Sept. 25
TENNESSEE:
Tennessee Seeks Execution Dates for 9 Death Row Inmates----Tennessee's attorney
general has asked the state Supreme Court to set 9 execution dates, bucking a
national movement away from capital punishment.
Tennessee's attorney general has asked the state Supreme Court to set execution
dates for nine death row prisoners, bucking a national movement away from
capital punishment.
Attorney General Herbert Slatery quietly filed the request on Friday with no
explanation, and the state Supreme Court later posted it on its website on
Tuesday.
"The Tennessee Constitution guarantees victims of crime the right to a 'prompt
and final conclusion of the case after the conviction of sentence,'" Slatery
said in a statement Tuesday in response to a request for comment from The
Associated Press.
Slatery's motion came the same day he publicly announced he would challenge a
Nashville Criminal Court's decision to commute the death sentence of black
inmate Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman's to life in prison after concerns were raised that
racism tainted the jury selection pool. Slatery argued in his appeal that the
court's order "circumvented established legal procedures."
Assistant Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry said she was surprised by the
request when she received it in the mail on Monday. 7 of the 9 men included in
Slatery's motion are represented by the public defender's office.
"Each case is unique and represents a number of fundamental constitutional
problems including innocence, racism, and severe mental illness," Henry wrote
in a statement on Tuesday. "We will oppose the appointed attorney general's
request."
In Tennessee, the attorney general can request execution dates once juries have
delivered death sentences and inmates have exhausted their three-tier appeals
process in state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court
then schedules the executions. It has not yet scheduled the 9 Slatery requested
but has scheduled 2 others for the coming months.
Tennessee has executed 5 people since it resumed executions about a year ago.
The state was 2nd only to Texas in the number of executions it carried out in
2018, the 4th consecutive year in which there have been fewer than 30
executions nationwide. Tennessee executed 3 people last year; Texas put to
death 13.
The 9 men in Slatery's execution request are:
— Byron Black, who was convicted of murder in the 1987 slayings of his
girlfriend Angela Clay and her 2 daughters, Latoya and Lakeisha Clay, in
Nashville. He was sentenced to die for the death of Lakeisha Clay and received
2 life sentences for the other killings.
— Tony V. Carruthers, who was convicted of 1st-degree murder in the 1994
slayings of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson and Frederick Tucker in
Memphis. He was given a death sentence for each conviction.
— Henry Eugene Hodges, who pleaded guilty to 1st-degree premeditated murder and
aggravated robbery in the 1990 slaying of Ronald Bassett in Nashville.
— Donald Ray Middlebrooks, who was convicted of torture and murder in the
slaying of 14-year-old Kerrick Majors in Nashville in 1987. The high court
reversed the death sentence in 1992 and ordered the case back to trial court
for resentencing, but Middlebrooks was eventually given a 2nd death sentence.
— Farris Genner Morris, who was convicted of murder in the 1997 slayings of
15-year-old Erica Hurd and James Ragland in Jackson, as well as the rape of
Angela Ragland. A jury imposed the death penalty for Hurd's killing.
— Harold Wayne Nichols, who was convicted of rape and 1st-degree felony murder
in the 1988 death of Karen Pulley in Hamilton County.
— Pervis Tyrone Payne, who was convicted of murder for the 1987 deaths of
Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter Lacie in Memphis. He was
sentenced to death for each of the killings. Payne also was convicted of
intending to murder Christopher's 3-year-old son Nicholas.
— Oscar Franklin Smith, who was convicted of murder in the 1989 triple slayings
of his estranged wife Judy Lynn Smoth and her 2 sons from a previous marriage,
Chad and Jason Burnett in Nashville. He was sentenced to death for all 3
killings.
— Gary Wayne Sutton, who was convicted of 1st-degree murder in the 1992 slaying
of Tommy Griffin in Blount County. A jury sentenced Sutton to death.
In Tennessee, executions are carried out through lethal injection unless the
drugs are unavailable, in which case the electric chair is used.
Additionally, death row inmates who were convicted of crimes before January
1999 can choose the electric chair or lethal injection. Tennessee put
56-year-old Stephen West to death by electric chair last month. West was
convicted of the 1986 kidnappings and stabbing deaths of a mother and her
15-year-old daughter. He also was convicted of raping the teen.
(source: Associated Press)
***********************
Nashville attorney: Death sentence deal may have prompted latest execution date
requests----Raybin: "We soon could become the new Texas."
Nashville attorney David Raybin was working with the Tennessee Attorney
General’s office 42 years ago when he helped draft the state’s death penalty
statutes.
Now in private practice, he looks over his old office’s latest request: the
state’s top cop wants the state’s highest court to set execution dates for 9
additional Tennessee death row inmates.
Raybin offered this assessment about the state Attorney General's office: "I
see this as some sort of preemptive strike."
The state has already executed 5 inmates in just more than a year, and the
Tennessee Supreme Court has already scheduled at least two more executions. But
Raybin says he thinks the reason Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery is
asking for nine more execution dates stems from a death row deal that Nashville
District Attorney General Glenn Funk organized last month .
In August, Nashville Judge Monte Watkins accepted that deal struck by convicted
killer Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, which replaced his death sentence with life
imprisonment. Abdur’Rahman’s attorneys had asked Watkins for a new trial
because of racial discrimination concerns during jury selection prior to
Abdur’Rahman’s original trial. Funk and Abdur’Rahman agreed to convert his
death sentence to life imprisonment in return for the inmate dropping his
request for a new trial.
The state's ask for the additional execution dates came three weeks later. It
included all 4 remaining death row inmates who committed their crimes in
Nashville.
“I see a connection there, and that does concern me,” Raybin said. “[The
Tennessee Attorney General’s office] is concerned the District Attorney [Funk]
might agree to reduce them to life.”
Included in the state's execution date request is a Davidson County-based
inmate who was sentenced as recently as 1992, according to a TDOC list of death
row inmates. While the state’s request includes inmates from other counties,
several inmates from outside Nashville remain without execution dates,
including inmates who were sentenced as early as 1983.
Raybin says he sees the move as a sign of growing tensions between state
prosecutors in Slatery’s office and local district prosecutors in Funk’s
office; two groups who are traditionally supposed to work together.
"Here I see an antagonism going on that is somewhat unprecedented in my
experience," Raybin said.
It’s an antagonism that Raybin says was exacerbated last week, when Slatery
announced he would sue to uphold Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence. Slatery said
neither Funk nor Watkins had the authority to make or approve the deal.
Slatery filed for the nine new execution dates on the same day.
"It’s very rare for the state to have appealed the district attorney's
agreement with the defense attorney," Raybin said. "It’s not illegal what Judge
Watkins did, there's plenty of precedent for ruling the way that he did."
Slatery’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday
evening. In legal filings, the state argued that it was appropriate for the
Tennessee Supreme Court to set execution dates for the nine inmates because
their court appeals had finished without a reversal of their death sentences
and because there were no judicial or executive orders staying their executions
or granting reprieves.
The request for execution dates for 9 more Tennessee death row inmates bucks
the national trend as states nationwide are carrying out fewer executions.
"Most of the states are reducing the number of death penalty cases," Raybin
said. "Many states still have the death penalty, but you still have an overall
reduction."
"We soon could become the new 'Texas' as far as that's concerned," Raybin said.
"I don’t think that's a great thing to be known for."
Raybin says he thinks the recent legal successes the state has seen in death
penalty appeals has encouraged state officials to ramp up its execution
schedule.
"I think the state has been emboldened, perhaps by the rulings in these death
penalty cases,” Raybin said. "They feel like there's nothing that's going to
stop them."
(source: WTVF news)
MISSOURI----impending execution
Attorneys fear Missouri inmate faces ‘grotesque’ execution
Attorneys for a Missouri death row inmate with a rare medical condition say the
tracheostomy tube he relies on to breathe increases the risk of a “grotesque
execution process” if he is put to death as scheduled Oct. 1.
Clemency from Gov. Mike Parson may be the last hope for 51-year-old convicted
killer Russell Bucklew. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the
execution could proceed, and Bucklew’s attorneys haven’t decided if there is
any merit in a state court appeal.
Bucklew suffers from cavernous hemangioma, which causes blood-filled tumors in
his head, neck and throat. Twice before, in 2014 and 2018, he’s been within
hours of execution, only to get last-minute reprieves from the U.S. Supreme
Court amid concerns about how his body would react to Missouri’s execution
drug, a single dose of pentobarbital.
Parson’s spokeswoman, Kelli Jones, said he is still reviewing the case. In a
statement, she said the Republican governor “has consistently supported capital
punishment when merited by the circumstances and all other legal remedies have
been exhausted and when due process has been satisfied.”
Human rights groups and death penalty opponents, including all four Roman
Catholic bishops in Missouri and the American Civil Liberties Union, have urged
Parson to intervene. The ACLU and Missourians for Alternatives to the Death
Penalty say they’ve gathered more than 57,000 petition signatures they plan to
present to the governor Thursday.
Shortly after the 2018 reprieve, Bucklew contracted meningitis and had to be
rushed to a St. Louis hospital, said Jeremy Weis, a Bucklew attorney. Doctors
inserted a permanent tracheostomy tube.
Weis said the tube is narrow and the tumors bleed easily, especially when
Bucklew is stressed. If blood fills the tube during the execution, Weis said,
Bucklew won’t be able to breathe and could choke to death.
“It really raises the risk of what could be a fairly grotesque execution
process,” Weis said.
A spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections would not say if the
state planned any special precautions to ensure Bucklew doesn’t suffer, such as
extra medical staff or monitoring. Spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said witnesses
will continue to be allowed to observe the execution at the state prison in
Bonne Terre.
In the clemency petition, Bucklew’s attorneys warned of what witnesses may see.
“Russell’s compromised medical condition make it highly likely that the state’s
protocol will cause a visually gruesome execution that will traumatize
corrections personnel and witnesses alike,” the petition states.
Bucklew has previously proposed that the state execute him by having him
breathe pure nitrogen through a mask, but the state responded that no state has
ever carried out an execution in that way.
Some attempts to execute sick inmates in other states have gone wrong in recent
years.
In 2017, the execution of twice-convicted killer Alva Campbell, who suffered
from smoking-related breathing problems, had to be halted in Ohio when a usable
vein couldn’t be found to administer execution drugs. He died in 2018 at age
69.
In 2018, Alabama halted the lethal injection of Doyle Lee Hamm when the
execution team had trouble getting the intravenous line connected. Hamm had
damaged veins because of lymphoma, hepatitis and drug use. A doctor hired by
Hamm’s lawyers wrote in a report that Hamm had at least 11 puncture sites and
bled heavily from his groin during the attempts to connect the line.
Adding to the uncertainty in Missouri is the secretive process the state uses
to obtain its execution drug. Big pharmaceutical companies prohibit the use of
their drugs in executions, so it is believed that Missouri and other states
have turned to compound pharmacies for their supplies. Missouri refuses to say
how or where it gets the drug.
None of the nearly 2 dozen inmates executed since Missouri switched from a
3-drug protocol to pentobarbital in 2013 have shown obvious signs of pain or
suffering.
Bucklew killed Michael Sanders in 1996. Court records show Bucklew’s
ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Pruitt, had moved in with Sanders in Cape Girardeau.
Bucklew killed Sanders in front of Pruitt, her 2 daughters and Sanders’ 2 sons.
He handcuffed and beat Pruitt, drove her to a secluded area and raped her.
After a state trooper spotted the car, Bucklew shot at the trooper but missed.
Bucklew later escaped from jail, hid in the home of Pruitt’s mother and beat
her with a hammer.
(source: Associated Press)
****************************************
Facing Bloody Execution, Prisoner Presses Human Rights Claim
A longtime Missouri death row prisoner with a rare medical condition has
“continued to deteriorate” and “continues to be at a very high risk of choking
to death on his own blood during an execution,” according to a declaration from
the doctor who evaluated him last week.
Facing an Oct. 1 execution that he and his supporters say will almost certainly
amount to torture, Russell Bucklew could face such a brutal end due to “the
rupturing of the blood-filled tumors in his throat,” the declaration dated
Tuesday from Dr. Joel Zivot said.
“In such a circumstance, Mr. Bucklew would experience feelings of suffocation
and extreme and excruciating pain,” Zivot said following his Sept. 20
evaluation of Bucklew.
Though Bucklew presented evidence that his rare and progressive disease, called
cavernous hemangioma, would lead him to “sputter, choke, and suffocate on his
own blood for up to several minutes before he dies” during execution by lethal
injection, the Supreme Court ruled against him in April, 5-4.
Bucklew couldn’t show that the state’s injection method “superadds” pain to the
death sentence, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court’s 5
Republican-appointees, over multiple dissents from Democratic-appointees saying
Bucklew’s execution would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and
unusual punishment. Both sides cited previous testimony from Zivot in support
of their points.
Zivot is an assistant professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the Emory
Center for Critical Care/Emory University, and is an expert on physician
participation in lethal injection, according to his website bio. He’s written
extensively on the topic. He’s been consulting with Bucklew’s attorneys since
2014.
Human Rights Claim
Having lost at the high court, Bucklew is now pressing his claim in a human
rights forum in Washington, trying to put political pressure on Missouri Gov.
Michael Parson, a Republican, to halt the execution, while state officials and
victim advocates—and, it seems, a majority of the Supreme Court—say justice is
already long overdue.
Bucklew was convicted of murder and other offenses after a “vicious crime
spree” over two decades ago that also included kidnapping, rape, escape from
jail, and assault, the state said in a brief to Supreme Court justices last
year.
But on Tuesday, at a rare hearing at the Organization of American States’
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the focus was on Bucklew’s condition
and what his lawyers and supporters say will be a gruesome affair in a Missouri
death chamber, if the state goes through with it.
The situation is more than just life or death—it’s life or being tortured to
death, the ACLU’s Jamil Dakwar said at the hearing. But it’s a situation that
Parson can prevent with the stroke of a pen, he said.
Missouri didn’t send anyone to the hearing, but the U.S. State Department did.
Its representatives maintained that Bucklew has already gotten his day in
court, and that his impending execution can’t amount to torture under
international law because the state doesn’t intend to cause him pain.
Commissioners clearly sided with Bucklew at the hearing, taking both Missouri
and the U.S. to task for their capital punishment positions.
Yet it’s unclear what effect, if any, all of this will have on Parson’s
decision whether to grant Bucklew clemency.
In a statement provided to Bloomberg Law on Tuesday before the hearing, his
office said he “takes seriously both his duty and responsibility to see that
lawfully entered capital sentences are carried out in accordance with state
law.” Each capital punishment case “will be thoroughly reviewed before any
decision for pardon or clemency is made. Governor Parson has consistently
supported capital punishment when merited by the circumstances and all other
legal remedies have been exhausted and when due process has been satisfied.”
Parson’s office didn’t immediately respond to a followup inquiry on Tuesday as
to his latest position.
But the drumbeat for Bucklew will continue in the days leading up to his
potential demise.
Adding to the grassroots effort, the ACLU and Missourians for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty say that, on Thursday, they’ll bring volunteers to the
Missouri state capitol and deliver tens of thousands of petitions to Parson,
pressing him to halt the execution.
The commission, an autonomous organ of OAS whose mission is to “promote and
protect human rights in the American hemisphere,” has previously weighed in on
Bucklew’s case to oppose his execution, including in connection with a petition
brought by him and Charles Warner, who was on death row in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma executed Warner in 2015. While he was being executed, he said, “My
body is on fire.”
(source: bloomberglaw.com)
ARIZONA:
Lawsuits in Arizona and Virginia Highlight Media Efforts to Witness Executions
in Their Entirety
Federal lawsuits filed by coalitions of media organizations in two states
highlight recent media efforts to vindicate the public’s right to witness
executions in their entirety. On September 17, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit ruled in a case brought by a coalition of Arizona media
organizations that the First Amendment right to witness an execution
encompasses the right to hear the execution in its entirety. On the heels of
that ruling, 4 Virginia media organizations filed suit in federal district
court in Richmond on September 23 seeking to compel the Virginia Department of
Corrections to leave open 2 curtains that, the suit alleges, have prevented the
public from “observ[ing] crucial steps in the execution process.”
The Arizona lawsuit was filed by seven death-row prisoners and the First
Amendment Coalition of Arizona following the botched execution of Joseph Wood
in 2015, in which he gasped, choked, and struggled to breath for nearly 2 hours
behind a sound-proof window separating witnesses from the execution chamber.
The appeals court ruled in favor of the petitioners that the First Amendment
guaranteed access to sound as an essential part of public oversight of the
execution process. Writing for the court, Judge Paul J. Watford said “[t]he
historical tradition of public access [to government proceedings] includes the
ability to hear the sounds of executions. … Execution witnesses need to be able
to observe and report on the entire process so that the public can determine
whether lethal injections are fairly and humanely administered.” Turning off
the microphone in the execution chamber when the execution is under way,
Watford wrote, prevents witnesses “from hearing sounds after the insertion of
intravenous lines [and] means that the public will not have full information
regarding the administration of lethal-injection drugs and the prisoner’s
experience as he dies.”
Under Arizona’s execution protocol, execution witnesses can view through a
video monitor the prisoner being strapped to the execution gurney and the
insertion of the intravenous execution line. They then can observe through a
window the administration of the execution drugs. The ruling bars Arizona from
turning off the microphone in the execution chamber after the IV line is
placed.
The Virginia lawsuit challenges provisions in the Commonwealth’s execution
protocol that delay opening the curtains to the witness room until the after
the IV lines have been established, preventing witnesses from observing the
prisoner being brought into the execution chamber and strapped to the gurney,
and the insertion of the IV lines. The plaintiffs allege that the state’s 2017
execution protocol violates the public’s First Amendment “affirmative right of
access to certain government proceedings, including a right to witness the
entirety of executions carried out by the government.” The limitations on what
witnesses can see during Virginia executions, the plaintiffs’ say, “severely
curtail the public’s ability to understand how those executions are
administered, or to assess whether a particular execution violates either the
Constitution or the state’s prescribed execution procedures, or is otherwise
botched.”
Virginia’s protocol was revised in 2017 to make it less transparent after the
problematic execution of Ricky Gray. Gray’s attorneys had voiced concerns about
the unexplained half-hour delay in Gray’s execution during which execution
personnel attempted to set an IV line. They said that the prison had checked
Gray’s veins before the execution and found nothing to suggest that Gray — an
otherwise healthy 39-year-old man — had any problems with his veins. An
independent pathologist reviewing Gray’s autopsy said that “changes described
in Ricky Gray’s lungs are more often seen in the aftermath of a sarin gas
attack than in a routine hospital autopsy.”
The Arizona court decision was a mixed outcome for First Amendment advocates.
Although granting a right of access to the sounds of the execution, the court
ruled that the First Amendment right of access to courts did not encompass the
right to information about execution drugs or execution personnel. However,
Arizona has already committed to provide some information about its execution
drugs under a prior partial settlement agreement in the case, and the court’s
ruling does not affect that agreement.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Marsha Berzon argued that Arizona’s secrecy
surrounding its execution process may violate the death-row prisoners’ First
and Eighth Amendment rights. “I write separately to call attention to the
inmates’ plausible allegations that Arizona, through its deliberate concealment
of information about its execution process, has violated their First Amendment
right of access to the courts,” she wrote. “I also write to reiterate my view
that Arizona’s approach to devising, announcing, and recording its execution
procedures denies condemned inmates their right under the Fourteenth Amendment
to procedural due process of law.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
OREGON:
Put death penalty to a vote
A potentially flawed law passed by the 2019 Legislature that limits the death
penalty will take effect without a fix, potentially allowing already convicted
death-row inmates to avoid execution if they are retried or re-sentenced after
appeals. That’s not what the Legislature intended, and it’s unfortunate that
lawmakers could not agree to amend the bill in a special session.
Gov. Kate Brown had said she would call a special session to amend the bill if
lawmakers could agree on a fix. Bill supporter Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene,
said he had agreement in the Senate, but House leaders could not line up enough
votes.
Oregon voters reinstated capital punishment by constitutional amendment in 1984
after the state Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.
Majority Democrats this year narrowed the definition of aggravated murder — the
only crime punishable by death in this state — to include only terrorist acts
that kill 2 or more people, killing police officers or children younger than
14.
Supporters of the bill intended it to apply only to new cases going forward,
but the state Justice Department issued an opinion saying the new law could
apply to previously convicted defendants who were granted a new trial or
re-sentencing.
There are compelling reasons to abolish the death penalty. But that debate
needs to involve all Oregon voters, not just lawmakers. Trying to restrict the
death penalty by redefining aggravated murder is fraught with problems, as this
mess illustrates.
Death penalty opponents should put the matter to the people, and make the case
to voters.
(source: Ashland Tidings Editorial Board)
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