Knox County to hold trial in 2007 murder case
A Tennessee judge announced Knox County will hold the trial for a man accused
of helping kidnap, torture and kill a couple in a 2007 carjacking.
Knox County Criminal Court Judge Bob McGee rejected Eric Boyd’s request on
Thursday to move his Aug. 5 trial to another location, the Knoxville News
Sentinel reports.
Boyd was indicted on murder charges last year after new evidence emerged
allegedly linking him to the attack of 21-year-old Channon Christian and her
boyfriend 23-year-old Christopher Newsom in Knoxville, Tennessee, 12 years ago.
Boyd was convicted of harboring a fugitive in 2008, and is serving an 18-year
sentence related to the attack. Now, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
They say he helped kidnap, rape and kill Newsom.
Boyd is the last of 5 suspects to face trial in the case, the paper reports.
Boyd’s attorney says he’s worried about bias, as the previous trials in the
case have drawn national publicity and animosity from Knox County citizens. The
case became racially charged: The victims were white and the defendants were
black. However, the county’s assistant district attorney argues past
high-publicity cases have been tried successfully without problems in the
county.
Alleged ringleader of the attack, Lemaricus Davidson, was the only other
suspect tried in the slayings by a Knox County jury. He was sentenced to death.
His brother, Letalvis Cobbinsis, is serving life without parole. Cobbins’
friend, George Thomas, is serving 2 consecutive life terms. Cobbins girlfriend,
Vanessa Coleman, was deemed a facilitator and is serving 35 years.
(source: Associated Press)
*********************
New Tennessee law impacts death row
Tennessee is set to remove a layer of court review before death row inmates are
executed.
Starting Monday, death penalty cases will no longer be reviewed by Tennessee's
Court of Criminal Appeals and will automatically be sent to the state Supreme
Court.
Lawmakers say the change offers a quicker path for victim justice, though death
penalty reviews by the Court of Criminal Appeals had been taking under a year.
Federal courts account for most of the time it takes for death penalty cases to
wend through the appeals process, sometimes 3 decades.
(source: Chattanooga Times Free Press)
USA:
Death Penalty Abolitionists Fasting at US Supreme Court----As Death Penalty Use
Declines, Highly Visible Anti-Death Penalty Activists Continue Four Day Fast
and Vigil at U.S. Supreme Court
Washington, DC – July 1, 2019 – Survivors of wrongful conviction who faced
execution, murder victim family members, and family members of those currently
on death row are among dozens of death penalty abolitionists from across the
United States and beyond who today enter the 3rd of the 4 day 26th Annual Fast
& Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty on the sidewalk in front of the US Supreme
Court. Wearing t-shirts, holding signs and sharing information with tourists,
students and other passers-by, abolitionists are gathering signatures on
petitions to stop upcoming executions in Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas
and Sri Lanka.
Background: June 29, 2019 marks the 47th anniversary of the 1972 Furman v.
Georgia decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty
laws in the US, finding capital punishment to be “arbitrary and capricious.”
July 2nd marks the 43rd anniversary of the 1976 Gregg decision, which upheld
new state death penalty laws and allowed the resumption of executions. This is
the 26th consecutive year that the Abolitionist Action Committee is holding its
annual Fast and Vigil between the dates of these 2 landmark decisions. WHEN:
July 1 and 2 - around the clock, 24-hour presence, ending at midnight on July 2
with a unique meal to break their fast on the sidewalk in front of the Court.
Evening teach-ins with noted speakers each day from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm (SEE
BELOW) WHAT: A 4 day liquid-only fast and vigil to mark the anniversaries of
the historic 1972 Furman and 1976 Gregg Supreme Court decisions on the death
penalty.
WHO: Exonerated death row prisoners, murder victim family members, 100+
anti-death penalty activists from as many as 20 states, clergy, scholars and
leaders of state and national anti-death penalty organizations.
WHERE: On the sidewalk in front of the United States Supreme Court
Details at http://www.abolition.org/fastandvigil/schedule.html.
The Abolitionist Action Committee is an ad-hoc group of individuals committed
to highly visible and effective public education for alternatives to the death
penalty through nonviolent direct action.
(source: AAC)
********************
Catholics Emboldened to Abolish the Death Penalty----New Hampshire became the
21st state to formally end the death penalty, after its legislature overrode
the governor’s veto.
A bipartisan legislative majority, supported by the Catholic Church, overturned
a gubernatorial veto May 30 to make New Hampshire the 21st U.S. state to
formally abolish the death penalty.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Catholics, along with fiscal
and pro-life conservatives, played a vital role in creating the overwhelming
majority to end the practice in the Granite State.
Within the year following Pope Francis’s revision to the Catechism of the
Catholic Church declaring the death penalty to be morally “inadmissible” in the
modern era, one state, California, has imposed a moratorium on capital
punishment, and now New Hampshire has joined Washington state in striking
capital punishment from its books.
Meredith Cook, the chancellor of the Diocese of Manchester and its former
public policy director, told the Register that the death penalty repeal had
been two decades in the making for Catholics in New Hampshire.
“Catholics, lay and ordained, joined together in this effort that is a positive
step toward building a culture that upholds the sacredness of all human life,”
she said.
In the case of New Hampshire, Cook said, Pope Francis’s change to the Catechism
“simply reflected what already was the general view on this issue among the
faithful in New Hampshire,” that had formed due to the Church’s teaching on the
death penalty in the last few decades.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing
Network, told the Register the Catholic Church has played an important role in
abolishing the death penalty, with Pope St. John Paul II calling the practice
“cruel and unnecessary,” and Benedict XVI declaring “society’s leaders should
make every effort to eliminate [the death penalty].”
The U.S. bishops also voted June 13 by an overwhelming 194-8 margin in favor of
new language in the U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults that conforms to Pope
Francis’s revision to the universal Catechism. The text has not been revealed
publicly, but Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles, who chairs the
U.S. bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, indicated June 11 at
the summer assembly in Baltimore that the language reflects much of the
explanation provided by Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, the prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In an explanatory letter last year
to bishops, Cardinal Ladaria communicated that the Catechism change is an
“authentic development of doctrine,” building on the teaching of Pope St. John
Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Catholic News Service reported that, according to Bishop Barron, the proposed
language for the U.S. catechism stresses “the irreducible dignity of all
people, even those accused of terrible crimes,” the developments within civil
society that render capital punishment morally inadmissible, and the serious
risk of the “gross misapplication” of the death penalty.
Murphy noted that Washington and New Hampshire abolished the death penalty
within the year since Pope Francis declared the death penalty “inadmissible,”
and that Gov. Gavin Newsom had also imposed a moratorium on the death penalty
in California.
“The momentum created by the Church’s clarified teaching on the death penalty
is impossible to ignore,” she said.
What Effect Will the Catechism Have?
Pope Francis’ revision to the Catechism declaring the death penalty to be
morally “inadmissible” came at a time when the Pew Research Center found an
uptick of support for the death penalty.
Despite St. John Paul II’s teaching in the 1994 encyclical Evangelium Vitae and
change to the Catechism in 1997 declaring the moral application of the death
penalty as social self-defense “practically non-existent” in modern societies,
Pew found a majority of Catholics (53%) support the death penalty, while 42%
are opposed.
Catholic Church leaders in Nebraska watched the state Legislature’s ban on
capital punishment overturned in 2016 by a referendum campaign funded in part
by the family fortune of the state’s Catholic governor, Pete Ricketts.
The California Catholic Conference and other death penalty abolitionists in
California saw a similar reversal in 2016 after succeeding in bringing a
measure to abolish the death penalty to the ballot. The initiative not only
lost, but Californians approved a ballot measure to speed up the process
instead. Newsom’s March 2019 moratorium on the death penalty, however, means
that the Catholic Church has a second shot to prevent capital punishment from
being practiced in the state.
Andrew Rivas, the executive director of the California Catholic Conference,
told the Register that there was “more momentum than ever” to educate the
public and end the death penalty following the governor’s moratorium.
“Moving forward, we are so grateful for the Holy Father’s emphasis in the
Catechism on preserving life,” he said. “The clarification of Church teaching
should be a tremendous help in keeping our message focused on the issue of
ending the use of capital punishment rather than what it costs to run political
campaigns.”
Catholic Debate Continues
Edward Feser, a Catholic philosopher at Pasadena City College and the co-author
of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment,
told the Register that he doubted the revisions of the Catechism on the death
penalty would have much practical effect on public policy.
“It might have a minor impact insofar as it will give a ‘talking point’ to
politicians who are already opposed to capital punishment for other reasons,
and who will use the Pope’s revision as a rhetorical weapon against Catholics
who oppose abortion and euthanasia but not capital punishment,” he said.
Feser said the Catholic debate on the death penalty is not closed, but is “just
beginning,” on the basis that the Holy Father’s language “trades on ambiguity.”
“It is simply not clear from the wording whether he is saying that capital
punishment is intrinsically immoral, or whether he is saying instead that while
it is not intrinsically immoral, it is prudentially ill-advised,” he said.
For Feser and other Catholics who support the death penalty, their concern is
that calling the death penalty “intrinsically immoral,” as opposed to
prudentially ill-advised, would foment “a doctrinal crisis.”
“While every Catholic certainly has the right to oppose capital punishment in
practice, no Catholic has the right to claim that it is always and
intrinsically evil, because this would contradict the clear and consistent
teaching of Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and every pope up
to Benedict XVI,” he said. “If the Church could be that wrong for that long
about something that serious, then there is no limit to what else she might be
wrong about. The issue is that serious.”
However, these views and the nature of what is at stake with the death penalty,
have been challenged by other orthodox Catholic philosophers, such as E.
Christian Brugger and Robert George among others. They argue capital punishment
was not an infallibly taught doctrine, that the present teaching in the
Catechism is a legitimate development of doctrine in line with the apostolic
age, and that opposing the direct killing of human beings by the state reflects
a pro-life ethic.
What is Next?
Pope Francis’ catechesis on the subject has at the very least raised morale and
energy for Catholic death penalty abolitionists. Murphy said the Catholic
Mobilizing Network has seen “a surge in parishes, dioceses, and Catholic
ministries that are seeking out ways to lift up this historic development in
Church teaching, and to engage more deeply in this critical piece of the
pro-life movement.”
She expected the USCCB’s overwhelming confirmation of the revision to the U.S.
Catechism would bolster the effect.
“This is an incredible opportunity to form the American faithful in the
Church’s unequivocal opposition to capital punishment,” she said, “and to
embolden them to build a culture that is, in the words of St. John Paul II,
‘unconditionally pro-life.’”
(source: Peter Jesserer Smith, National Catholic Register)
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