June 1
OHIO:
Death penalty ‘mental illness’ bill heads to Ohio House
The Ohio House is considering a bill that would prohibit the executions of
defendants if they're found to have had a "serious mental illness" at the time
of the offense.
The House Criminal Justice Committee approved the measure Thursday after
rejecting an amendment offered by Rep. Robert Cupp, a Lima Republican, that
would have exempted current death row inmates from the ban.
Gongwer News Service reports that Cupp said he was concerned about the cost and
the difficulty of finding evidence in old cases.
Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, said only a few inmates would be
eligible.
Offenders deemed by professionals to have had "serious mental illness" must
have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar
disorder, or delusional disorder. The bill goes now to the full House.
(source: Associated Press)
TENNESSEE:
Sumner Co. DA: Waiting on evidence, psych. eval. before seeking death penalty
for Cummins
Sumner County District Attorney Ray Whitley is still awaiting more evidence
processing from the TBI and a mental health examination for Michael Cummins
before deciding he will seek the death penalty for Cummins who is accused of
killing 8 people.
"We have to wait until we determine what his mental state is, determine what
the evidence is, fit that into the law and make a decision," Whitley said after
Cummins preliminary hearing.
Whitley has taken criticism from the family of victims who think Sumner County
was too lenient on Cummins after a conviction for aggravated arson and
aggravated assault.
Steve McGlothlin, brother and uncle to 2 of Cummins' alleged victims, said, "I
feel Sumner County dropped the ball. This man shouldn't have been out."
Whitley responded, "All the facts represented to the judge, we did not drop the
ball. We did what we should have done, and it turned out bad. Sometimes that
happens. You cannot predict human behavior 100%."
Whitley does not want to make a decision on the death penalty until he is sure
that Cummins is fit to stand trial. Prematurely calling for the death penalty
only to reverse that decision could create false hope for heartbroken people
like Virgil Nuckols.
"I just want him to get the penalty where he won't be able to come out of
jail," Nuckols said. "He's took the most important thing away from me. My wife,
my daughter and granddaughter, and I'm really hurt."
Testimony in the Wednesday preliminary hearing was too tough for McGlothlin and
Nuckols to take; both left midway through the 2 hour hearing that detailed how
the bodies were found and beaten.
Cummins is accused of the deadliest killing spree in Tennessee since Paul
Dennis Reid in 1997 when he killed 7 fast food workers.
(source: WZTV news)
*************************
Execution lays bare truth about corrosive hatred, need for mercy
It was the 4th vigil at the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville
since executions have made their dark return to Tennessee. Sadly, it was
beginning to feel routine.
On the road to the prison, there’s a first checkpoint. “For or against?” the
officer asks. “Against,” I replied. They placed a yellow sticker on my
windshield and moved me on to the next checkpoint.
Seeing the sticker, the officer at checkpoint No. 2 motioned me to the
“Against” parking lot, where I parked and walked to the third checkpoint, where
the question was asked again by armed officers sitting at tables under a tent.
“Against,” I responded again as they took my driver’s license and wrote down my
legal name. “Ernest, go that way,” he said as he pointed down a roped-off path
that led to a fenced-in field.
15 feet away from me were 4 armed officers on black Clydesdales. They looked
both silly and ominous, supposedly a symbol of force to keep these people who
don’t want people to kill people because they killed people in line, lest they
break out into mayhem and violence.
As I walked into the “against” area, I saw familiar faces, a collection of
people who had visited men on death row, several priests and a few career
activists. They talked quietly in small groups, some people standing alone
looking up at the nearby hills and a descending sun.
We gathered in a circle as a young priest began a liturgy interspersed with
scripture, readings, prayers, testimonies and song. Absent this time were
cameras from the local TV stations. Sadly, this had become old news. Unless
there was a last-minute phone call, Don Johnson, the condemned, would be dead
within an hour, killed by a drug concoction that, contrary to popular belief,
has been proven to cause torturous pain.
I was on the edge of the circle, unable to concentrate on the words, and
looking toward the building where Don was being strapped to a gurney. As I
looked around, I saw a particular man. He was in the “For” field, connected to
the far corner of our field. He’d been there for each execution in the same
outfit: a long leather coat, hanging loosely almost to the ground, and a
snake-skin cowboy hat. In the past, he’d had a few friends with him.
Their liturgy was different from ours. Sometimes it involved blaring metal
music from a huge black boom box pointed in our direction. But mostly, there
were taunts. “I hope he fries!” “I hope he takes a long time to die and suffers
every second!” “I hope they dump his body in the landfill!” “Why don’t you pray
for the victims?” which we were doing when they yelled it. All the while they
were laughing like they were at a keg party. There were times I wanted the guys
on the Clydesdales to stop them, having forgotten that the horses were there
only for show.
This night, however, he was in the field alone, slowly pacing back and forth in
a line. As I watched him, I felt something I hadn’t felt before. Compassion. He
looked like some lonely old horse on a run-down farm. Without his friends,
there was no party. No one with whom he could laugh. Taunting by one’s self is
no fun. His silence surprised me. It also exposed me.
I had grown to hate him, annoyed and angered by his mean and cruel spirit. What
kind of person would make the drive to the prison to celebrate a death? Why
such hate? I realized I had absorbed his hatred and turned it back on him. The
words of Jesus to the Pharisees flooded over me as he was making the playing
field level – hate is murder.
In my hatred, I was no better than him. I was as guilty as Don and all the men
on death row. I was as guilty as the governor. And I desperately needed what
they all needed – mercy.
And then, for a moment, I thought, “I wonder what it would mean to try to love
this guy. To pray for him.” I’m not at all sure how to do that, but I know that
hate was not working for me. Like all of the men on death row, he must have
experienced horrible abuse. Hatred doesn’t come out of nowhere. And dare I
dream that one day, he could join our circle and not have to be alone, not have
to hate?
The announcement came: “Don Johnson died at 7:37 p.m.” The song that was sung
at the beginning of the night resonated throughout the field: “Though we have
sinned He has mercy and pardon, pardon for you and for me. Come home, come
home. Ye who are weary come home.”
And so we slowly left for home. Don went first, then the rest of us began the
same journey. The man alone in the field left as well.
(source: Opinion; Al Andrews, The Tennessean)
ARKANSAS:
Arkansas Supreme Court says it won't reconsider new trial order for man who had
been convicted of killing 6-year-old son
The Arkansas Supreme Court says it won't reconsider its decision to grant a new
trial to an inmate who had been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to
death for the killing of his 6-year-old son.
The justices on Thursday denied Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's petition to
reconsider their 4-3 decision last month in the 2016 conviction of Mauricio
Alejandro Torres. Investigators say Torres used a stick to sexually assault his
son while the family was camping in Missouri. The boy died at an Arkansas
hospital a day after the assault.
The justices denied the request along the same 4-3 split. They ruled last month
that Arkansas authorities couldn't use rape to substantiate the capital murder
conviction because the assault occurred in Missouri.
Rutledge argued that the court erred in its analysis of how the law applied to
Torres' case.
(source: Associated Press)
OKLAHOMA:
Criminal Justice Conversation Addresses Death Row Inmate’s Plea For Clemency
A conversation on the criminal justice system this week brought together legal
experts and the family of a man on death row. Julius Jones became the focus of
the “What Lies Between Us? with Ayanna Najuma” community discussion series.
The event takes place every other Tuesday evening at 6:30 p.m. at the Full
Circle bookstore, using books to delve into community issues. This week,
participants say they were trying to save a life.
Attorneys, judges and corrections board members all joined host Najuma in the
discussion, highlighting how mass incarceration helps the rural areas where
private prisons are often located.
Oklahoma DOC board member Reginald Hines explained, “That is an economic boost
for those areas, and where do most of the people that are incarcerated…come
from? They come from the urban areas.”
Those who have worked in the legal field for years admit the system is flawed.
“The courts in our country were never intended to do justice,” added attorney
and tribal Supreme Court Justice Peggy Big Eagle. “We do law. That’s what we’re
supposed to do, is law.”
That led the conversation to the Julius Jones case. He was convicted of
murdering a man in Edmond in 1999. Jones did not get to testify in his own
defense, after his original attorney died and he was appointed a group of
public defenders.
Jones’s last possible appeal now is to Governor Kevin Stitt.
A former teacher of Jones, Dr. John Thompson, said, “Have them read the fact
sheet and then ask 1 simple question: If Barry Albert hadn’t died, do you think
he would be on death row today?”
Jones’s sister immediately responded, “No.”
They hope the governor will hear their voices, as they push to eliminate the
death penalty altogether in the state, saying conservatives should also
consider the additional cost to house death row inmates.
Big Eagle explained, “You have to have a separate facility. You have to have a
death house, and you have to keep it staffed and you have to keep it cooled,
even if no one is there.”
Their goal is to get their appeal for clemency to the governor's desk before
time runs out.
(source: news9.com)
UTAH:
Petition seeks death penalty for man charged with killing Elizabeth Shelley
An online petition is asking for a Logan man charged with the brutal murder of
his 5-year-old niece to be sentenced to death.
Elizabeth “Lizzy” Shelley was reported missing on Saturday morning.
5 days later, Alex Whipple, 21, was charged with kidnapping, murder and
desecration of her body. Hours later, police found Shelley’s body just a block
away from her home.
Authorities negotiated with Whipple in order to find Shelley. They came to an
agreement that prosecutors wouldn't seek the death penalty if the 21-year-old
would lead them to the girl's body.
This decision has outraged thousands of community members who have been
following the case since Shelley was reported missing.
A petition on Avaaz.org is asking for the Utah Attorney General’s office to put
the death penalty back on the table.
“It was only day 5 that he finally gave up the location of Lizzy’s body in
order to have the death penalty taken off of the table. If not for this deal, I
do not believe we would have found her on day 5. I do not believe that he truly
wanted the family to have closure and that he only revealed the location to
save his own life.
I firmly believe that Alexander should receive the death penalty. An eye for an
eye or in this case, a life for a life.”
Whipple was named the primary suspect in the case after police say they found
incriminating evidence.
At approximately 3 p.m. on Saturday, Whipple was located in a remote area near
2400 W. 8000 South. In his possession, police found a baseball bat, a pipe
commonly used for narcotics, personal items and a Pabst Blue Ribbon 24-ounce
beer can. He was transported to the Logan City Police Department for
questioning.
At the station, handcuffs were removed from Whipple. When he was left alone in
the room, the 21-year-old started licking his hands to try and wipe them clean,
court documents state. Police placed the handcuffs back on him to preserve
evidence that may be on Whipple's hands.
During an interview with police, Whipple initially denied going over to
Jessica's house on Friday night. He changed his story several times, stating
the last time he went to his sister's house was two days ago and then two weeks
ago. When he was confronted with the inconsistencies, Whipple admitted to going
over to Jessica's home on Friday.
Court documents state Whipple said he drank beer at Jessica's house and later
left the residence to go on a walk because he could tell his sister and her
boyfriend were "horny." He told police he didn't want to hear anything, so he
went on a walk to enjoy the scenery just before sunrise. He claimed he had not
seen Elizabeth while he was at her house.
When police asked why he left his cellphone and skateboard and why he left the
door open, Whipple claimed he didn't know and that he didn't need his personal
items.
Court documents state Whipple never denied, nor admitted to being involved in
Elizabeth's disappearance. He told investigators about how cruel the world is,
his struggles as a child and how his family treated him "horribly."
The 21-year-old also mentioned to police that alcohol makes him "black out" and
sometimes he does "criminal things" when he blacks out. He didn't elaborate on
what those criminal things were.
During the interview, investigators noticed dark colored stains on Whipple's
pants that were consistent with dried blood. They also noticed several cuts on
his dirty fingers.
A search warrant was served on Whipple and DNA tests were obtained from his
clothing.
Whipple was later charged with violating his probation and was held at the
Cache County Jail without bail.
While Whipple was being questioned, investigators found several pieces of
evidence near the Shelley home. A knife was found in the northwest corner of
the Bear River Charter School parking lot. This was consistent with the knife
that was missing from Jessica's LivingKit set she had at home. In the same
area, a PVC pipe was located. It had a red substance on it and a partial palm
print.
Approximately 50 yards away, investigators found a teal skirt with white lace
that appeared to be hastily buried under some dirt and bark, court document
state.
A neighbor in the area of 470 W. Center St. in Logan told police he found an
empty Pabst Blue Ribbon 24-ounce beer in his garbage on Saturday morning. He
said he doesn't drink beer and that the can didn't' belong to him. This was the
same kind of beer that Whipple was drinking at the Shelley home the night
before. The can was seized as evidence.
Swabs were taken from the evidence to test for Elizabeth's DNA. Blood found on
the LivingKit knife, Whipple's watch and a hooded sweatshirt all had positive
matches to Elizabeth's DNA profile. The beer can tested positive for Whipple's
DNA and the palm print on the PVC pipe was determined to be Whipple's.
(source: KUTV news)
USA:
Roanoke federal murder case on hold until death penalty decision
Federal prosecutors still haven’t revealed whether they’ll seek the death
penalty against 2 of 4 Roanoke men who have been held on gang-related charges
for nearly 8 months.
The case is on hold until the decision, which prosecutors said is up to
Attorney General William Barr.
Trayvone Raycron Kasey, 20, and Demonte Rashod Mack, 30, are charged with
murder in aid of racketeering and firearms offenses. They’re charged, along
with Chauncey Dion Levesy, 25, and Sean Denzel Guerrant, 28, with engaging in a
racketeering conspiracy involving acts of violence, obstruction of justice and
drug trafficking. A footnote in one filing says Guerrant could also face death
penalty-eligible charges as investigators continue to piece together what
happened.
The 4 men were arrested and pleaded not guilty in October.
Court papers described the Lansdowne Park public housing complex on Salem
Turnpike Northwest as the gang's center of operations, although a
representative of the complex has said he did not think any of the defendants
lived there. The gang goes by the name Rollin' 30s Crips, court papers said.
A grand jury indictment accused Kasey of killing Markel Trevon Girty, 23, of
Roanoke in February 2018. It also accused Kasey and Mack of killing Nickalas
Lee, 17, of Roanoke in June 2017. Both men were killed in Roanoke, police said,
but not at the housing complex.
The evidence includes 500 gigabytes of digital information, prosecutors told
the judge in a successful motion to relax time constraints because the case is
especially complex. The defendants didn’t disagree with the delay. The material
includes thousands of pages of Facebook content, recordings of jail phone calls
and witness interviews, police body camera footage and gang documents, court
papers said.
(source: The ROanoke Times)
**************************
How to Convince Americans to Abolish the Death Penalty----The moral argument
doesn't work. Opponents of capital punishment in New Hampshire succeeded with a
different approach.
When New Hampshire abolished the death penalty on Thursday, the reaction to the
news—at least nationally—was rather muted. Here was a New England state, after
all, whose machinery of death had rusted long ago. “This debate has been
largely symbolic, because New Hampshire has neither an active death penalty
system nor any executions on the horizon,” The Washington Post reported. “The
state has only one person on death row … and last carried out an execution in
1939.”
It is true that New Hampshire never had much use for capital punishment. Since
its first use in 1734, New Hampshire has executed only 24 people. But there is
greater significance here than it seems. For starters, New Hampshire joins a
growing trend. Now, since 2007, seven states have abolished capital punishment
by legislative action, and three by judicial decree. (Nebraska abolished it
legislatively, but voters subsequently reinstated it in a referendum.) Four
other states have a moratorium in place preventing anyone from being executed.
This period has been one of the most successful in the modern history of death
penalty abolitionism.
And the politics of New Hampshire are not those of, say, Massachusetts. The
state—whose official motto, emblazoned on license plates, is “Live Free or
Die”—was a Republican stronghold until the early 1990s, and retains a
libertarian streak. While the state Senate and House are both controlled by
Democrats, they needed votes from across the aisle to reach the two-thirds
threshold to override Republican Governor Chris Sununu.
There are thus important lessons from New Hampshire about how abolitionists can
be successful across the country—namely, by shifting the grounds of the debate
so as not to be painted as soft on crime or out of touch with mainstream
American values.
Their success has its roots in a decades-long struggle. In 2000, both houses of
the New Hampshire legislature voted to end the death penalty, only to have
Democratic Governor Jeanne Shaheen veto the bill; the legislature failed to
override her. Shaheen explained her decision by saying, “There are some murders
that are so brutal and heinous that the death penalty is the only appropriate
penalty.”
This appeal to an eye for an eye kind of justice has long provided the fuel to
propel support for the death penalty. Four years after Shaheen’s veto,
Republican Governor Craig Benson made a similar argument in explaining his veto
of legislation that would have raised the minimum age to execute someone from
17 to 18. “When somebody, regardless of their age, is bold enough to take the
life of a police officer, there should be no exceptions—we should make sure
that they should pay the ultimate price,” he said. Earlier this month, Sununu
defended capital punishment as “common sense,” adding that the repeal bill was
an “injustice … to law enforcement and other victims of violent crime across
the state.” (Michael Addison, the only man in death row in the state, was
sentenced to death for killing a Manchester police officer.)
Similar arguments frequently are heard at the national level. In explaining the
Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the 1994 case Callins v. Collins, Justice
Antonin Scalia famously argued that abolitionists—including Justice Harry
Blackmun, whose dissent from the Court’s decision is equally famous—underplay
the gravity and heinousness of the crimes for which the death penalty is an
appropriate punishment.
“Justice Blackmun begins his statement by describing with poignancy the death
of a convicted murderer by lethal injection,” Scalia wrote. “He chooses, as the
case in which to make that statement, one of the less brutal of the murders
that regularly come before us—the murder of a man ripped by a bullet suddenly
and unexpectedly, with no opportunity to prepare himself and his affairs, and
left to bleed to death on the floor of a tavern. The death by injection which
Justice Blackmun describes looks pretty desirable next to that.”
Other justices have shown little patience for the extended period of appeal
that follows a capital sentence. Earlier this year, Neil Gorsuch, Scalia’s
successor on the Court, noted that “both the State and the victims of crime
have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a (death) sentence.”
Traditionally, opponents of the death penalty have responded to such arguments
by claiming that even the most heinous criminals are entitled to be treated
with dignity or that there is nothing that anyone can do to forfeit their
“right to have rights.” Each of these arguments rejects the simple and
appealing rationale for capital punishment: retribution. But in doing so, it
puts opponents of the death penalty on the side of society’s most despised and
notorious criminals, of cop killers and of child murderers. It is not
surprising, then, that such arguments, while popular in philosophical and
political commentary, have never carried the day in the debate about capital
punishment in the United States.
New Hampshire abolitionists avoided this pitfall, changing the argument in ways
that can and do appeal to a broader range of citizens. They allied themselves
with the plight of the families of murder victims. “I am grateful to the many
survivors of murder victims who bravely shared their stories with the
Legislature this session, many of whom told us that the death penalty, with its
requisite long legal process, only prolongs the pain and trauma of their loss,”
said Democratic Senator Martha Hennessey in explaining her vote to override the
veto.
They also avoided the soft-on-crime label by noting that the death penalty does
not make citizens safer and that it is “archaic, costly, discriminatory and
violent.” And they enlisted conservative allies. As one New Hampshire
abolitionist said, “more conservatives than ever know the death penalty is a
failed government program that does not value life, threatens innocent people,
and wastes money.”
The campaign to abolish capital punishment succeeded in New Hampshire, just as
it has succeeded elsewhere, because abolitionists resisted the temptation to
engage with the red meat arguments of many death penalty supporters. They
appealed to American values of fairness, equal treatment, and pragmatism. In so
doing, they formed a coalition of legislators, political leaders, and citizens
who shared the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s view that it is time
to “stop tinkering with the machinery of death.”
(source: Commentary; Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political
science at Amherst College and author of The Death Penalty on the Ballot:
American Democracy and the Fate of Capital Punishment----The New Republic)
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