May 6
LOUISIANA:
Public defenders' claims sound like Chicken Little
The Louisiana Public Defender Board and its supporters have done an excellent
job of using Louisiana's budget woes to make a case for more money. They say
the right of indigent criminal defendants to receive free legal counsel will
disappear unless they are provided massive increases in their budget.
These "Chicken Little" claims have been accepted as truth by most media. As an
example of just how pervasive the idea of a funding crisis is, Louisiana Public
Broadcasting recently staged a forum titled "Justice on Hold: Louisiana's
Public Defender Shortage." The program began with the premise that insufficient
funding was leading many local public defender offices to stop taking cases.
From that starting point, participants debated what should be done.
I suggest those concerned about public defender funding step back to a
different starting point and ask whether a funding crisis actually does exists,
and, if it does, how it occurred.
Let me be clear that all district attorneys want efficient, competent, properly
funded public defender offices. We work in an adversarial system in which every
criminal defendant is constitutionally guaranteed the right to have qualified
legal counsel. We would not have it any other way.
The issue for us is how a public defender system that is better funded today
than at any previous time in history can claim to be so underfunded that it has
virtually shut down the criminal courts in some judicial districts.
After all, state funding for indigent defense has increased 300 % in the past
decade.
We believe the problem lies not with local public defender offices, many of
which do an outstanding job of representing their clients, but in the Louisiana
Public Defender Board, which has become a kind of middleman receiving and
parceling out the state's $33 million annual allocation. Before the board came
into existence in 2007, public defender offices may have been underfunded, but
they were not in crisis.
Rather than properly fund the local offices, the board spends millions of
dollars on its staff, who do not try cases, and doles out about $10 million a
year to nonprofit legal organizations that represent death penalty defendants,
which make up less than 1 % of criminal defendants. Only about half the
board???s state allocation filters down to the local offices, where all but the
few capital indigent defendants are actually represented by local public
defenders. The chief public defender recently admitted that if the board would
direct 60 % of the state money to the locals, all of the local cases could
proceed. Why haven't they done so?
The bottom line for the Louisiana District Attorneys Association is that the
Public Defender Board appears to be the source of the problem it seeks to
solve. The board is not accountable to anyone - unlike district attorneys, who
are directly accountable to the voters - and in the past decade, it has used
its authority to weaken the autonomy and financial condition of local public
defender offices.
Before considering giving the board more money, the Legislature should conduct
a thorough review of its spending priorities and impose accountability on the
board. The board exists to serve public defenders across Louisiana, so those
local offices should have a voice in its governance to ensure that allocated
money is spent for its intended purpose, not in pursuit of a narrow political
agenda.
If an objective review of the Public Defender Board finds that more money
should be appropriated for public defense, district attorneys will support it.
Until then, the board should put local defenders back to work representing real
indigent defendants and allowing justice to be done. (source: Guest Column; E.
Pete Adams is executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys
Association----The Advocate)
**********************
Angola inmates become Loyola grads
William Kirkpatrick smiles, blue eyes glimmering over his faded cheekbone
tattoo. It's a sunny, breezy day at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola,
Louisiana, and this former death row inmate has just graduated from the Loyola
Institute for Ministry.
Kirkpatrick was 1 of 6 inmates to graduate from the LIM extension program on
April 29 with a certification in pastoral studies.
The graduates, along with their facilitator, Rick Bebin, also won the Kairos
Award, given to 1 exceptional LIM class each year.
About a dozen men began studying in the Loyola program, but only 6 - John
Balfa, Milburn Bates, William Kirkpatrick, Felton Ledet, Herman Tureaud and
Lester Williams - completed the 10-week class.
"I would never have even imagined myself in ministry," Kirkpatrick said after
the graduation ceremony.
Kirkpatrick dropped out of school in junior high, but since coming to Angola
and having his death penalty sentence reduced, he has focused on education and
caring for other inmates.
He has pursued multiple religious education programs and teaches in the prison.
Kirkpatrick hopes to use his new certification to return to death row as a peer
minister.
Reflecting on the extension program's effect, Kirkpatrick said, "LIMEX has
greatly enhanced our ability to minister and our ability to live out our faith
in every situation, and in an environment that can be trying to say the least."
Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States and houses
6,000 inmates, the state's death row for men, and the execution chamber for men
and women.
Because the men earn less than one dollar per hour for their labor on "The
Farm," 1 of Angola's nicknames, Loyola raised funds to educate the inmates for
free, using donations from the Diocese of Baton Rouge and a grant from Our
Sunday Visitor. Loyola hopes to host another program like this, provided the
funds are available, said Tom Ryan, director of the institute for ministry.
Each student in the program chose a focus area, Ryan said. Graduate Herman
Tureaud, who has been in Angola since he was 15 years old, focused on youth
ministry.
Herman works on the popular confirmation retreats Angola hosts for high school
students from the Diocese of Baton Rouge. His favorite part of the Loyola
Institute for Ministry class was the heated discussions over how to interpret
different readings. He said he liked to see the way the students' cultures
influenced their interpretations.
He recalled that controversial topics like women priests and how to approach
abortion intensified the class' conversation, but, he said, "We're a
brotherhood, so it never got bad."
Instead, Tureaud reflected, "It was a beautiful experience of getting to know
one another."
Louisiana lawmakers are now debating how to apply a January Supreme Court
decision that might open the possibility of parole to juvenile offenders who,
like Tureaud, are serving life sentences without parole.
Tureaud is hopeful that he might be released from prison and said that he would
like to minister to teens who are in the situation he was before his arrest.
When asked if he would return to minister in his former neighborhood in
Algiers, Tureaud said, "It really doesn't matter as long as I'm doing God's
work in the capacity I'm able to do it in. I don't want it to be about me."
(source: The Loyola Maroon)
OHIO:
East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison convicted on 13 counts: 'He will
never do this again'
After the verdict was read convicting Michael Madison in the serial murders of
three East Cleveland women, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty
walked to the back of the courtroom and hugged the victims' family members.
"He will never do this again," McGinty told Belinda Minor, mother of Shirellda
Terry, who would have turned 21 years old this year.
Terry was 1 of 3 women Madison is now convicted of killing in a series of
attacks that occurred between October 2012 and July 2013. Shetisha Sheeley and
Angela Deskins were his other victims.
Family members thanked McGinty on what marks his 1st successful prosecution in
a death penalty case.
The jury of 12 spent less than 1 day deliberating before returning a guilty
verdict on all 13 counts including aggravated felony murder, kidnapping and
rape.
The verdict ensures that Madison will never walk the Earth as a free man.
Members of the jury will return to court Thursday for the sentencing phase of
the trial which will determine whether they will recommend the death penalty.
Madison told the court he plans to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy McDonnell will decide whether to
sentence Madison to death or allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The verdict marked 31 days since the trial began. Prosecutors, led by McGinty,
called 50 witnesses to testify in the case and presented over a thousand
exhibits to jurors.
Madison's defense attorneys, led by David Grant, did not dispute that Madison
killed the 3 women. Instead, his attorneys hoped to convince jurors that
Madison did not commit the murders with the degree of prior thought and
calculation that would qualify him for the death penalty.
Prosecutors spent over 2 hours in closing arguments reexamining dozens of
photographs showing how Madison mutilated the women's bodies before stuffing
them in garbage bags. Their evidence including Madison talking about the
killings and how he met the women.
Attorneys made their closing arguments before a jury Wednesday in the trial of
accused East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison.
In the sentencing phase, Grant will present testimony from psychological
experts and people who knew Madison in an attempt dissuade the jury from
recommending a death sentence.
Madison will return to court Friday morning to continue a bench trial on
separate charges, including having weapons under disability and a violent
sexual offender specification that was attached to the murder and aggravated
murder charges.
ARKANSAS:
Former death-row inmate from 'West Memphis 3' remembers anniversary of his
scheduled execution
Damian Echols, who was sentenced to death as part of the 'West Memphis 3'
remembered the anniversary of his scheduled execution date on Thursday. A
former death-row inmate released after decades in prison commemorated Thursday
as the anniversary of when he was originally scheduled to be executed.
"If Arkansas had their way, I'd have been dead 22 years today," Damien Echols,
the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis 3, said on Twitter.
Others wished the former inmate, who was released in 2011, a Happy Survivors
Day after going through 18 years in prison for a crime many believe he didn't
commit.
Echols's original execution date came 364 days after the bodies of 3
8-year-olds were discovered in West Memphis, the result of what prosecutors
said was a Satanic killing ritual.
Jessie Misskelley Jr., Jason Baldwin and Echols, a group of teenagers who
didn't fit in with the rest of the Southern Christian town.
"I was the town weirdo. I dressed in all black, had long hair, and listened to
heavy metal music," he wrote for Vice last year.
Though evidence was thin, they were ultimately convicted because of a
confession from Misskelley, who had mental disabilities, that the defense said
was coerced.
Misskelley and Baldwin received life sentences while Echols, as the supposed
ringleader, was sentenced to the death penalty.
He faced time in solitary confinement and the looming threat of execution dates
as interest in his case waned and waxed, at one point surging due to the
documentary series "Paradise Lost."
Echols was in prison for more than 18 years, including stretches in solitary
confinement.
He says that part of the way he survived prison was through meditation and
"magick.
Echols still has an interested in the occult, and says that one of the ways he
survived solitary confinement in prison was meditation.
It was ultimately DNA evidence - or the lack of any pointing to the 3
defendants - that helped free them after material from the crime scene was
tested in 2007. Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin were not fully exonerated, but
were resentenced to time served in 2011 after entering Alford pleas, which
maintain innocence but admit that the prosecution has enough evidence for
conviction.
Since his release from prison Echols has continued to speak and write about his
experiences along with his wife Terri, who he married while in jail in 1999.
He has spoken about the benefits of "magick" meditation and also has begun a
career as an artist while living in Harlem, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Still an occult enthusiast, he exhibited a show called "Salem" in Santa Monica
last month.
(source: New York Daily News)
ARIZONA:
Cop killer to learn whether he'll get death penalty
Danny Martinez, convicted of shooting and killing a Phoenix police officer, has
already been sentenced to life in prison, and Friday he finds out whether he
will get the death penalty.
In June of 2015, Martinez was convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for
shooting and killing Officer Travis Murphy.
In November, jurors sentenced Martinez to life in prison on 1 murder charge,
but were not unanimous in their decision on the 2nd charge for premeditated
murder.
Murphy was shot and killed in 2010. He was responding to a suspicious-person
call near 19th Avenue and Indian School Road.
Murphy and his partner were the first to respond to the 1:30 a.m. call.
Neighbors said someone hit a parked car and was trying to hide the car in a
vacant carport. The officers split up in search of a suspect.
Moments later, Murphy was hit by multiple gunshots from an assault rifle. He
had just come back to work after being off for paternity leave. He was a father
of 2 and had served on the force for 4 years.
The jurors determined that Martinez killed Murphy in a cruel manner and that he
should have known Murphy was with the police.
That sentencing will happen at 1:30 p.m. at Maricopa County Superior Court.
(source: KPNX news)
CALIFORNIA:
'Grim Sleeper' killer guilty in 10 murders, could face death penalty
A former Los Angeles trash collector was convicted Thursday of 10 counts of
murder in the "Grim Sleeper" serial killings that targeted poor, young black
women over 2 decades.
Lonnie Franklin Jr. showed no emotion as the verdicts were read and family
members who had wondered if they would ever see justice quietly wept and dabbed
their eyes with tissues in the gallery.
"We got him," exclaimed Porter Alexander Jr., whose daughter Alicia, 18, was
shot and choked. Her body was found under a mattress in an alley in September
1988. "It took a long time. By the grace of God it happened. It's such a
relief."
Prosecutors will seek the death penalty during the 2nd phase of trial scheduled
to start May 12.
Franklin, 63, was also found guilty of 1 count of attempted murder for shooting
a woman in the chest and dumping her body from his orange Ford Pinto 2 months
after Alexander's killing. The survivor, Enietra Washington, provided a link to
7 previous slayings and was a key witness at trial.
The killings from 1985 to 2007 were dubbed the work of the "Grim Sleeper"
because of an apparent 14-year gap after Washington's shooting, though
prosecutors now think he never rested and there were other victims during that
span.
The crimes went unsolved for decades and community members complained that
police ignored the victims because of their race and the fact some were
prostitutes and drug users.
Much of the violence unfolded during the nation's crack cocaine epidemic when
at least 2 other serial killers prowled the area then known as South Central.
The 10 victims, including a 15-year-old girl, were fatally shot or strangled
and dumped in alleys and garbage bins. Most had traces of cocaine in their
systems.
Franklin, a onetime trash collector in the area and a garage attendant for the
Los Angeles Police Department, had been hiding in plain sight, said Deputy
District Attorney Beth Silverman.
He was connected to the crimes after DNA from a son, collected after a felony
arrest, showed similarities to genetic material left on the bodies of many of
the victims.
An officer posing as a busboy retrieved pizza crusts and napkins with
Franklin's DNA while he was celebrating at a birthday party.
It proved a match with material found on the breasts and clothing of many of
the women and on the zip tie of a trash bag that held the curled-up body of the
final victim, Janecia Peters. She was found Jan. 1, 2007, by someone rifling
through a dumpster who noticed her red fingernails through a hole in the bag.
Silverman described the victims as sisters, daughters and mothers who suffered
frailties but had hopes and dreams.
She projected photos of the 10 women from happier days, many smiling from
headshots that captured their youth and hairstyles of the times. The images
were in stark contrast to gory crime scene and autopsy photos also displayed of
half-naked bodies sprawled among garbage - images that made family members
wince, weep and recoil.
Samara Herard, the sister of the youngest victim, Princess Berthomieux, said
there were things she didn't want to see during the trial and had to hold her
head down at times, but was elated with the verdict.
"I wanted to remember the sweet little girl who had her whole life in front of
her," Herard said. "She had a heart of gold and she deserved to live a full
life."
Defense lawyer Seymour Amster challenged what he called "inferior science" of
DNA and ballistics evidence. During his closing argument, he introduced a new
theory: a "mystery man with a mystery gun and mystery DNA" was responsible for
all the killings. He said the man was a "nephew" of Franklin's who was jealous
because his uncle had better luck with women, though he offered no supporting
evidence or any name.
Amster based the theory on the testimony of the sole known survivor,
Washington, who crawled to safety after being shot in Franklin's flashy Pinto.
She testified that her assailant said he had to stop at his "uncle's house" for
money before the attack.
Silverman scoffed at the "mystery nephew" notion, saying it was as rational an
explanation as a space ship dropping from the sky and killing the women. She
said Franklin had lied to Washington and was probably stopping at his house to
get his gun.
Washington later led police to Franklin's street, but not his house.
The attack fit the pattern of other killings and showed how the killer carried
out the crimes, Silverman said. The bullet removed from Washington's chest came
from the same gun used to shoot the 7 previous victims and she provided a
detail that would later prove telling.
Washington described how her attacker took a Polaroid photo of her as she was
losing consciousness. Police searching Franklin's house more than 2 decades
later found a snapshot of the wounded Washington slouched over in a car with a
breast exposed.
The Polaroid was hidden behind a wall in his garage.
(source: Pasadena Star-News)
*******************
Serial wife killer on death row offers info on where he buried body in exchange
for execution date
A serial wife killer will tell where he buried 1 of his wives, if the state
will set a date to put him to death. His case highlights the serious problems
in California's death penalty system,
Tonight at 11 on ABC7 News, we'll discuss what his case says about our broken
death penalty system in an exclusive I-Team report.
Gerald Stanley offers to reveal where he buried 1 of his wives, because he is
tired of decades on death row and of all the mandatory appeals.
This investigation began after Gerald wrote me. I've been going through the
evidence and speaking with attorneys on the case, and with his children.
Jay Stanley was only 5 years old when he watched his father open fire at
Cambridge Elementary in Concord.
"He didn't just destroy mine and my sister's life, he destroyed other kids'
lives," he said. "They don't have no (sic) closure, they don't know where their
mom is, never found her body."
Gerald has been on San Quentin's death row for 32 years.
(source: ABC news)
OREGON:
The Oregon Supreme Court is upholding the death sentences given to a father and
son convicted of a 2008 bank bombing in Woodburn
The Oregon Supreme Court has affirmed convictions and death sentences for a
father and son found guilty of killing 2 police officers in a bank bombing.
Bruce Turnidge and his son, Joshua Turnidge, were convicted of murder in 2010
by a jury who agreed with prosecutors that the pair planted a bomb that
exploded at a bank in Woodburn, a small city between Portland and Salem.
The December 2008 blast killed state police bomb technician William Hakim, who
was trying to dismantle the explosive, and Woodburn Capt. Tom Tennant, who was
helping. The city's police chief, Scott Russell, lost a leg.
Prosecutors said the Turnidges fantasized about starting an anti-government
militia and hatched a bank robbery plan because they needed money to maintain
their struggling biodiesel company.
Oregon law requires the state Supreme Court to review verdicts and sentences in
death-penalty cases for any legal errors in the trial court.
The high court Thursday rejected more than two dozen assertions of trial
errors, on issues ranging from jury questionnaires to closing arguments to the
denial of Joshua Turnidge's motion to be tried separately.
In one instance, Bruce Turnidge took issue with a closing statement in which
the prosecutor told jurors about the defendant's zeal to form a militia and
spread anti-government ideologies.
The state said the prosecutor raised the point because potential future danger
is 1 thing the jury considers as it decides whether to sentence someone to
death. Turnidge said argument violated his free-speech rights, but the court
disagreed.
"Contrary to defendant's assertions, this is not a situation in which the
prosecutor's statements urged the jury to punish defendant because of his
abstract political beliefs or statements," the opinion states. "Rather, the
state had presented evidence of defendant's beliefs that directly bore on his
motivation for the murders at issue in this case."
The Turnidges are among more than 30 people on Oregon's death row. The state
currently has a moratorium on executions.
Public defender Joshua Crowther, who argued on behalf of Joshua Turnidge, said
this was just a first step and the challenges will continue.
"From our point of view, there are still several issues that need to be
resolved," he said from Salem. "Most of the issues raised, if not all, had a
federal component, so a federal court is going to need to look at the issues,
which could be the United States Supreme Court."
(source: Associated Press)
USA:
There's No Separating the Death Penalty and Race----The only way to get rid of
racial bias in death penalty cases is to get rid of the death penalty.
Back in 1987, Timothy Foster was a poor, black, intellectually impaired
teenager facing trial for the murder of an elderly white woman in rural
Georgia.* During jury selection, the prosecution highlighted in green the name
of every black person on the jury list and helpfully added a note explaining
that a green highlight meant the person was black. For good measure, they also
placed a B next to each black person's name and circled the word black where it
appeared on the jury questionnaires as a racial identifier. Then, in case "it
[came] down to having to pick one of the black jurors," the prosecutors also
ranked blacks against one another. After securing an all-white jury,
prosecutors argued for the death penalty for Foster to "deter other people out
there in the projects." The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide soon
whether illegal race discrimination infected that trial, a decision that will
come after Foster has spent nearly 3 decades on Georgia's death row. It seems
likely the court will grant Foster a new trial, but it's hard to imagine even a
favorable Supreme Court ruling in his case fixing the biggest problem with the
death penalty itself: Even in 2016, its use remains inextricably, hopelessly
intertwined with our national legacy of racial bias and exclusion.
The mix of prosecutorial impropriety and the exclusion of black jurors has
always been a potent combination for injecting racial bias into death penalty
cases and racial cynicism into the electorate. It undermines not only the
legitimacy of the death penalty, but also the legitimacy of the government as
an entity capable of rendering impartial justice. It robs people of the right
to participate in their government, and it makes whole swaths of people cynical
about the government itself and their role in it. Yet, even if the Foster case
provides another rebuke of the illegal practice of striking jurors because of
their race, 30 years of experience suggests that the court's case-by-case
reversals will not eradicate racial discrimination in jury selection. It still
happens all over the country and continues to taint our broken death penalty
system.
As older cases like Foster's move toward execution dates, the inextricable ties
between race and the death penalty in America become increasingly salient. This
is because the death penalty generally is in decline at a time when there is
heightened attention to racial unfairness throughout the criminal justice
system. Consider the last couple of months alone:
--On April 12, Georgia executed Kenneth Fults - another poor, intellectually
impaired black man - even though a juror in his case acknowledged deciding to
vote for death before hearing the evidence because "that's what that nigger
deserved."
--"A dumb nigger" is what one member of an all-white South Carolina jury called
Johnny Bennett, a black defendant who received relief from a federal judge in
March because the prosecutor called him a monster, caveman, "beast of burden,"
and "King Kong."
--Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rescheduled its review of a petition
urging the justices to intervene in a Harris County, Texas, death penalty case
where a psychologist testified that Duane Buck's blackness makes him more
dangerous.
An optimist might hold out hope that although racial bias infects these older
cases, the ties between race and the death penalty have loosened in more recent
cases as the nation continues to make racial progress. Unfortunately, though,
while the death penalty has become increasingly rare in practice, many of the
remaining cases are still intertwined with the nation's long legacy of racism.
And, even in the cases with explicit, unconscionable racial bias - for example,
the execution of Fults last month - current elected prosecutors, governors, and
state and federal courts have failed repeatedly to intervene or object.
Of the more than 3,100 counties in the United States, only 16 or so still
impose death sentences with any regularity. Consider, for example, the
following three jurisdictions, all of which are among the tiny handful of
outlier death sentencing counties:
--Caddo Parish, Louisiana's nickname is "Bloody Caddo" due to its history as
the place with the second-highest number lynchings in the country between 1877
and 1950. Over the past 6 years, 66 percent of Louisiana's death sentences come
from Caddo Parish, a jurisdiction with 5 % of the state's population. Yet, no
white defendant has ever been sentenced to death in Caddo Parish for killing a
black person. As recently as 2011, Lamondre Tucker - an 18-year-old with an IQ
of 74 - was sentenced to death in a courthouse adorned with the Confederate
flag. Last year, a study found that prosecutors struck qualified black
residents from Caddo juries 3 times more often than qualified white residents.
--In Houston County, Alabama, a local police chief started a chapter of the
Sons of the Confederacy, posed in front of a Confederate flag, and named his
son after the 1st grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. A 2010 study found that
prosecutors in Houston County strike 80 % of qualified black jurors from death
penalty cases. Alabama courts have reversed at least 3 death sentences from
Houston County since 2010.
--At the end of March, the Nevada Supreme Court found that Clark County
prosecutors engaged in illegal racial discrimination in jury selection for the
2nd time in the past 2 years. In yet another recent Clark County case involving
questionable jury selection practices, a state supreme court justice said to a
prosecutor during oral arguments: "I just don't understand knocking these 2
black women off [the jury]. I just don't understand why it's so necessary in
these cases. You're so afraid of losing a case that you're knocking off African
Americans consistently." That case is still pending.
Despite all the racial progress over the past decades, how can it be that race
continues to plague the nation's death penalty?
The death penalty has always been rooted in a felt need for retribution -
payback, evening the score, revenge. Indeed, in 1914, the Shreveport Times
editorial board responded to "suggestions from some of the newspapers" that
Louisiana "abolish the death penalty" with an argument that repeal of the death
penalty would result in an "increase in the number of lynchings" due to "the
vengeance of an outraged citizenship." In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, Supreme
Court Justice Potter Stewart made a similar point: "When people begin to
believe that organized society is unwilling or unable to impose upon criminal
offenders the punishment they 'deserve,' then there are sown the seeds of
anarchy - of self-help, vigilante justice, and lynch law."
A black defendant received relief from a federal judge because the prosecutor
called him a monster, caveman, "beast of burden," and "King Kong."
The reality today is that the death penalty no longer contributes meaningfully
to any felt need for retribution. Life without parole or other serious
sanctions satisfy the retributive appetite for most prosecutors and jurors in
most places in America. We know this is true because in this nation of 320
million people, with more than 10,000 annual murders, surely there would be
much more frequent resort to death sentences in far more counties and states if
executions were truly necessary for retributive purposes. And, when we look
closely at some of the outlier counties that still resort to death sentences,
we see this racialized need for retribution continues to drive how prosecutors
seek death sentences and how juries decide them.
These are places like Caddo Parish where prosecutors like Dale Cox make their
racially filtered, outsized-personality - driven need for retribution known
unmistakably: Last year, after calling society "a jungle," Cox told a reporter
that "we need to kill more people" because revenge "brings to us a visceral
satisfaction." Cox's comments epitomize what Justice Anthony Kennedy meant when
he cautioned in 2008's Kennedy v. Louisiana, a case where the court held that
the death penalty is an unconstitutionally excessive punishment for nonhomicide
offenses, that retribution is the motive for punishment that "most often can
contradict the law's own ends." "When the law punishes by death," Kennedy
wrote, "it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the
constitutional commitment to decency and restraint."
Though it is up to prosecutors to guard against retributive excess, when they
do not, jurors are meant to be the second line of defense. Most death penalty
jurors are white. This is a big deal because research shows that white jurors
tend to implicitly associate black faces with the concept of retribution,
implicitly associate white faces with a sense of relative value or worth, show
greater support for the death penalty generally, and may be less able to
consider mitigating circumstances when they relate to black defendants. When
black jurors are placed on juries, they help guard against retributive excess.
Yet, in the few places that continue to use the death penalty consistently
today - in Caddo Parish, Clark County, and Houston County, for example -
prosecutors continue to disproportionately strike qualified black prospective
jurors.
I support getting rid of the death penalty but my support for this is
relatively new, and it's largely based on the credibility and continuation of
life-without-parole sentencing, something that did not exist in the past.
In other words, in these outlier counties, neither prosecutorial discretion nor
the constitutionally built-in jury check on retribution appears to be
functioning as intended. That leaves the judiciary. The court should grant new
trials for Timothy Foster, Duane Buck, and Lamondre Tucker. But it would be
naive to believe that new trials in these cases would put a dent in the broader
race problems that continue to plague American capital punishment. Indeed, it
has become indisputably clear in the 40 years since the Supreme Court held the
modern death penalty constitutional that the only way to eradicate race from
the death penalty is to eradicate the death penalty.
(source: Robert Smith, slate.com)
US MILITARY:
Navy Lt. Cmdr. accused of espionage confesses on tape
Lieutenant Commander Edward C. Lin, the Taiwan born U.S. Navy officer accused
of espionage, confessed to the crime during an NCIS interrogation, according to
military prosecutors.
But his defense attorney argued none of that would be admissible if the case
moves to court-martial.
The information came to light Thursday, as Navy officials played an audio
recording of Lin's Article 32 Hearing which took place in early April. The
recording was played at Fleet Forces Command for members of the media,
including 10 On Your Side, but media were not allowed to record the audio.
During the 80-minute hearing, which is similar to a pre-trial hearing in a
civilian court. Attorneys for both sides submitted evidence to Navy Commander
Bruce Gregor.
Lin is charged with 2 counts of espionage, 3 counts of attempted espionage,
communicating secret information 'with intent or reason to believe it would be
used to the advantage of a foreign nation' and adultery. The charges stem from
actions the Navy says occurred in August and September of 2015.
Navy prosecutor, Cmdr. Jonathan Stevens told Gregor Lin is accused of feeding
secrets to a prostitute, and also came into contact with under cover FBI
agents, as well a FBI informant. The recordings did not make it clear if the
prostitute and the FBI's informant were the same person.
We also learned that NCIS agents searched Lin's workplace and his home. They
found emails dating back to 2012 and a notebook they say contained classified
information.
Stevens also said Lin communicated with a FBI informant in Mandarin Chinese,
which is his native language. Lin's civilian defense attorney, Larry Younger,
questioned the validity of the transcript of the conversation. The transcript
was submitted as evidence saying that whomever the FBI chose to translate the
conversation, could have gotten it wrong. The defense claims that because
Mandarin Chinese has two dialects, the meaning of the conversation could be
misinterpreted.
Lin was arrested at a Honolulu airport on September 11th, 2015. NCIS
investigators then interrogated Lin for eleven hours, all of which was recorded
according to prosecutors. They submitted nine disks of evidence which they say
contain all 11 hours of recordings. Those were also not played during the
hearing.
While it appears Lin confessed to the crimes, his attorney argued none of it
will be admissible if the case goes to court-martial. Younger counted the
government's claims and went so far as to accuse officials of entrapment.
Younger called actions by the FBI agents a 'nefarious scheme to entrap' and
that agents 'preyed on his vulnerabilities' when they allegedly 'coerced' Lin
to communicate with the informant.
Younger also said that if the case moves forward he would file motions to
suppress all eleven hours of audio recordings in which Lin allegedly admits to
the crimes. Younger says his client was never properly read his rights, or
notified of his right to counsel. He believes the audio would not be admissible
in court. Younger also argued that the search of Lin's property may have been
done without proper search warrants, and that any evidence gathered would also
be inadmissible.
Younger also claimed that any information Lin passed on to the informant was
'open-source' information, meaning information that was no longer classified
and could be found on-line.
The decision to move the case forward sits in the hands of Admiral Davidson,
head of Fleet Forces Command. There is no timeline on his decision. If
convicted, Lin could face the death penalty.
Lin has been held in pre-trial confinement at the Brig in Chesapeake since
September.
(source: WAVY news)
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