July 16
TEXAS:
State files a motion to set Rodney Reed’s execution for November
The state has filed a motion to schedule an execution date for death-row inmate
Rodney Reed, calling for him to be put to death on Nov. 20, 2019.
Reed’s attorney, Bryce Benjet, then filed a motion of his own Monday afternoon
opposing the state and asking a Bastrop District Court judge to dismiss or
strike the state’s request to schedule the execution. Benjet argues the state
has retaliated against Reed and his family for exercising their First Amendment
rights. He also argues that the state falsely implied the execution date would
not interfere with litigation in the case.
“The timing of the filing alone presents strong circumstantial evidence that
the motion was filed in response to Mr. Reed and his family’s exercise of First
Amendment rights, and not in a legitimate effort to enforce the judgment in
this case,” Benjet wrote in the motion.
His family members were joined by anti-death penalty activists to protest on
the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
denied his most recent appeal. Reed’s family believes he was wrongfully
convicted and intended to plead with the Supreme Court to overturn his
conviction.
“Being black and considered poor, they didn’t anticipate on us being in
Washington,” said Sandra Reed, Rodney’s mother.
The state’s motion asks the court to deny Reed a hearing. If the court does
allow Reed a hearing, the state asks that it happen as soon as possible because
the order would need to be entered by Aug. 21, 2019, in order to set Reed’s
execution on Nov. 20.
Reed’s legal team has fought for years to overturn Reed’s conviction and get
him a new trial. He was scheduled to be put to death in March 2015, but the
execution was paused just days beforehand. He was first sentenced to death in
May of 1998.
“This trial has been a Jim Crow trial from the beginning, from the very
beginning and we are outraged by that,” said Roderick Reed, Rodney’s brother.
Reed was convicted of killing Stacey Stites and dumping her body on a rural
Bastrop County road in 1996. DNA from the Stites case matched Reed, but Reed
said he had a consensual and secretive relationship with her.
Stites was set to marry Jimmy Fennell, a Georgetown police officer, at the time
of her murder. Fennell was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for an
unrelated crime. He was accused of raping a woman in his custody but pleaded
guilty to lesser charges. Reed’s attorney believes new evidence shows Fennell
was the actual killer.
Reed’s case has garnered national attention as his defense team — led by Benjet
— has uncovered new evidence, found new witnesses and cast doubt on the state’s
case and critical forensic evidence used at trial.
Reed had applied for relief from his 1997 murder conviction on the grounds that
scientific expert opinions used at trial were false and have since changed. But
on June 26, the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed that application for
relief. The appeals court also denied Reed relief he sought in 2017 that
included new testimony and evidence the defense presented.
Reed has unsuccessfully pushed to get pieces of evidence tested for DNA,
including the belt used to strangle Stites.
“Our family has done nothing but asked for a fair trial from the beginning, to
present all the evidence from the beginning,” Roderick Reed said.
(source: KXAN news)
*********************
"I'm not sorry": A quarter century later, Eddie Bernice Johnson stands by her
crime bill vote----Johnson is the only Texan remaining in Congress who voted
for the bill, which has become deeply unpopular among Democrats and is a
contentious issue in the 2020 presidential primary.
On the afternoon of August 18, 1994, Eddie Bernice Johnson, a barrier-breaking
freshman congresswoman from Dallas, stood on the floor of the U.S. House of
Representatives and stumped for the most infamous legislation of that decade.
“Every day, most of the headlines have to do with crime,” she said, describing
a desperate state of affairs in her home district. “School has been open less
than two weeks now and already teachers have had guns in their faces. They
found a gun arsenal underside of the building. It is overwhelming, but we must
do something about it."
Johnson was slated to speak that morning about health care, but she held off
for 10 minutes to weigh in on President Bill Clinton's crime bill, which looked
to be in jeopardy despite Democratic control of both chambers of Congress.
"I cannot understand why there is so much opposition and so much rhetoric and
so much demagoguery surrounding the bill that will address these issues," she
said.
3 days after Johnson's speech, the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act —
better known today as the 1994 crime bill — passed the House. The next month,
Clinton signed it into law.
2 1/2 decades later, Clinton’s $30 billion tough-on-crime bill has become a
flashpoint in heated debates about criminal and racial justice. A sweeping
package, the bill included several measures that are still broadly supported by
Democrats today: It included more than $1 billion to fight violence against
women and remains the last time Congress passed significant gun control
legislation. But the bill also expanded the death penalty, introduced
controversial 3-strikes and "truth-in-sentencing" laws, and poured billions in
funding toward the construction of federal prisons.
And today the legacy of the bill haunts many of its original champions. For a
new generation of liberal voters, complicity with the crime bill's passage is a
sort of political mortal sin. Many Democratic voters remember the bill as an
engine of mass incarceration fueled by cruel and racist policing laws. Most
notably, Joe Biden, one of the its lead authors, has faced a constant barrage
of attacks on his racial justice record as he tries to maintain his lead in the
2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Johnson, the first black representative elected from Dallas, is the only
current Texas representative who was in office to vote on the crime bill back
in 1994. She campaigned for it at the time, and voted for it when it finally
passed the House that August.
But in an interview this month in her Washington office, Johnson was unbending
in her defense of her record, waiving off the criticisms that have assailed
Biden and other backers of the crime bill. A quarter century later, she
expressed no regrets.
"I’m not sorry," Johnson told the Tribune, recalling her feeling of urgency at
the time to eradicate the violence and drug trafficking that plagued her
district. "If the circumstances were the same today as they were back then, I
would do the same thing."
More than 500 murders
In the decade leading up to Clinton's inauguration, many American cities were
reeling from crime. Year after year, cities across the country broke their own
murder records. For black males between 14 and 18 years old in the 1980s, the
leading cause of death was homicide. On TV, crime was inescapable. It even
invaded children's programing, where figures as unlikely as Pee Wee Herman
fronted alarmist PSAs about the lethal dangers of crack-cocaine.
Dallas was no exception. A 1989 PBS Frontline investigation into the city’s
drug trade opened with a jarring declaration: "Behind the gleaming face of
Dallas lies a war zone." In 1991, local homicides surpassed 500, giving Dallas
one of the highest murder rates of any city in the country.
"The thing that stood out nationally was the murder rate," said former Dallas
police Chief Ben Click, who took over the city’s police department not long
after homicides peaked. "For a city that size to have 500 murders was amazing.
... And those were just the murders. How many people were shot and all but
didn’t die?"
By the early 1990s there was general consensus that something needed to be done
about crime, but chasmic disagreement over how to address it. Democrats — under
the leadership of familiar names like Clinton and Biden — championed sprawling
prison expansion, harsher sentencing, and reloaded police forces. Republicans
pushed back, wary of the unbridled federal spending needed for crime-control.
But among liberals, there was one faction that was deeply ambivalent about
Clinton's tough-on-crime platform: black Democrats.
"Crime bills are tough votes for black lawmakers,” The New York Times observed
days before the crime bill’s passage. “Blacks are far more likely than whites
to be victims of violent crime, and some polls have found that they are more
afraid than whites of being murdered or mugged.”
At the same time, harsh policing and drastic prison expansion seemed sure to
disproportionately affect black communities.
The NAACP campaigned hard against the bill, denouncing it as “draconian” and “a
crime against the American people,” and members of the Congressional Black
Caucus, fearful of how Clinton’s legislation could harm black communities,
introduced a competing bill with a heavier emphasis on alternatives to
incarceration and billions of dollars towards drug rehabilitation and early
intervention programs.
This uneasiness extended to Dallas' black community leaders. Diane Ragsdale, an
activist who served as city councilwoman in Dallas during the 1980s and 1990s,
said that she distrusted the bill’s focus on police enforcement and drastic
sentencing laws.
"Even with the crack epidemic, many of us as activists, we didn't support that
at all," she said.
Johnson herself recalled that her choice to support the bill was not easy. She
was an old friend of Clinton's, dating back to the 1970s. Years later, the he
wrote in his memoir that Johnson was “one of [his] strongest allies in
Congress." (Johnson told the Tribune that she spoke with Clinton often during
his presidency but said she could not recall any specific conversations about
the crime bill.) But at the time, Johnson cited grievances with the bill’s
expansion of the death penalty, as well as the omission of a racial justice
component written by the Congressional Black Caucus.
She said she made her decision after being moved into action by people in her
district.
"I had just decided that I was going to take the safe way and vote against it,"
she told the Tribune. "But when I got home and talked with constituents and
looked at the situation being described to me in that community, I came back
and said to the caucus members that my vote [was] going to be for the bill."
The crime bill eventually passed with the votes of 26 of 38 Congressional Black
Caucus members.
"I don't apologize"
For 2 decades after the crime bill’s passage, debates over its legacy were
mostly dormant. But as the bill's architects attempt to woo a new generation of
voters who have rigid —sometimes uncompromising — political standards, power
brokers like Clinton and Biden have had to reckon with the consequences of
decades-old decisions. Clinton apologized for his bill's contribution to
incarceration levels in 2016. Biden, however, has been less repentant.
"This idea that the crime bill generated mass incarceration—it did not generate
mass incarceration," he said at a campaign event in May.
Johnson, too, pushed back on claims that the bill had damaging effects on black
Americans. She noted that she has received "not a single complaint" about her
vote in the decades since the bill passed and added that she sees little value
in the tendency of younger liberal voters to resurrect bygone decisions in
their attacks on Biden and other Democrats of their generation.
"I don’t know that you can go back and change history," Johnson said. "No
matter how much noise you keep up, it’s not going to change."
And while Johnson conceded that the bill may have been overly aggressive in its
enforcement prescriptions, she maintained that a softer bill would never have
passed: "You can always look at something in retrospect and say what you could
have done and should have done, but you’ve got to have the votes to get
something done."
Defenders of the crime bill often point to the precipitous decline of crime
rates across the board in the 1990s and early 2000s. They argue that the bill
was the saving grace of formerly crime-ridden American cities.
But crime rates were already trending down across the country by the time of
Clinton's inauguration.
"The bill itself, at least in the academic world, was not seen as any
significant contributor to any kind of reductions in crime in the United States
— and in the city of Dallas — because those crime rates were already
decreasing," said Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of
Texas at Dallas. He noted that Dallas' crime rates began to slide after their
peak in 1990 and 1991, and had a significantly steeper drop in the four years
leading up to the crime bill than in the 4 years after it.
Piquero said that a convergence of many factors — a booming economy, "an aging
of the crime prone population," the stabilization of the crack market, and the
emergence of new law enforcement technologies like CompStat policing — led to
the sudden reversal of national crime trends in the mid-1990s far more than
anything in Clinton's crime bill.
The bill's contribution to mass incarceration, however, may also be overblown.
Piquero and other experts point out that, although the bill did contribute to
an increase in prison population, incarceration levels were climbing at a
steeper rate in the years before the bill’s passage.
For some black criminal justice reformists in Dallas, Johnson’s support for the
crime bill came as little surprise. John Wiley Price, a longtime county
commissioner with significant sway on Dallas' south side, had sharp words for
her record on criminal justice.
"It’s kind of typical Congresswoman Johnson," Price told the Tribune, adding
that he is "unaware of any reform advocacy that she has championed."
Two-and-a-half decades later, bipartisan consensus over the methods of criminal
justice reform has shifted. Texas, long the epitome of mass incarceration and
death row sentencing, has become a leader in certain areas of criminal justice
reform. Last year, President Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, a sweeping
prison reform bill that was shepherded through Congress by Sen. John Cornyn,
R-Texas, and supported by many Texans on both sides of the aisle.
Still, homicide rates are surging in Dallas again, and Price expressed
frustration at the perennial damage levied on black Dallas residents, both by
crime itself and by misguided attempts to reform it.
"We've seen these cycles," he said. "Whether it’s a Joe Biden or an Eddie
Bernice, until we have somebody standing and really putting their finger to the
dam, we’re going to see this."
Stern in her defense of her record, Johnson argued that Price's voice is not
representative of her district.
"I've stayed in touch with law enforcement, with the police department, with
the D.A.'s office, with mayors," she said. "You're always going to have some
antagonists, but they can't boss you. I cannot be bossed."
For Johnson, the black incarceration boom of the last few decades is not the
result of the 1994 crime bill, but rather the product of the broken criminal
justice system tasked with putting its laws into effect.
"I don’t apologize for voting for the bill," she said, "What I don’t have
control over is how the bill was implemented. I don’t have control over
eradicating racism. If I could you know I would do something about that."
(source: Texas Tribune)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner Argues PA Death Penalty Is
Unconstitutional----"Because the death penalty has repeatedly been handed out
in an unreliable and arbitrary manner, it cannot survive the state
Constitution’s ban on cruel punishments."
A petition before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court by 2 death row inmates could
upend Pennsylvania's dysfunctional death penalty, and it has one extremely
unusual supporter: the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.
In a legal brief filed Monday night in support of the petition, Philadelphia
D.A. Larry Krasner, who ran for office promising to never pursue a death
sentence, argues Pennsylvania's death penalty is applied unreliably and
arbitrarily, violating the state constitution's ban on cruel punishment.
To reach its conclusions, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office reviewed
every case where a Philadelphia defendant received a death sentence between
1978 and 2017. The study found that 72 percent of those 155 sentences were
ultimately overturned—more than half of them for ineffective legal assistance.
"Where nearly three out of every four death sentences have been
overturned—after years of litigation at significant taxpayer expense—there can
be no confidence that capital punishment has been carefully reserved for the
most culpable defendants, as our Constitution requires," the office wrote in
its brief. "Where a majority of death sentenced defendants have been
represented by poorly compensated, poorly supported court-appointed attorneys,
there is a significant likelihood that capital punishment has not been reserved
for the 'worst of the worst.'"
The brief was filed in the case of Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli, who were
sentenced to death for 3 drug-related murders in 1992 and a fatal 1994
shooting, respectively. Their petition argues that the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court should strike down the state's capital punishment system because of its
"pervasive unreliability" and "systemic dysfunction," citing the scores of
reversed death penalty sentences, as well as 6 death row exonerations.
Cox and Marinelli's petition has attracted amici briefs from groups like the
Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund.
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania attorney general, the Philadelphia chapter of the
Fraternal Order of Police, and several groups of Republican state lawmakers
filed briefs opposing the petition. But it appears to be the first time, at
least as far as several criminal justice experts can tell, that a district
attorney has argued broadly in court against a state death penalty.
"There have been individual cases where a particular defendant challenges the
death penalty and a prosecutor who reviews the case on appeal decides, you
know, we can't defend what happened here," says David Rudovsky, a professor at
the University of Pennsylvania Law School. "I don't know of any case of a
broad-scale attack like this on the whole system, where a prosecutor agreed
that the death penalty, at least in application here in Pennsylvania, is
unconstitutional."
Krasner, a former civil rights attorney, was elected in 2017 and is one of the
most high-profile members of a wave of progressive candidates who have run for
prosecutor offices in major cities in recent years, promising to roll back
policies they say contribute to mass incarceration.
Krasner pledged during his campaign to never seek the death penalty. That
decision, along with others, has led to intense opposition from police unions
and critical local news coverage.
Although Pennsylvania is 1 of 30 states where the death penalty is still on the
books, there have only been 3 executions in the state since 1978. The last took
place in 1999. 4 years ago, Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf announced a
moratorium on the death penalty that still remains in place.
Nationwide, the use of capital punishment has steadily declined and become more
geographically isolated over the past few decades. Only a handful of counties
in the U.S. are responsible for the majority of new death penalty sentences.
Last year, the Washington Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty
"because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner"—much the
same argument that Cox and Marinelli, as well as Krasner, make.
However, the extraordinary cost of death penalty trials and near non-existence
of executions have not stopped Pennsylvania prosecutors from pursuing capital
punishment. A 2016 analysis by the Reading Eagle found that the state had spent
$816 million on the death penalty since 1978.
(source: reason.com)
*******************
The death penalty punishes PA’s corrections workers, too | Opinion
Graterford Prison is where I started my corrections career over 20 years ago.
When I retired in 2018, I was its superintendent, responsible for the safety
and well-being of hundreds of employees and 3600 prisoners.
My work was deeply rewarding, but nothing prepared me for the level of human
suffering I experienced in the restricted housing unit where death-sentenced
prisoners are held. Few outside of my profession realize how difficult capital
punishment is for the staff; even when executions are not being carried out,
housing death row prisoners can be profoundly damaging.
The corrections profession learned long ago that working with death row
prisoners causes trauma, and officers working on death row today are regularly
monitored for mental health concerns. No officer is permitted to work there
longer than 2 years, and most “tours of duty” on the row are much shorter.
Although staff members leave the environment, psychological effects can persist
for years.
The work hardens you in order to survive it. It can make you frozen inside –
sometimes to a point where even your loved ones’ own tears won’t move you. Some
officers indulge in alcohol, drugs or other dangerous behaviors to find relief.
Some isolate and leave their families. Some have even taken their own lives
when it becomes too overwhelming. The stress on death row staff is
seldom-discussed but undeniably real. Each tour of duty on death row makes you
feel less human.
It hurt to be unable to help colleagues harmed by death row conditions, but I
could do even less for the death row prisoners themselves. Politics, policy and
post order often kept us from providing professionally prudent care. Condemned
prisoners are not permitted to participate in programs, religious ceremonies or
work opportunities. By the end of my career, some of them had not been outside
of their cells in years.
Death row was designed to provide temporary housing prior to an execution, but
today’s death-sentenced prisoners live inhumanely for many years or decades
while staff struggle to help them survive their “temporary” stay.
Pennsylvania’s last execution was in 1999. For the condemned men, decades pass
with no human touch except when being handcuffed and shackled.
Death row prisoners live in small, barren cells. Open bars allow zero privacy.
Toileting, personal care, meals and all of the activities of daily living occur
in constant view of others. Phone calls are limited. Visits occur in modules.
Each time a prisoner leaves his cell he is subjected to a strip search.
Although death row was not designed as an asylum for the mentally ill, that’s
often how I remember it . . . the cacophony of the Restricted Housing Unit for
inmates with severe adjustment problems in the prison – the screaming, the
yelling, the banging. All of that was imposed on the condemned men, most of
whom lived at times in deathly silence.
During the last few years of my career, we were preparing to move to the newly
built prison at Phoenix, a much more modern corrections facility. Graterford,
built in 1929, was already old when I began working there. Cell doors creak and
stick, staircases have fallen away from the concrete walls, the roofs leak, and
the age-old plumbing is in constant need of repair.ically broken and in tears
for his critically-ill child, who had been unable to contact his family for
days.
The Department of Corrections has thousands of highly professional and deeply
committed staff. But nearly all of their training and expertise are cast aside
when it comes to maintaining condemned prisoners in their tiny boxes for
decades.
During the last few years of my career, we were preparing to move to the newly
built prison at Phoenix, a much more modern corrections facility. Graterford,
built in 1929, was already old when I began working there. Cell doors creak and
stick, staircases have fallen away from the concrete walls, the roofs leak, and
the age-old plumbing is in constant need of repair.
Prisons eventually outlive their usefulness and turn into relics of an
unfamiliar past. Maybe the death penalty is a relic that can also be replaced.
I know that doing so would remove a huge burden from the lives of corrections
staff.
As government officials in Harrisburg contemplate what to do about the death
penalty, I urge them to factor in the human toll it takes on Pennsylvania’s
corrections profession. Death sentences punish them, too.
(source: Opinion, Ms. Cynthia Link served as the Superintendent of Graterford
Prison from 2015-2018----pennlive.com)
KENTUCKY:
KY Judge Rules Death Penalty Protocol Unconstitutional
A Franklin County judge has ruled the state's protocol for carrying out the
death penalty is unconstitutional. The ruling by Judge Phillip Shepherd came in
response to a case filed by a group of death-row inmates, who argued
corrections department regulations don't protect people with intellectual
disabilities.
Nearly 20 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of people with
intellectual disabilities. Aaron Bentley, chair of the Kentucky Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty, said the judge's decision highlights one of the many
flaws in the state's system.
"What Kentucky is asking us is to trust that a person not only deserves - in
their estimation - to be executed, but is fit to be executed,” Bentley said.
“And what the decision from the Franklin circuit court shows is that we can't
trust that."
Bentley pointed out the state once relied on IQ testing to determine whether or
not a person could be considered intellectually disabled. In 2018, Kentucky's
Supreme Court ruled IQ alone is not sufficient to determine mental competency.
Bentley said corrections departments should be performing comprehensive
psychological testing to ensure defendants have the ability to understand why
they are being sentenced to die.
Litigation over Kentucky's execution protocol has been ongoing for more than a
decade. Republican State Rep. Chad McCoy of Bardstown said Kentuckians should
be aware that legal fees and other costs involved in death-row cases are
draining state funds.
"Right now with the death penalty in Kentucky, since 1978, I think we've had 33
people sentenced to death, but we've only actually executed 3. And of those 3,
one of them voluntarily said 'I'm not going to do any appeals; go ahead and do
it.' And the other 2 actually went through the system,” McCoy said. “We waste
just a ton of money on the appeals, that last literally for years, and years
and years, and years."
The state spends an estimated $10 million per year on death-penalty court
proceedings, according to the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy.
(source: publicnewsservice.org)
KANSAS:
US Supreme Court sets Oct. 7 for appeal in Osage County murder case Featured
3 Kansas court cases will be heard by the United States Supreme Court this
fall, including one from Osage County.
The case of Kansas v. James Kraig Kahler will be heard Oct. 7. Kahler does not
argue killing his wife, 2 daughters and his wife's grandmother in November
2009. However, he says state law did not let him assert an insanity defense and
that prevention was unconstitutional.
Kahler was convicted of capital murder in 2011. Last year, the Kansas Supreme
Court affirmed both the conviction and resulting death penalty sentence in
Kahler's case. The US Supreme Court has granted Kahler's request to have that
decision reviewed.
(source: KVOE news)
NEW MEXICO:
New Mexico Supreme Court Vacates Death Sentences Of The Last Inmates On Death
Row
The State Supreme Court has set aside the death sentences of the only inmates
awaiting execution in New Mexico, concluding that their sentences were
unlawfully disproportionate in comparison to the penalties imposed in similar
murder cases.
In a divided decision, 3 justices sent the cases of Timothy Allen and Robert
Fry back to a District Court in San Juan County to impose sentences of life
imprisonment.
New Mexico repealed the death penalty a decade ago for murders committed after
July 1, 2009. However, the death sentences of Allen and Fry remained in place
because they were convicted and sentenced years before New Mexico abolished
capital punishment.
The 1979 law under which Allen and Fry were sentenced requires the state’s
highest court to review capital punishment cases and prohibits a sentence of
death when it is “excessive or disproportionate” to the penalties in similar
cases. The requirement for a “comparative proportionality” review was adopted
by the Legislature to protect against the death penalty being arbitrarily
imposed in violation of constitutional protections against cruel and unusual
punishment.
“In comparing Petitioner’s cases to other equally horrendous cases in which
defendants were not sentenced to death, we find no meaningful distinction which
justifies imposing the death sentence upon Fry and Allen. The absence of such a
distinction renders the ultimate penalty of death contrary to the people’s
mandate that the sentence be proportionate to the penalties imposed in similar
cases,” the Court said in a majority opinion written by Justice Barbara J.
Vigil.
Retired Justices Edward L. Chávez and Charles W. Daniels joined in the majority
decision and each wrote specially concurring opinions. Chief Justice Judith K.
Nakamura dissented and Retired Justice Petra Jimenez Maes joined in the
dissent.
“The Majority misstates the governing law and has done what our Legislature
would not: repeal the death penalty in its entirety for all defendants in New
Mexico,” Chief Justice Nakamura wrote in the dissenting opinion.
Justices Chávez, Daniels and Maes remained assigned to the death penalty case
after their retirement last year. The 3 justices were on the Court when Allen
and Fry brought their legal challenge more than 5 years ago.
Until 2009, New Mexico allowed the death penalty only for first-degree murders
with certain aggravating circumstances, including a killing during a kidnapping
and the murder of a police officer. Allen was convicted of kidnapping,
attempted rape and murdering 17-year-old Sandra Phillips in 1994. Fry was
sentenced to death for fatally stabbing and bludgeoning Betty Lee, a mother of
5, in 2000. He also was convicted of kidnapping, attempted rape and evidence
tampering. In other cases, Fry was sentenced to life in prison for three
murders in 1996 and 1998 in San Juan County.
The state’s highest court had previously affirmed the convictions and death
sentences of Allen and Fry. Each of the men had post-conviction legal
challenges pending when the state repealed the death penalty. They appealed to
the Supreme Court after a district court rejected arguments that their death
sentences were unconstitutional because New Mexico had abolished capital
punishment.
In today’s decision, the Court did not address the issue of constitutional
violations and instead concluded that the death sentences were invalid under
statutory safeguards established by the Legislature for death penalty cases.
The Court initially heard arguments in the combined cases in 2014, and later
asked attorneys for additional written briefing on whether to modify its
approach for determining whether a death sentence is excessive or
disproportionate to sentences in similar cases. The Court’s majority expanded
the cases reviewed for an assessment of the death sentences of Allen and Fry,
and concluded that “a death sentence is disproportionate if juries do not
generally impose a death sentence in similar cases and there is no real
justification for the death sentence.”
In more than half a century, the only person executed in New Mexico was Terry
Clark. He was put to death by lethal injection in 2001 for the murder,
kidnapping and rape of a nine-year-old girl. The execution occurred after Clark
dropped all appeals of his death sentence.
From July 1979 through December 2007, juries imposed a death sentence in 15
cases and 12 of those were vacated — seven reversed on direct appeal or
post-conviction proceedings and five were commuted in 1986 by then Gov. Toney
Anaya. One inmate died in prison while awaiting execution. During that time,
prosecutors sought the death penalty in 211 cases but only 52 cases advanced to
a separate proceeding for jurors to decide on imposing a death sentence.
Allen and Fry will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years under a
sentence of life imprisonment. But if paroled, they would immediately begin
serving additional sentences for their other convictions, Justice Chávez wrote
in his concurring opinion. Allen, who soon turns 56, faces an additional 25
years after serving his murder sentence. Fry, 45, will never be eligible for
release from prison, the Justice said, because he faces 120 years for the life
sentences of his 1st-degree murder convictions.
Justice Daniels, in a concurring opinion, said “when the collective result of
all the actions taken under authority of our state justice system is that 1 or
even 3 cold-blooded murders out of hundreds are executed by the state while the
equally culpable majority are spared, our state cannot honestly claim it has
imposed the death penalty in a proportionate manner.”
“A killer’s crimes reflect who he is. What we do to the killer reflects who we
are,” Justice Daniels wrote. “Can we really look anyone in the eye and say that
executing these 2 defendants would be proportionate when compared to non-deadly
punishment our state has overwhelmingly meted out in virtually all equally
serious 1st-degree murder cases, and specifically in similar cases, since
enactment of the Capital Felony Sentencing Act in 1979? I, for one, cannot
honestly do so.”
In the dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Nakamura wrote: “The legislative
command that this Court assure that Fry’s and Allen’s death sentences are not
‘disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases’ should not be
construed in the way embraced by the Majority. They perceive in the language
authority to conclude that, because so few offenders in New Mexico have ever
been sentenced to die, no offenders shall ever again be sentenced to die in New
Mexico. I respectfully contend that the Majority’s judgment is error.”
Previous New Mexico Supreme Court decisions in death penalty cases correctly
interpreted the law, the Chief Justice wrote, “to require us to do no more than
evaluate whether there is some precedent for the death sentence and to assure
ourselves that the sentence is not excessive in light of the nature of the
crime. To do anything more than this intrudes upon the capital-sentencing
jury’s rightful, constitutional authority to extend mercy or impose death.”
(source: Los Alamos Daily Post)
ARIZONA:
Books: “Arbitrary Death” Reveals a Prosecutor’s Evolution on Capital Punishment
Rick Unklesbay served as a prosecutor in the Pima County Attorney’s Office in
Arizona for nearly four decades, prosecuting more than 100 homicides, including
sixteen in which death sentences were imposed. He put Don Miller on death row
and, in November 2000, watched as Arizona put Miller to death. In Arbitrary
Death: A Prosecutor’s Perspective on the Death Penalty, Unklesbay tells the
story of nine of those death-penalty cases and how the arbitrary nature of the
U.S. justice system has changed his mind about the death penalty. “Who lives
and who dies,” he writes, “is a decision that becomes the arbitrary application
of convoluted statutes and conflicting and inconsistent court decisions.” He
has concluded that the system cannot fix these problems and that “the effort to
eliminate arbitrariness in capital cases, while preserving fairness is …
plainly doomed.” As a result, he has come to believe that “the randomness
inherent in capital punishment should lead us to rid it from our statutes.”
Unklesbay’s book explores how a capital prosecutor in what had been one of the
nation’s most aggressive death-penalty jurisdictions now finds life in prison a
better sentencing option than the death penalty. In an interview with Arizona
Public Media, he said, “seeing how these cases proceed, it strikes me that if
people really knew what the system was about they would say: ‘We don’t need
this. We have an alternative of natural life.’”
Each chapter in Arbitrary Death focuses on a capital case that Unklesbay tried
during his time as a homicide prosecutor. It includes some cases that resulted
in death sentences and others that he believed should have, but for various
reasons did not. “Despite the effort, expense, and time that goes into
prosecuting and defending these cases, the ultimate decision as to whether such
a murderer lives or dies is … dependent upon the ‘vagaries of the criminal
justice system’” — vagaries that caused him to question the purpose and
fairness of the death penalty.
By the end of the book, Unklesbay has addressed some of the other problems
associated with the death penalty, including its exorbitant costs, its long
history of racial disparities, and the fact that our justice system is not
perfect. He suggests, “The question one must answer then is, if our system
allows for wrongful convictions, are we willing to continue to execute
convicted murderers?” In his very last section, aptly titled “Final Words” he
explains the procedures that go into an execution. The process that can
sometimes take over thirty years ends the same way that it started, with death.
However, he says that it is “anticlimactic” because “[t]he execution has not
brought back the victim of course and, with few exceptions, has not brought
anyone any satisfaction.”
Rob Warden, a co-founder of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern
University Pritzker School of Law and now co-director of Injustice Watch, calls
Arbitrary Death a “compelling” book “that ought to be required reading by every
prosecutor, every attorney general, every governor, and every legislator” in
those states that still authorize capital punishment. In assessing his own
work, Unklesbay writes, “I doubt that opponents of the death penalty will find
any surprises here and will feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface of
the problems associated with capital punishment. Some ardent supporters will no
doubt feel I have betrayed them by writing that we should rid ourselves of a
punishment we simply don’t need. Still others will think me a hypocrite for
expressing these views while still prosecuting these cases. They are probably
all correct.”
(source: Death Penalty Informatino Center)
NEVADA:
Nevada Supreme Court rejects killer’s bid to get off death row
The Nevada Supreme Court has denied a Reno man’s latest bid to get off death
row for the 2008 rape and killing of a 19-year-old college student that became
one of the highest-profile cases in the city’s history.
The high court rejected James Biela’s motion for a rehearing of the appeal it
denied in April seeking a new penalty phase of his trial in the kidnapping and
murder of Brianna Denison and sexual assault of 2 others near the University of
Nevada, Reno.
Biela’s lawyers argued the jury wouldn’t have ordered Biela’s death if his
public defenders had tried to block jurors from hearing improper evidence about
his history of domestic violence and animal abuse.
The justices agreed the defenders were legally ineffective but ruled it
wouldn’t have affected his sentence because of all the other overwhelming
evidence.
(source: Nevada Appeal)
USA:
Being Pro Life: Capital Punishment: Is It Truly Justice?
The story below are summaries of 2 powerful personal interviews.
Part I
Joe D’Ambrosio was getting ready for work on September 26, 1988.
Suddenly, 2 police officers kicked in his door, pointed pistols at him, threw
him on the ground, handcuffed him and arrested him for murder. A few months
later his case made it to trial, and after the shortest capital trial in Ohio
history (just over two days), he was sentenced to death for a crime he did not
commit.
An honorably discharged sergeant from the U.S. military with no criminal
record, Joe had no idea he would spend the next 22 years of his life on death
row, desperately searching for someone to take up his case for a battle he was
too poor and uneducated to fight the first time around. He had two
court-appointed attorneys in that first trial. One was preoccupied running for
mayor, and the other just didn’t seem to care. They both presumed he was guilty
and made no effort to look into the facts of the case.
Ten years into his sentence, he finally found the break he needed when he was
visited by Father Neil, a Catholic priest who also happened to be a nurse and
an attorney. A short investigation convinced Father Neil that Joe was innocent,
and prosecutors had just been in a hurry to convict the easiest target.
His nursing and law backgrounds gave him the insight he needed to see how
contradictory the evidence was in Joe’s case. It took 12 more years, but Father
Neil was eventually able to turn over crucial evidence to some attorney
friends, got Joe an evidentiary hearing, and the case was overturned.
Joe is not alone. To date, there have been 165 exonerees from death row in the
United States since 1973. That is about 1.6 percent of all death row
convictions. But a 2014 study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated
that over 4 % of death sentences in the United States are for false
convictions. No matter how you feel about the death penalty for the guilty,
that’s a high percentage of error in our legal system for a punishment that
cannot be undone.
The story below is Part II of 2 powerful personal interviews.
On the other side of the courtroom, Bill Pelke stands with those who have lost
loved ones to violent crime. Bill’s grandmother, Nana, was attacked by a group
of teenage girls who skipped school one afternoon, looking for money to play
arcade games. They entered her home, stabbed her to death, but only found $10
and the keys to her car. The trial ended with one of the young women, Paula,
being sentenced to death with tears streaming down her face. Bill watched
stone-faced as her grandfather was led out of the courtroom for his outbursts
of, “They’re going to kill my baby.” Three months later, Bill was unable to get
that image out of his head. He realized that Nana would never have wanted a
grandfather to watch his own grandchild die. Nana loved Jesus. She would have
chosen love and forgiveness over more death.
Forgiveness was a way of life for his grandmother, so it needed to be a way of
life for Bill as well. He changed his opinion of the death penalty, and credits
God’s intervention in Paula’s case to ultimately get her off of death row. He
later founded an organization called Journey of Hope, led by murder victims’
family members, who share their stories and go on speaking tours about how
healing comes through love and forgiveness, not vengeance and further death.
You can learn more about their work at journeyofhope.org. Ohioans to Stop
Executions fights to end capital punishment, and to help overturn questionable
convictions like Joe’s right here in Ohio. You can learn more about them or
donate at otse.org.
(source: thecatholictelegraph.com)
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