[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OKLAHOMA
May 8 OKLAHOMAstay/new date of execution 180-day stay recommended for convicted Oklahoma killer Charles Warner; Warner was set to be executed by lethal injection on April 29. His execution was delayed 2 weeks by Gov. Mary Fallin. Convicted killer Charles Warner is now set to be executed Nov. 13, according to a filing Thursday with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. Warner was set to be executed by lethal injection on April 29. His execution was delayed 2 weeks by Gov. Mary Fallin following the botched execution that day of murderer Clayton Lockett. The state Attorney General's Office says it will not oppose a 180-day stay in Warner's case, in order to allow for an investigation into Lockett's execution to be completed. (source: The Oklahoman) Oklahoma agrees to 180-day stay of execution for death-row inmate The Oklahoma attorney general's office on Thursday agreed to a 180-day stay of execution for death-row inmate Charles Warner, while the state investigates last week's botched execution of Clayton Lockett. Lawyers for Warner, a convicted killer, had requested the state court of criminal appeals grant a stay of execution for at least 6 months. The attorney general's office said on Thursday he should be executed on 13 November. The criminal appeals court had ordered the state to respond to the stay request by noon on Thursday. The response was filed at 11.45am. After an unprecedented legal and political battle, Oklahoma tried to execute Lockett on 29 April with an untried dose of the drug midazolam followed by vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Lockett did not fall asleep for 10 minutes; 3 minutes after he fell unconscious he began to writhe and struggle against his restraints. 16 minutes into the execution, he groaned: Man. The warden ordered that blinds be lowered to the execution witnesses. Officials called off the execution, but corrections director Robert Patton said Lockett died of what appeared to be a heart attack 43 minutes after the execution began. Warner's execution, also scheduled to take place that night, was rescheduled to 13 May. Lockett was convicted of kidnapping and shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman as part of a 1999 home invasion. She survived the initial assault, but Lockett ordered an accomplice to bury her alive. He also raped one of her friends. Neiman's parents supported his death sentence. Warner was convicted of raping and killing 11-month-old Adrianna Waller in 1997. The child's mother said she morally opposes the death penalty and would be traumatized again by knowing of Warner's execution. After Lockett's death, Patton recommended an indefinite stay of all executions in the state. He said refining new protocols could take weeks and prison staff would need extensive training. The state department of public safety is reviewing Lockett's death. One autopsy was completed in Texas, at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science, and Lockett's body was sent back to the medical examiner's office in Tulsa this week. The state's autopsy report is pending. His attorneys will have a private doctor conduct their own autopsy. The office of Mary Fallin, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, has said the state will not proceed with any executions until department of corrections protocols can be reviewed and updated, and staff then trained to implement those new protocols. The state said it would notify the court of any need for an additional stay in Warner's case as the review of Lockett's death continued. Warner's litigation conduct over the past 60 days demonstrates a strategic choice by his counsel to pursue an endless media campaign against capital punishment in Oklahoma instead of exhausting available legal remedies in the proper court, wrote Seth Branham, an assistant attorney general. His request for indefinite stay is merely an extension of that strategy. Madeline Cohen, an attorney for Warner, welcomed the stay. It's good that they recognize they are not in a position to carry out a constitutional execution, she said. There are some unnecessary, inflammatory and inaccurate statements in the response. A Democratic member of the state house of representatives, Joe Dorman, who is running against Governor Fallin, plans to hold a press conference at the state capitol on Thursday, to call for an outside investigation of Lockett's death. Oklahoma senator Constance Johnson and representative Seneca Scott have called for a moratorium on executions in the state until an independent outside body, not a state agency, fully investigates Lockett's death. Their resolutions were unlikely to be heard in the legislature. On Monday, the US supreme court declined to hear the appeal of another Oklahoma death-row inmate, Richard Glossip, whose execution date has not been set. The Oklahoma attorney general's office has asked the criminal appeals court to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
May 8 USA: The Executioner's Lament In 1977, death row inmate Gary Mark Gilmore chose to be executed by a firing squad. Gilmore was strapped to a chair at the Utah State Prison, and 5 officers shot him. The media circus that ensued prompted a group of lawmakers in nearby Oklahoma to wonder if there might be a better way to handle executions. They approached Dr. Jay Chapman, the state medical examiner at the time, who proposed using 3 drugs, based loosely on anesthesia procedures at the time: 1 drug to knock out the inmates, 1 to relax or paralyze them, and a final drug that would stop their hearts. The 3-drug execution cocktail, which later became known as Chapman's Protocol, has been the preferred method across the U.S. ever since. But last week's botched execution - in the same state where the technique was developed - has raised questions about execution norms. Although the drugs and the question of whether they work are at the center of the debate, the reality is executions are carried out by people, and people sometimes make mistakes. Many also struggle with their involvement for years afterward. Chapman's protocol depends on a number of things that he never foresaw: that in the years to come, doctors and nurses skilled in the art of finding veins would no longer agree to participate; that drug makers in Europe would refuse to allow their drugs to be used; that unregulated pharmacies would have to replicate the drugs, or that prison staff would be responsible for the dosage and the administration. Chapman supports the death penalty. But he shakes his head at some of the problems. In one situation I was made aware of, the needle was inserted into the vein pointing away from the body, he says. And I have never even known anybody that would imagine doing that sort of thing. There have been all manner of problems: inmates who wake up midway through - or who cry out in pain. Former prison officers say putting a dog to sleep is one thing; killing a person is something else entirely. This is not normal behavior for right-minded humans to engage in, says Steve Martin, who participated in several executions in Texas in the 1980s. His job was to man the phones in case of a reprieve. He says the whole process is emotionally crippling. He remembers a couple of times when the execution team couldn't get the needles inserted properly. Boy, it just ratcheted up everything, he says. People don't realize, he says, you just killed somebody, and you've been a part of it, and it affects all of us. Carroll Pickett was the chaplain at 95 executions in Texas through the mid-1990s. He remembers one time when prison staff spent 40 minutes trying to find a vein until the inmate sat up and helped them. Some of them would go outside and throw up, he says. Over time, Pickett says, the staff unraveled. And these were some good, good men. Basically, they all left. Every one of them, he says. Pickett and Steve Martin both say the memories of every execution haunt them. Martin says he often thinks of one inmate in particular, who worked on an inmate program with the prison director. The last words he ever uttered on this earth were thanking the director, he says, crying. It just struck me that this guy's fall partner was not even given the death sentence, and here we have this person we're executing whose last - at least articulated - thought was to give thanks to the person who was going to execute him. Corrections officials in Oklahoma say that, at the moment, they anticipate that the courts will postpone an execution set for next week - at least until they're certain what went wrong last week. (source: NPR) *** The Constitutionality of the Death Penalty After Botched Executions; The botched executions that occurred in Ohio and Oklahoma have many people questioning the legality of the death penalty The botched executions that occurred in Ohio and Oklahoma have many people questioning the legality of the death penalty. In this article, I hope to explain why the death penalty is constitutional in the United States and exactly how it is controlled. Overview of Amendments Relevant to the Death Penalty The death penalty in the United States has three basic controls: the Fifth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Eighth Amendment. To make it simple, the Fifth and the Fourteenth determine the legality and the constitutionality of the death penalty in the United States. The Eighth Amendment controls the manner in which the death penalty can be executed in the United States. The Fifth Amendment states in part: ...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law (U.S. Const. amend. V). These three parts each have a meaning at law. Life: the death penalty Liberty: prison or jail Property: RICO, eminent domain So long as due process of law is granted, the Constitution allows the state to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA
May 8 USA: Several states are in a kind of death penalty limbo Oklahoma officially put death penalty executions on hold Thursday for 6 months following last week's bungled execution. The decision adds it to a growing list of states in a kind of death penalty limbo. 18 states have abolished the punishment altogether, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, but it's been put on hold - for now, at least - in at least 9 more. Court rulings that the use of lethal injection procedures need to be changed or reviewed have created de facto moratoriums on the death penalty in California, North Carolina, Arkansas and Kentucky. As in Oklahoma, the state of Louisiana stayed an execution to buy time to review the intended lethal drug. And governors in 3 more states - Colorado, Oregon and Washington - have instituted formal moratoriums citing an imperfect system. In issuing those moratoriums, each governor went to great lengths to explain their thinking, citing flawed procedures and unequal application of the law. Those statements reflect the reasoning and facts behind many of the holds. Here's what they had to say: Washington On Feb. 11, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced that he was suspending the death penalty as long as he's in office Equal justice under the law is the state's primary responsibility. And in death penalty cases, I'm not convinced equal justice is being served. The use of the death penalty in this state is unequally applied, sometimes dependent on the budget of the county where the crime occurred. -- Let me say clearly that this policy decision is not about the 9 men currently on death row in Walla Walla. I don't question their guilt or the gravity of their crimes. They get no mercy from me. This action today does not commute their sentences or issue any pardons to any offender. But I do not believe their horrific offenses override the problems that exist in our capital punishment system. Colorado On May 22, 2013, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) issued a temporary reprieve for Nathan J. Dunlap. [T]he question is about the use of the death penalty itself, and not about [Dunlap], he said in his executive order. If the State of Colorado is going to undertake the responsibility of executing a human being, the system must operate flawlessly. Colorado's system for capital punishment is not flawless. A recent study co-authored by several law professors showed that under Colorado???s capital sentencing system, death is not handed down fairly. Many defendants are eligible for capital punishment but almost none are actually sentenced to death. The inmates currently on death row have committed heinous crimes, but so have many others who are serving mandatory life sentences. -- The fact that those defendants were sentenced to life in prison instead of death underscores the arbitrary nature of the death penalty in this State, and demonstrates that it has not been fairly or equitably imposed. -- My decision to grant a reprieve to Offender No. 89148 is not out of compassion or sympathy for him or any other inmate sentenced to death. The crimes are horrendous and the pain and suffering inflicted are indescribable. Oregon On Nov. 22, 2011, Gov. John Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, announced that he would no longer allow the death penalty on his watch. Oregonians have a fundamental belief in fairness and justice ??? in swift and certain justice. The death penalty as practiced in Oregon is neither fair nor just; and it is not swift or certain. It is not applied equally to all. It is a perversion of justice that the single best indicator of who will and will not be executed has nothing to do with the circumstances of a crime or the findings of a jury. The only factor that determines whether someone sentenced to death in Oregon is actually executed is that they volunteer. The hard truth is that in the 27 years since Oregonians reinstated the death penalty, it has only been carried out on two volunteers who waived their rights to appeal. -- It is time for Oregon to consider a different approach. I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am Governor. (source: Washington Post) ___ DeathPenalty mailing list DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty Search the Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/deathpenalty@lists.washlaw.edu/ ~~~ A free service of WashLaw http://washlaw.edu (785)670.1088 ~~~
