[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---ARKANSAS
April 19 ARKANSAS: Arkansas Supreme Court halts 1 death-row inmate's execution The Arkansas Supreme Court on Wednesday night halted the execution of Stacey Johnson, which was scheduled for Thursday. The Arkansas Supreme Court has halted one of two executions set for Thursday, saying the condemned inmate should have a chance to prove his innocence with more DNA testing. Stacey Johnson claims that advanced DNA techniques could show that he didn't kill Carol Heath, a 25-year-old mother of two, in 1993 at her southwest Arkansas apartment. In a 4-3 ruling late Wednesday afternoon, the state's highest court issued a stay for Johnson and ordered a new hearing in lower court for Johnson to make his claims. Johnson was set for execution Thursday night along with inmate Ledell Lee, who is also seeking a stay in a separate case. (source: Arkansasonline.com) ___ A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu DeathPenalty mailing list DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----LOUISIANA
April 19 LOUISIANA: Rodricus Crawford Exonerated from Louisiana Death Row Caddo Parish Prosecutors Drop Charges After Medical Evidence Suggests No Crime Occurred At the request of local prosecutors, a Caddo Parish, Louisiana trial court has dismissed all charges against Rodricus Crawford, making him the 158th person exonerated from death row in the United States since 1973 and the second to be exonerated this year. Mr. Crawford had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 2012 for the murder of his 1-year-old son, Roderius Lott, despite medical evidence that the child actually died of a combination of pneumonia and sepsis. “In many respects, this case may reflect both the past and future of the death penalty in America,” said Robert Dunham, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “A jurisdiction with a history of racial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, and overuse of the death penalty chose to pursue a death sentence against a grieving father, despite evidence that his child had unexpectedly died of natural causes. But as in increasing numbers of counties across the country, local voters were put off by these types of abusive prosecution practices and elected a new District Attorney, who took a fresh look at the evidence and acted in the interests of justice.” Mr. Crawford’s case attracted national attention amid evidence of race discrimination, prosecutorial excess, and scientifically false forensic testimony. During trial, prosecutor Dale Cox—who personally prosecuted 1/3 of all the cases in which Louisiana juries returned death sentences between 2010-2015—presented testimony from a local doctor that Mr. Crawford’s infant son had been suffocated. However, autopsy results showed pervasive bronchopneumonia in the baby's lungs and sepsis in his blood. Cox later told the jury that Jesus Christ would have imposed the death penalty against Mr. Crawford. In 2014, two years after the trial, Cox wrote an internal memorandum stating that Mr. Crawford “deserves as much physical suffering as it is humanly possible to endure before he dies.” Cox gained national notoriety a year later when, as Acting District Attorney, he told The Shreveport Times that he thought the state needed to “kill more people.” In November 2016, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned Mr. Crawford’s conviction, ruling that Cox had exercised the government’s discretionary jury strikes on the basis of race to unconstitutionally exclude black jurors from serving in the case. When the parish’s new District Attorney, James Stewart, re-examined the evidence in the case, he asked the court to drop the charges against Mr. Crawford. Caddo Parish is one of five major U.S. counties in which local voters have replaced prosecutors known for aggressive use of the death penalty with new prosecutors who promised systemic criminal justice reforms, including reduced reliance on capital punishment.[1] “With these new prosecutors, we are seeing a greater commitment to fairness, one that we hope will translate into greater efforts to correct the miscarriages of justice that have resulted in condemning innocent people to death,” Dunham said. With the formal dropping of charges, Rodricus Crawford becomes the 11th person exonerated from Louisiana’s death row, and the second from Caddo Parish. In 2014, Glenn Ford was released from Louisiana’s death row after 30 years. A death sentence imposed on Corey Williams, an intellectually disabled Caddo Parish prisoner who was 16 at the time of his alleged crime, has been overturned, but he is still serving a life sentence despite evidence that his confession was coerced and that others committed the offense for which he was condemned. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) today added Mr. Crawford to its Innocence List at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row. To be included on DPIC's Innocence List, defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either: (a) been acquitted of all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row, or (b) had all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row dismissed by the prosecution or the courts, or (c) been granted a complete pardon based on evidence of innocence. (source: Death Penalty Information Center) ___ A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu DeathPenalty mailing list DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 19 TURKEY: Turkey: death penalty incompatible with Council of EuropeAdoption would push Ankara outside the institution "Rejection of capital punishment is a basic principle of the Council of Europe and its reintroduction would be simply incompatible with Turkey's continued membership in the organization". It is what the Luxembourg socialist parliamentarian Yves Cruchten, general rapporteur on abolition of the death penalty for the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace), said reacting to President Erdogan's declaration on the intention of holding a referendum to bringing back the death penalty in Turkey. "The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace) has helped turn Europe into a death penalty free continent, by making a moratorium on executions and a commitment to abolition a condition for accession" says Cruchten, underlining that Pace "will not accept any backsliding on this". "President Erdogan should be under no illusion: reintroducing the death penalty would be simply incompatible with Turkey's continued membership of the Council of Europe" declares Cruchten. (source: ansamed.info) SINGAPORE: Activists decry hurried execution of convicted drug courier The following is a joint-press release by We Believe in Second Chances and the Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign. *** We Believe in Second Chances and the Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign (SADPC) note with dismay that the execution of Jeefrey bin Jamil has been abruptly scheduled for this Friday, 21 April 2017. Jeefrey is now known as Jeffrey Marquez Abineno. Jeffrey (aged 52) was convicted by the High Court of trafficking 45.26 grams of diamorphine into Singapore on 28 November 2014. His appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on 2 December 2016. He appealed to the President of Singapore for clemency, but was refused a pardon on 17 April 2017 - the same day his family was informed of his scheduled execution. We are alarmed by the speed at which Jeffrey's execution is to be carried out. In previous cases, there was more time between the President's rejection of clemency and the execution. We note with concern this decreasing window of time between notifying the inmate's lawyer and the scheduled execution. Families of death row inmates need time to make funeral preparations, inform their relatives, visit the inmate, and ready themselves emotionally. The inmate's lawyers need time to review their case and pursue other legal avenues where necessary. There should be a reasonable notice period, and at the very least a consistently enforced notice period, for the inmate's family and lawyers to plan ahead and make the necessary arrangements. The death penalty is the harshest and most final punishment that a court can mete out to any individual. It is a punishment that has been abandoned by the majority of criminal justice systems in the world. Moreover, decades of research have not been able to prove that the death sentence is more effective than other forms of punishment in deterring crime and keeping society safe. Furthermore, should Jeffrey's hanging on Friday proceed as planned, it would take place under a cloud of uncertainty over its international legality and legitimacy. Lawyers for 2 of Jeffrey's fellow death row inmates - Malaysians S Prabagaran and K Datchinamurthy - have commenced judicial review proceedings in Malaysia challenging Singapore's drug prosecution regime on grounds that it constitutes a breach of fair trial. Their case is now before the Court of Appeal of Malaysia. Should it succeed, Putrajaya would be compelled to institute legal proceedings against Singapore before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for denying its citizens a fair trial. This impacts Jeffrey's case substantially. If the ICJ ultimately rules that Singapore's current drug prosecution regime breaches the accused???s right to a fair trial, Jeffrey and his family would pay the high price of him being one of the last men hanged under a regime found to be in breach of customary international law. We urge the Singaporean authorities to halt the execution of Jeffrey Marquez Abineno. The death penalty is irreversible. Once it is carried out, a wrongful execution is an injustice that can never be rectified. (source: theindependent.sg) BANGLADESH: 2 men bag death sentence in Bangladesh A Bangladeshi court on Wednesday sentenced 2 men to death for crimes committed during the country's 1971 war of independence with Pakistan, officials said. The Special War Crimes Tribunal handed down the penalty to Moslem Prodhan, 66, and Syed Mohammad Hossain, 64, for killings and atrocities carried out on civilians during the 9-month war. Prosecution lawyer Tureen Afroz said 6 charges, including killing of unarmed civilians, were proved beyond doubt against the accused, who were members of an armed militia group linked to the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARK., NEB., S. DAK., ARIZ., NEV., USA
April 19
ARKANSAS:
The Fix AnalysisCould Arkansas' battle over the death penalty signal the
beginning of its end?
The Supreme Court said Monday that Arkansas won't be able to execute two of its
death-row inmates. And a growing number of conservatives, who see the death
penalty as an anachronistic, religiously hypocritical and big-government waste
of money, are just fine with that.
In fact, the extreme nature of Arkansas' efforts to execute 8 inmates over a
week and a half - after going 12 years without an execution - could even
underscore anti-death-penalty conservatives' argument about why it should be
abolished.
And what conservatives think about the death penalty matters perhaps more than
it does for any other political faction: Public support for the death penalty
and actual executions is at or near a 40-year-low. But Republicans control a
majority of state legislatures and governor's mansions, so any movement to
actually undo it will likely be driven by conservatives.
For the most part, the GOP in Arkansas fully supports the efforts of Gov. Asa
Hutchinson (R) to execute these inmates before a lethal injection drug expires.
But to growing numbers of conservatives on the fence or opposed to the death
penalty outside Arkansas, what he's doing feels like it belongs in the 1990s
rather than today's society, where life without parole is an option.
"For me, both as a fiscal conservative as well as a person of faith, we've
evolved to a point in society where it's not necessary," said longtime Georgia
state Rep. Brett Harrell (R), who just unveiled his opposition to the death
penalty.
In January, Harrell helped announced the formation of Georgia's branch of
Conservatives Against the Death Penalty, a faction of a national group formed
in 2013 that has now expanded to 11 states and counting, including in very red
states such as Utah, Kansas and Nebraska.
But Arkansas is drawing the attention of even pro-death-penalty Republicans.
Marc Hyden, with the national branch of Conservatives Against the Death
Penalty, said he's in contact with national tea party leaders who are privately
put off by the rush to execute in Arkansas. They're not necessarily changing
their minds about it, but there's a sense that the state's rush to execute
these men feels unnecessary, he said.
"I think the inevitable is the death penalty will, at some point, become a
thing of the past," Hyden said.
In Georgia - which led the nation in executions last year - Harrell agreed that
there are more conservatives wary of the death penalty than those who publicly
say so. When he acknowledged he had changed his mind about the death penalty,
"nearly a dozen" of his Republican colleagues privately told him: "Good job. I
believe the same thing."
A messy, headline-grabbing legal battle in Arkansas could further prod them to
oppose it.
"There's a growing number of people who are stereotypically pro-death penalty
who are beginning to reconsider the issue," Harrell said.
Support for the death penalty is no longer a given in red states. Over the past
2 state legislative sessions, GOP lawmakers in an unprecedented 12 states have
sponsored or co-sponsored legislation to repeal the death penalty. Some of them
have gotten close.
In Utah last year, a repeal bill passed the state Senate and a House committee.
For the 1st time in the modern era, Missouri's full state Senate debated the
issue.
In 2015, Nebraska, a technically nonpartisan but politically conservative
legislature, became the 1st red state in 40 years to repeal it. In Kansas, the
Republican Party removed the death penalty from its platform. The National
Association of Evangelicals switched its 40-year position on support for the
death penalty to a stance that acknowledges evangelicals may oppose it. (In
Arkansas, more than 2 dozen evangelical leaders urged Hutchinson in a letter to
stop the executions.)
Conservatives' reasoning for opposing the death penalty generally falls under
at least 1 of 3 arguments:
1. It's not consistent with their antiabortion (that is "pro-life") beliefs.
("Many people argue in the pro-life movement," Harrell said, "at the beginning
of life that the image of God is present at the moment of conception, and
therefore we should do everything in our power to preserve life.")
2. It's not fiscally sound and not consistent with conservatives'
small-government policies. ("I'm thinking that it's wrong for government to be
in business in killing its own citizens," Utah state Sen. Steve Urquhart (R),
who sponsored the repeal bill there, told The Fix.)
3. Life in prison without parole is bad enough.
Reconsidering the death penalty is far from the consensus view among
Republicans. Nebraska voters reinstated the death penalty in November after a
campaign funded in part by the state's billionaire governor. The 2015 state
legislative session was overwhelmingly supportive of the death
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA., OHIO, KY.
April 19 TEXAS: Condemned inmate avoids execution with life sentence for Houston crime spree A North Carolina man who spent years on Texas' death row awaiting execution was sentenced Monday to 4 consecutive life sentences, a plea bargain that Harris County prosecutors hope will keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. Randolph Mansoor Greer, 43, was on death row until 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling that meant he and dozens of condemned inmates would get new sentencing hearings because of insufficient jury instructions. Those cases, called Penry retrials because of the Supreme Court case, have been winding their way through Houston's courts for years. Some have successfully been retried as death penalty cases, others have gotten plea bargains with elaborately structured pleas to ensure the former death row inmates are never free. Since Texas did not have a punishment of life in prison without parole when those crimes were committed, prosecutors and families of victims have worried that even a capital murder conviction in these cases might one day lead to parole. The decision to grant parole is made by prison officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice under the law at the time of the crime. On Monday, Greer was sentenced to 4 consecutive life sentences in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to capital murder and other crimes he committed during a 1991 spree in the Houston area, according to the Harris County District Attorneys Office. "26 years after committing a murderous crime spree, Mr. Greer has been resentenced to 4 consecutive life terms without parole," First Assistant Tom Berg said Tuesday. "Greer, now 43, has been incapacitated and will never again pose a threat to public safety." Prosecutors said his crime spree spanned 6 months. In separate incidents, he abducted and sexually assaulted 2 Houston area women who survived the attacks. He also robbed from a business, stole a car, and shot and killed Walter Chmiel, owner of the Alamo gun shop in Bellaire. Greer also committed a capital murder in North Carolina as well as sexual assaults, robberies and a home invasion. Prior to new sentencing, prosecutors consulted with survivors and the families of victims, Berg said. Defense attorneys Allen Tanner and Gerald Bourgue said it was a just result. "It was an agreement based on the fact that he was 18 at the time, and he's been a model inmate ever since then," Tanner said. "We think his prison record was helpful for him." Tanner also said mitigation experts combed through records and witnesses in North Carolina and Cleveland and were expected to testify about how Greer's troubled childhood led him to a life of crime. (source: Houston Chronicle) FLORIDA: Death penalty will be pursued against man accused of shooting Sanford mother, sonSuspect Allen Cashe faces 1st-degree murder charges The death penalty will be pursued against Allen Cashe, who is accused of killing a mother and her son and shooting 4 other people, was indicted Monday on 1st-degree premeditated murder charges, according to the Seminole County State Attorney's Office. Cashe was indicted Monday on 1st-degree premeditated murder charges in connection with the deaths of Latina Herring, 35, and her 8-year-old son, Branden Christian. Officials on Tuesday filed a notice of intent to pursue the death penalty in that case. Cashe was also indicted on 4 counts of attempted 1st-degree murder with a firearm in connection with the shootings of Latina Herring's father, 60-year-old Bertis Herring; Latina Herring's youngest child, 7-year-old Brenden Christian; and 2 bystanders, Rakeya Jackson, 18, and Lazaro Paredes, 43. Sanford police released body camera footage of Cashe and Herring had been arguing about a set of keys hours before the double fatal shooting on March 27. Police encountered the couple twice before the shooting, but no arrests were made. Cashe left Herring's home in Sanford after the 2nd police encounter, then returned around 6:20 a.m. with an AK-47, police said. Cashe is accused of opening fire on the family as they were sleeping. Herring was shot 7 times and killed in her bedroom, police said. Her 2 sons were sleeping on the couch when they were shot 3 times, the report said. Bertis Gerard Herring was shot 5 times in another bedroom. Cashe is accused of shooting Jackson and Paredes as he was fleeing the area. Assistant State Attorney Dan Faggard and the lead Sanford Police Department investigator presented information to the Grand Jury before the indictment was returned late Monday afternoon. Cashe also faces charges of burglary of a dwelling with assault or battery with a firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and shooting into a dwelling. Aramis Ayala used direct verbiage from anti-death penalty group, emails showState attorney consulted few
