June 23
USA (RHODE ISLAND):
Feds will seek death penalty in Jason Pleau case
This past week, the ongoing Jason Pleau custody battle took yet another turn.
On Monday, federal prosecutors declared their desire to seek the death penalty
in the Pleau case. Governor Lincoln Chafee, a strong opponent of capital
punishment, has been embroiled in a legal tug-of-war with the feds over Pleau’s
custody since June 2011.
Initially, the custody of Pleau was granted to Rhode Island, but federal
prosecutors were later given custody after an appeal was made to the First
District Court of Appeals in Boston. Although Chafee refused to hand Pleau
over, the state was forced to concede in late May due to the court’s decision.
Pleau, 34, is accused of fatally shooting 49-year-old gas station manager David
Main as he was on his way to a Woonsocket bank on Sept. 20, 2010 to make a
deposit. A masked Pleau reportedly made off with a deposit bag containing over
$12,000 after shooting Main multiple times, according to prosecutors. Aside
from the 2010 incident, Pleau was a lengthy criminal record, including a series
of robberies in 1996, which he served 12 years in prison for. Feds cite Pleau’s
low rehabilitative potential and likelihood to reoffend as just cause for
seeking the death penalty.
The governor has stated that he intends to pursue the case with the United
States Supreme Court, calling it a states’ right issue. According to Chafee,
capital punishment should not apply to Pleau because the event occurred in
Rhode Island, a state that has abolished the death penalty.
Rhode Island’s last hanging took place on February 14, 1845. Chafee
posthumously pardoned John Gordon, the deceased, in 2011.
(source: Go Local Providence News)
******************
Remembering the Day of the Rosenberg Executions
It was one of the most dramatic trials in American history -- 2 New Yorkers, a
man and his wife -- were convicted of passing on atomic secrets to the Soviet
Union.
And on an evening in late June, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg paid the
penalty for their crime. They were electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison in upstate
Ossining.
I was at Sing Sing, assigned by my city editor, at the World-Telegram and Sun,
to cover the scene outside the prison gates on that fateful day. The tension
had been building, not only in New York but throughout the world as the
execution date drew near. A second reporter for the newspaper became part of a
“pool” to cover the execution itself. The noted reporter-columnist Bob
Considine, covered the execution, then briefed other reporters on what he
witnessed.
I was just 29, still wet behind the ears in this business. And I was nervous
about how well I would handle the assignment. There was tension throughout the
world. For months demonstrators in many countries had demanded that the United
States not carry out the executions. In Washington and New York demonstrators
appealed to President Truman and, then, President Eisenhower to spare the
Rosenbergs.
At the 11th hour, when the Rosenberg attorneys made a plea for executive
clemency, Eisenhower turned them down. Eisenhower issued a statement declaring:
“I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the
Rosenbergs may have condemned to death millions of innocent people all over the
world. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is
the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable
to what these spies have done.”
On June 19, the day of the execution, I found a spot on a hill overlooking the
prison courtyard. In the course of a tense afternoon I saw 2 prison physicians,
who would later certify the deaths of the prisoners, arrive by car. Julius
Rosenberg’s brother, David, got out of another car and sprinted to the prison
gate. The Rosenbergs’ two young children, Robert, 6, and Michael, 10, came for
a last visit with their parents.
In the last hour, the setting sun sent a golden shaft down the Hudson River. A
Coast Guard helicopter circled overhead. There were rumors that thousands of
pickets might try to storm the prison gates.
Barricades were set up; hundreds of prison guards, state troopers and Ossining
policemen assembled to handle any threat. But none came.
On the porch of a frame house on the hill near the courtyard sat gray-haired
Mrs. Natalie Jackson, 1 of 4 Death House matrons. She was listening to the
radio for the latest news from the prison.
She talked of Ethel Rosenberg: “When I saw her today, she was as calm as ever.
She is a quiet one. I’ve seen 5 women go to the chair but she was the calmest.
The only sentence I heard from her was when she talked about her children. “
At 7:20 almost all conversation ceased. At 7:52 a trooper said: “I understand
one is dead.”
Tension was at its peak.
At 8:18, a blue-shirted guard in Tower 13, high above the main gate, crossed
his arms, then spread them out like an umpire signaling a player safe at home.
That’s how the news came to the world that both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were
dead.
(source: Gabe Pressman, NBC News)
*****************
U.S. Bureau of Prisons to arm some guards with pepper spray
Corrections officers at U.S. Penitentiary Atwater in California and 6 other
tension-racked federal prisons now will be armed with pepper spray, prompted in
part by a 2008 murder that still haunts a California court.
Urged on by lawmakers, U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials are currently training
selected officers to use the spray canisters that can drop a violent inmate
from up to 12 feet away. Although described as a “pilot program” that will
formally start in several weeks, the decision marks a policy shift for
officials who until now have warned against the dangers of arming prison
guards.
Under the prior no-weapons policy, Atwater guard Jose Rivera carried only a
radio and body alarm when 2 inmates turned on him June 20, 2008. They ran
Rivera down, tackled the 22-year-old Navy veteran and stabbed him repeatedly, a
prison videotape shows. The 2 accused inmates are awaiting trial.
“The senseless and tragic murder of Jose Rivera highlighted the dangerous risks
correctional officers face on a daily basis when working in overcrowded
prisons,” stated Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, Calif., adding that he was
“pleased” with the new policy that he believes will “save other law enforcement
officers from injury or even death.”
Following Rivera’s murder, Cardoza introduced legislation to direct a
pepper-spray pilot program in federal prisons. Although the legislation has not
moved, the version re-introduced in the current Congress has collected 61 House
co-sponsors; it’s the kind of congressional support that can grab an agency’s
attention.
Besides Atwater, which opened in California’s Central Valley in 2001, the
pepper spray will be distributed to guards at other high-security federal
prisons in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia and Louisiana. Training is
now under way and the pepper spray is supposed to be deployed by August, with
officials planning to study its use and effectiveness for the next year.
“I hope it helps someone not get injured, and absolutely save a life,” Dale
Deshotel, president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Council
of Prison Locals 33, said in an interview Friday. “We hope we can (eventually)
get this into all employees’ hands.”
Known technically as oleoresin capsicum, pepper spray incapacitates by causing
retching, uncontrollable coughing, burning pain, eye swelling and more.
While state prison guards in California and a number of other states are armed
with pepper spray, federal authorities until now have reasoned that the
potential disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
Arming guards, even with a non-lethal weapon like pepper spray, would impede
communication with inmates, officials have stated. Officials also have warned
that unruly inmates could seize the three- to four-ounce pepper spray canisters
and turn them against the guards.
“Management at one (federal) institution explained that, regardless of the
amount of equipment officers carry, inmates will always outnumber officers.
Therefore, the officers’ ability to manage the inmates through effective
communication, rather than the use of equipment, is essential to ensuring
federal safety,” the Government Accountability Office noted in a 2011 study.
The prior director of the Bureau of Prisons who had been steadfast in resisting
arming guards, Harley Lappin, left the agency last year to join the private
Corrections Corporation of America. The current director, Charles E. Samuels,
Jr., has been more open to the idea, though the pilot program announcement
“came out of the blue,” Deshotel said.
A Bureau of Prison spokesperson could not be reached Friday.
In certain cases, Bureau of Prisons officials have granted waivers to permit
the deployment of additional equipment. Guards at the so-called Supermax
facility in Florence, Colo., for instance, were given special permission to
carry batons. Pepper spray and other weapons have also been stored and kept
available for emergency use.
Federal prison inmates committed 73 “serious” assaults on staff in 2010 and
1,623 “less serious” assaults, Bureau of Prisons records show. In 2008, the
year of Rivera’s death, federal prisons reported 94 serious assaults and 1,392
less serious assaults.
Inmates James Leon Guerrero and Joseph Cabrera Sablan potentially face the
death penalty if convicted of Rivera’s murder. Attorneys, though, still are
contesting whether Guerrero is mentally fit to stand trial.
(source: McClatchy News Service)
ARKANSAS:
Arkansas Court Upends Death Penalty
The Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the state’s death penalty law on Friday,
faulting a provision that permitted the Corrections Department to select the
fatal drugs used in an execution.
The court ruled 5 to 2 that the Legislature must set the quantity and type of
drugs in a lethal injection. The 2009 law left those decisions to the director
of the Corrections Department. The court sided with 10 death row inmates who
challenged the law’s constitutionality.
Prison officials across the nation are grappling with a shortage of an
anesthetic called sodium thiopental that is 1 of 3 drugs used in a lethal
injection. The only American company that manufactured the drug stopped
producing it in 2010, saying the active ingredient had become difficult to
obtain.
Arkansas does not have any doses of the drug left, and its law does not specify
whether a substitute is allowed. Although Arkansas is 1 of 33 states where the
death penalty is legal, the state has not held an execution since 2005, while
it has fought legal challenges.
The 37 inmates on the state’s death row will not be executed until the
Legislature responds to the ruling, said Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the
Corrections Department. But, she said, “we still have a responsibility to
execute these inmates.”
Obtaining the drugs needed for a lethal injection has become challenging in
many states. 3 drugs are used in most lethal injections: an anesthetic to numb
the pain, a muscle relaxant to prevent movement and a drug that stops the
heart.
Some states had planned to replace the most common anesthetic, sodium
thiopental, with a drug called pentobarbital that is also used in animal
euthanasia. But the Danish company that makes that drug stopped allowing it to
be used for human executions.
The scarcity of these drugs has raised legal questions for prison officials,
said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center. Other states, including Texas, Delaware and Idaho, have laws similar to
Arkansas’s that allow the Corrections Department to choose the drugs.
Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel of Arkansas,
said the state was forming a plan to address the court decision.
In Friday’s ruling, Justice Jim Gunter wrote that the case came down to a
matter of separation of powers. “The Legislature has abdicated its
responsibility and passed to the executive branch,” he wrote in the majority
opinion, arguing that the law left “unfettered discretion” to corrections
officials.
In dissent, two justices argued that federal bans on “cruel and unusual
punishment” are sufficient to ensure a humane execution procedure. “Arkansas is
left no method of carrying out the death penalty in cases where it has been
lawfully imposed,” Justice Karen Baker wrote.
(source: New York Times)
NEBRASKA:
Ruling could affect Nebraska death penalty law
A Friday ruling by the Arkansas Supreme Court striking down that state's
execution law could affect Nebraska's use of the death penalty.
The court, in a split decision, agreed with 10 death row inmates who said the
Arkansas constitution says only its Legislature can set execution policy, an
authority state lawmakers gave its Correction Department in 2009.
Nebraska death-row inmate Michael Ryan makes the same argument in an appeal
pending before the Nebraska Supreme Court. He says Nebraska lawmakers were
wrong in 2009 to give the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services the
authority to set the state’s lethal injection protocol when use of the electric
chair was abolished.
And while the Arkansas ruling has no direct bearing on Nebraska, it shows the
argument -- which Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning's office has called
frivolous -- has merit.
In the Arkansas court's majority opinion, Justice Jim Gunter wrote: "It is
evident to this court that the Legislature has abdicated its responsibility and
passed to the executive branch, in this case the (Arkansas Department of
Correction), the unfettered discretion to determine all protocol and
procedures, most notably the chemicals to be used, for a state execution."
2 members of the seven-member court dissented, arguing that the Correction
Department's discretion is not "unfettered" because it is bound by the federal
and state constitutions that guard against cruel and unusual punishment.
"In addition, Arkansas is left no method of carrying out the death penalty in
cases where it has been lawfully imposed," Justice Karen Baker wrote.
In the Nebraska case, Richardson County District Judge Daniel Bryan Jr. did not
address the question as to whether Nebraska's death-penalty law violates the
state Constitution; the case was thrown out on procedural grounds.
Ryan's lawyer, Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission of Public Advocacy, is
asking the Nebraska high court to send the case back to Bryan to rule on that
question, among other things.
Soucie also argues that Ryan was sentenced to die in the electric chair, which
the state no longer uses. Nebraska switched to lethal injection after a state
Supreme Court ruling that the chair was unconstitutional and cruel and unusual
punishment. At the time, Nebraska was the only state with electrocution as its
sole means of execution.
In his order, Bryan said courts have jurisdiction in such cases only if "a
prisoner under sentence asserts facts that claim a right to be released on
grounds that there was a denial or infringement of state or federal
constitutional rights that would render the judgment or conviction void or
voidable.
"Here, Ryan … is asking that his death sentence be vacated for constitutional
infringements and that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The
grounds he alleges occurred well after the final judgment in the criminal
matter and do not deal with the judgments of the death sentence ordered by the
court, but deal with the method of inflicting the death penalty."
That issue, the judge said, already was decided by the Nebraska Supreme Court
in death-row cases in 2006 and 2008.
Soucie asked that Ryan's death sentence be reduced to life without parole.
Ryan was convicted in the cult-related 1985 killings of James Thimm, 26, and
Luke Stice, 5, near Rulo. He was sentenced to death for Thimm's murder.
Thimm was tortured for several days by members of Ryan's cult at their Rulo
compound. He was beaten, his fingers were shot off, he was sodomized with a
shovel handle, his legs were skinned and several of his bones were broken.
Finally, Ryan killed him by stomping on his chest.
(source: Journal Star)
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