[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Oct. 7 EUROPE: The Dark Life of a Medieval Executioner – A Cut Away from the Rest It is no surprise that the medieval period was filled with all kinds of undesirable jobs. There were leech collectors, cesspool cleaners, serfs, and gong farmers, to name a few. But one vocation that was, perhaps, one of the toughest, was the job of the medieval executioner. Theirs was one of the darkest, most taboo jobs of the Middle Ages. Whether employed in splendid royal courts or backwater petty castles, these vicious headsmen had a singular purpose – to do the job that very few could or wanted to do. Theirs was the role of taking lives, tightening the noose or decapitating those who were destined for an early grave. Their axes knew no class or creed – the sharp iron culled both king and peasant. Medieval Executioners: Masters of Dirty Jobs During much of the early medieval period, as well as the centuries that followed, crime and lawlessness were rampant throughout the world. From Europe to Asia and the Middle East, evil was an everyday occurrence. Rapes, thievery, murder, heresy, and leprosy – all manner of sin and decadence ran rampant in the unruly medieval world, under the auspices of death itself. But where there is lawlessness, there is also justice, albeit sometimes a cruel one. Mercy was not the usual approach to solving crimes, much to the disadvantage of the budding criminal of the period. This means that once dealt, justice was swift and brutal – a determined and definite retribution against the usurpation of the order of the society. In short, the death penalty was often the sentence. As the earliest epoch of the Middle Ages slowly advanced into a new, slightly more developed period, it also saw the rise of a new vocation. Someone was needed to perform the role that no one wanted - that was the executioner’s vocation. From as early as the 1200’s, the societies of Western and Central Europe were increasingly requiring an official position that would satisfy their needs for delivering capital punishment to their convicts. Prominent cities throughout France, Germany, and England required skilled executioners to act as the divine hand of justice appointed by the state and the royal court. One of the earliest documented official executioner positions dates to 1202, when a prominent headsman, Nicolas Jouhanne – nicknamed “la Justice” – was appointed the vicomte, and official executioner of the Normandy town of Caux. From then on, this official position spread through many capitals and large towns of Western Europe. But even before that period, and certainly well after it, the role of the executioner was definitely a troubled one, straddling a grey area between good and evil and between acceptance and repugnance. Executioners were very much ostracized. Death, and moreover, murder, always had a difficult position in society. When done by a mass of people, as in lynching, murder was no longer a taboo act – the group erased the perpetrator. But once an individual took the matter into their own hands, and performed a murder, the situation was different. And such was the predicament of the executioner. A person in this position, who was known to be the headsman, was seen as a troubled person, a sinner beyond redemption, and simply put – a killer. The masses could not accept the wanton taking of a life – on command – and could not comprehend the state of mind that hid behind the eyes of the headsman. One good example of this viewpoint of the masses can be observed from the many writings and memoires from the Middle Ages, and chiefly the writings of Joseph de Maistre. Here is a part of his observations of the character of an executioner: “This head, this heart, are they made like ours? Do they not have something odd or foreign to our nature? On the exterior he [the executioner] is made just as we are; he is born, like us; but he is an extraordinary being…Is he a man?” At the Edge of Society The truth is not very far – a medieval executioner had a hard time in the society around him. In many, if not most, cultures of the medieval world, an executioner was an ostracized, shunned person, who belonged to a markedly different caste of society. Even though they sometimes enjoyed financial benefits and could earn reasonable amounts from their work, these people still suffered in solitude and lived life on the margins of society – simply because of their vocation. To freely deliver death, torture, and all manner of foulness on another person was seen as reason enough for the people to look down on an executioner and shun him. In most countries, executioners and their families lived on the peripheries of cities, well away from the main residences. They also couldn’t be buried like the rest of the citizens – their graves were separated from the main graveyard, marked, and much less elaborate. The executioners had to be recognizable even
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., N.C., USA
Oct. 7 TEXAS: Murderer must die, Texas appeals court rules, despite victim’s family’s opposition An appeals court has rejected a lower court’s recommendation that urged judges to spare the life of a death row inmate or give him another sentencing hearing because prosecutors lied during his trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a ruling Wednesday saying that Paul David Storey has to die, despite an impassioned plea from the parents of the man he murdered that asked the court to let him live. Storey’s attorneys, Mike Ware and Keith Hampton, said they are considering options, and are now planing to ask the appeals court to reconsider its ruling. Three of the nine judges on the appeals court dissented from the court’s majority opinion. “The opinion says two things,” Ware said. “It’s OK for a lawyer to lie and say untrue things to the jury and to the judge, and it’s OK for the prosecutor to cover up that lie and the courts will allow that lie to go forward. I refuse to accept that is the law.” The court postponed Storey’s execution days before he was scheduled to die. Glenn and Judy Cherry, the parents of Jonas Cherry, the murder victim, said they never wanted to see their son’s killer put to death and that they told prosecutors early on about their feelings concerning the death penalty. Attorneys for Storey argued that the Cherrys told prosecutors about their opposition to the death penalty, yet during the sentencing phase of the trial, the state argued that everyone in the family was in agreement with the use of the death penalty. Christy Jack, then a Tarrant County prosecutor who is now a partner at Varghese Summersett, told the jury: “And it should go without saying that all of the Jonas’ [the victim’s] family and everyone who loved him believe the death penalty is appropriate.” Appellate judges sent the case back to a lower court to figure out the truth. Visiting State District Judge Everett Young ruled that Storey’s sentence is entitled to further review on multiple constitutional grounds, which include a violation of his right to due process, the suppression of mitigating evidence by prosecutors, the introduction of false evidence to a jury, and his right to a fair punishment hearing. Jack and another prosecutor, Robert Foran, have always maintained that Storey’s defense attorneys were told how the Cherrys felt about the death penalty prior to the trial. The appeals attorneys representing Storey now say the defense attorneys were never told about the Cherrys’ opposition to the death penalty. The appellate court said in its opinion that it does not often go against trial judges. But in this case, it did. “In an unprecedented move, the highest criminal court in Texas reversed Judge Young’s decision and reinstated the death sentence,’ Jack said. “The Attorney General’s Office will be seeking a new execution date. There really is nothing more to say at this point.” Opinion cites an absence of evidence The appeal judges ruled that there is no evidence that shows that one of Storey’s appellate lawyers, Robert Ford, did not know about the Cherrys’ death penalty stance and argues that Ford could have discovered how the father felt through the exercise of reasonable diligence. Young found that Ford, who is dead, did not know that the victim’s family members opposed the death sentence for Storey. But the appeals court said that finding is not supported by the record. The appeals court also said that while Ford had a good reputation as a diligent attorney, there was no evidence in the record that he was diligent in this case. If this ruling is allowed to stand, attorneys will be placed in the difficult position of assuming that all statements from prosecutors are lies, Hampton said. Those attorneys will also be forced to contact the family members of victims to determine their positions on laws like the death penalty. “The last thing that people want is to hear from the lawyers of the person who has been convicted of murdering their family members,” Hampton said. Storey’s legal team is exploring all possibilities including asking for intervention from elected officials, Hampton said. With a recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, the governor has the power to commute Storey’s death penalty sentence. “We just had the Amber Guyger trial,” where the victim’s brother forgave a convicted killer, “and that’s what the Cherrys want to do,” Hampton said. “And instead of letting something beautiful happen, we are getting interference from the state’s highest court.” An appellate judge who wrote in support of the majority opinion pointed out that what a prosecutor says during closing arguments is not evidence. That judge also says in his opinion that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient enough to withstand any objections about the death penalty from the victim’s relatives. The
